What is Culture? - The Human Side of Transformation

This is the first of several complementary articles that I am writing on the topic of creative culture for corporations, as part of Share More Stories (SMS) work on: “The Human Side of Transformation”

INTRODUCTION - CULTURE IS?

Before proceeding let’s first get to a shared perspective on what is corporate culture. Merriam-Webster defines culture as “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization.” This is a good description of our traditional view of culture. However if we are trying to cultivate and improve culture, I believe it misses some of the key subtleties and mechanisms involved. In my experience, it is those gaps in the understanding of culture, that undermine corporate change initiatives and have led so many companies to fail at changing their culture. 

Stated plainly, culture is the collective byproduct of corporate activity. Yes simply, culture is a company’s norms and values, but these are primarily evaluations of an inner ethos that is generated through the cumulative direct and indirect actions of a company going about its routine execution. There may be brass engravings of the official corporate narrative hanging in the cafeteria, but culture is actually the lived experience of the entirety of the company’s labor resources, and in some ways the consumers who share the company’s culture through their brands. 

We must first understand that culture is a layered byproduct of activity, similar to car exhaust. It is expressed as output from expended effort, and thus can not be easily changed directly. If culture is indirect, then to effect culture, you must first change the engine and wait for the results. This is an important understanding. Many who think they are directly changing culture often find themselves at war with the culture. Yes exhaust is an entity of sorts. We could change its molecular composition, trap it, filter it, and redirect it. It is true, we know US cars have emissions controls to impact the toxicity of exhaust. However, I hope we can all agree that changes in the functional operation of the engine, and thus impacting how the exhaust is created, is a more effective approach. When changing culture, it is a function of changing the activity of a company that ultimately and eventually changes culture. 

Culture is also a sedimentary process. Over time, culture collects. It is the result of organic and inorganic activity layering upon themselves to build the corporate patina. Some of the sediment is formal and written down, some of it shared in gossip, and some is not even identified or perceived, but solely felt as culture. Some companies are naturally good at establishing and cultivating culture. These companies have created iconic sanctuaries that inspire their workers to achieve beyond their pay and requirements. Other companies, who may still command the market, have derived work environments that feel like prisons, or battlefields; or worse the waiting room at a local government office. I believe if we studied it, we would establish that there is a weak correlation between culture and market opportunity at any given moment in time. Yet over time, a company’s culture does much to impact its opportunity, reputation, and market presence.

CULTURE OF PEOPLE

“OUR CULTURE IS OUR PEOPLE” - This seems a common clique on any number of company culture plaques, but is culture actually a direct product of a company’s personnel? In general no one person fully establishes corporate culture; though founders of startups, and powerful CEO's exact notable influence. If people alone defined culture, there would be less anxiety associated with work. In our SMS study of creative workers, we noted the strong inter-relationships between attitudes like “self-discipline” and “anxiety” associated with work environments. Further we noted that much of the stress of work is in the effort to present yourself as the perfect image of the culture. On average there is some normal distance between the individual, and the corporate culture that is supposedly defined by its people. With that said, let’s look at where people do impact culture.

There are four places to consider the human impact on corporate culture. 

• Leadership - We’ll discuss the impact of leadership in exacting culture change in an upcoming article. For now, I will state leadership is impactful to culture specifically in how they interact with the the company resources, through communication and demonstration.
• Hiring - Hiring profiles have a notable impact on how a company’s culture evolves. The company hires “the company professional” and that professional enforces that profile. How that profile is constructed will, without question, affect culture over time. 
• Training - Every employee is formally and informally trained by corporate culture. This helps perpetuate culture (good or bad). In this way the company builds “the company professional”, both leading to similar results.
• Evaluation - Both the intrinsic and extrinsic value a worker feels is highly determinant on their happiness and contribution. Unfortunately companies often get it exactly wrong. Too often companies focus on evaluating employees, instead of "valuing" employees. This, among other things, usually leads to discord that is present in the culture.
• Voice - Who the company “listens to” is a significant determinant of how people affect culture. It is appropriate to point out “anonymous” surveys and listening sessions can potentially be perceived as inauthentic, untrustworthy, and thus may collect information the workers think you want to hear, but not capture the deeper perspectives and attitudes they feel.

