Your Corporate Culture is like your Nose

I know this analogy sounds strange :-) Bear with me for just a little while and I’ll explain what I mean. Let’s start with a small exercise. First, face directly forward. Next, without turning your head, look as far to the left as you can, then do the same to the right. Whatever you saw when you did this, it might surprise you to learn that your nose was in your eyeline each time. You just didn’t ‘see’ it because your brain ‘filtered’ it out.

In any waking moment, your eyes are receiving an enormous amount of information – several million pieces per second. Once received, the information is transmitted to your brain for processing. Understandably, this is too much data to make sense of instantaneously. So your brain chooses what information is relevant, processes that, and ‘tells’ you what you’re seeing. The rest of the information is either stored or discarded. Because it would be of limited value to constantly ‘tell’ you that your nose is on your face, it is filtered out of the processed information and you don’t actively ‘see’ it. In much the same way, your corporate culture is ever-present but constantly filtered out of your day to day work.

With that in mind, I want to explore six ways in which your Corporate Culture is like your nose:

1.???? Outsiders can see it clearly, even if you don’t – Whether they are customers, partners, or merely observing stakeholders, those who interact with your organisation from the outside can clearly see the manifestation of your culture in how your employees show up to them. They see it in how you deal with crises, how and who is empowered to make decisions – among other things.

2.???? You can only really study it if you make a deliberate effort to do so. In much the same way your brain filters your nose out, your corporate culture is ever present but fades into the background and subconscious. It’s there in whether your team is comfortable in publicly disagreeing with you – and by the same token, it’s there in how you respond to such disagreement. However, if you as a leader don’t consciously take the time to study it – to hold a mirror up to yourself and your organisation – very often you won’t notice when it’s damaging your effectiveness. At least not until it forces you to notice.

3.???? It has a big impact on whether or not you look beautiful. I would readily agree that ‘beauty’ is a subjective evaluation. However, there tends to be general consensus about what faces we find attractive. How your nose