CULTURAL DYNAMICS

What we can say is the collection of people, in action over time, are instrumental to a company’s evolving culture. Is it the people alone? What are the other internal and external forces that participate in the expression of culture? The following list are some of the additional dynamics at play. This is not an exhaustive list, but its intent is to challenge some of the traditional mental framing used in culture change in order to realize the existence of these gaps and hidden features. I offer the hypothesis that a stronger understanding of the status quo, will allow companies to stage for a more practical success through this grounding. These are some of the perspectives I have identified as a participant in culture change that I felt were worth sharing.

• Culture is reality - It seems important to all who want to enable culture, that this fundamental fact is understood. Culture is not what you want it to be, it is what you are. This may feel obvious, but I suggest this single fact is the biggest misconception and detriment to culture change today. As defined in “Johari’s window”, there is equally a corporate “blind spot” that can make culture change feel more like herding sacred cows, than an authentic experience in understanding and change. Our SMS study on trust and authenticity showed that to engage an audience authentically, it is important to establish trust first. This is why much of our work with brands and organizations ties to developing a deeper understanding of the people involved. Company culture is real, and in process. It is of significant importance that you understand those realities, even if some of the learning hurts, because that reality is at work today, no matter your understanding of it. 
• Culture reflects risk - Culture is a manifestation of the company’s risk profile. Like a fingerprint, culture conveys where and how the company manages risk out of the business, and where it takes risks. Though it is too far from the scope of this article to discuss this in detail, I believe corporations are too often devoid of healthy risk. Similar to healthy cholesterol or good gut bacteria, some risk is essential to a thriving ecosystem; but the strength of the company’s success, demonstrated in an ongoing culture, in part works to discount, disqualify and altogether remove risk from the environment. This is imprinted deeply on the culture. The implication is not that this is a bad expression, but that it is strongly pressed into the mud. Understanding this can impact your targets and the success of planned changes. 
• Corporate cleanser - Culture works as a cleanser of difference. As the last bullet described the specific example of risk, variability itself is more often than not perceived as risk in traditional models, and culture works to limit it. In this way culture works to cleanse itself of difference. As a change agent, helping companies implement and realize change, I have often described myself as a virus entering an ecosystem. I explained there will be natural antibodies that will work against my efforts, and I will either succeed at helping you accomplish your initiative, or I will be conquered like a contagion by the culture. It is a framing that helps start the needed introspection to realize how hard it is to change culture. There is the familiar saying attributed to Peter Druker, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. After more than 25 years of participating in all aspects of corporate strategy, culture, and change, I contest there has never been a more true or evergreen business quote uttered. Culture has inertial memory, and defense mechanisms that protect it. Every company must look inside itself to understand two things: how their culture is limiting their diversity, and how will their culture fight the changes the company would like to make?
• Culture strengthens the strong - This may feel akin or even redundant to the last point of cleansing difference. Admittedly they are related, however I feel it's important to highlight that company culture not only becomes homogeneous, it becomes overly strong. Companies usually have strong groups and individuals who directly affect the corporate calculus of revenue, costs and power; and culture tends to bias towards them. Culture strengthens the strong, leaving the less strong to often atrophy within an organization. It is an active fight to keep balance between the normative attitudes and beliefs, while making room for differing views, and alternate approaches. All this makes intuitive sense, some may even see it as a corporate “strength”; however I suggest companies should consider how to achieve a moderate allotment that allows for creativity and growth through diversity, and its less strong parts. You could say the HR and D&I functions have been established to take on this fight, and work towards balancing the inherent natural bias. Though not always welcome, these efforts have had a strong impact on improving the company, and its resulting culture. It is becoming clear that transformation is the “new black dress” of corporate evolution. Companies must understand how to transform and exact change in a rapidly evolving marketplace. Sometimes this is happening at a intra-year pace, with a changing workforce. It may not as of yet be a fact, but in theory, culture management is becoming a key differentiator of success. The question is where in this redefinition, should companies look to cultivate balance and allow to grow these differences; and what of their current strengths will continue to be considered valuable over time?
• Culture is multiplicative - Most companies are an overlapping Venn diagram of groups, and thus overlapping cultures within the overall culture. There is not one culture, but an ecosystem of cultures. This can be seen functionally as in the difference between say engineering and sales; it is additionally relevant in international companies where geo-political, economic, norms and customs all differ in large and small ways. I ran an international group within a corporation. When I got the role, I was known for my consistent delivery of planning, execution and results in the US market. Initially, I thought my job was to apply that consistency across Europe and Asia. Humbly, I submit I was quickly educated that delivering my consistent results was not my job, but to advance each theater within the realm of their culture and norms. I fought many culture battles during this time, and I won a few of them. However, I would suggest to you that my leadership style was the most altered from the experience. Culture said “I enjoy your strategy with a side of buttered toast...”. Ultimately my message here is if you see your culture as something engraved on a plaque over your door, or contained within your vision and mission statements, I humbly recommend that change is best started with a strong empathetic dose of open minded discovery to uncover the vast and variable edges of your culture.
• Culture is environmental - Per my previous comments about international business, If you’re spending over $1,000 airfare to visit one of your corporate offices, the environmental differences can be more important than your company's cultural similarities. Specifically I found in my work, the inter-company norms & culture of two partners in a European country, are likely more similar than the culture and norms shared between a single company's operations in two different countries like US and Germany. This implies that company culture is deeply affected by the culture of the locality of its workers and consumers. Germans and US business people working norms are not the same. Their goals, needs, and concerns are quite different, and ultimately they do not work alike; and often do not appreciate the styles of the other. I personally experienced this trying to manage a team and evaluate performance of operations. My desire for output was inherently American made, my measurement of things like activity, progress, and strategic impact were defined by my American experience. From that viewpoint, I found Europe too reserved in their approach. I was more direct, simple and aggressive (i.e. checkers), they were more plotted, close to the vest, relationship based (i.e. chess). Which strategy was right? I contend a blend, with a deep respect for the environmentals at play. However it really doesn’t matter, Europe is Europe; and my desire to make it deliver and look like US operations was something I could not accomplish as an individual leader in a vast mature market. Now let’s consider this example and the impact on culture. I had little effect on the culture of our European operations other than to confirm Americans are boorish. I’d like to think I eventually adapted to be a better leader by expanding my perspectives and immersing myself into their way of working. In international companies this is often down played, and considered solved by putting powerful leaders from each region into the leadership structure. But these floors creak constantly, and it's rare that companies ever find a centralized culture deeper than a couple levels at the top. That might be OK, but it is important to consider how the company defines success for any cultural change. This example provides clarity, but these same dynamics can erupt during mergers and acquisitions, differing product lines, or other scenarios. It is enough here to say the environments you operate within will naturally cleave your culture. 

I hope you have enjoyed stepping through some of my learnings. In this article, we studied the fundamental concept of what is culture, and explored some of the ingredients that make up that mix. We established that culture is an indirect byproduct of activity, is impacted by the people it is made of, and is an imprint of the company's ethics, ethos, operations and risk profile. We also discussed its complexity, and the influence of outside forces. I agree that this is the beginning of a conversation, more than a compendium of all things defining culture. My hope was to focus on some of the things I have learned, and that from my experience go unnoticed. I hope this helps in your success in cultivating your culture. Please share freely in the comments below. I’d like to hear your ideas as well.

"The Human Side of Transformation" Links:

1) What is Culture

2) Touring the Past

3) The Objective of Culture

4) Influence of Leadership

5) Individualism in Culture

6) Moment of Shared Wisdom

7) Virtualizing Culture

8) Freedoms and Boundaries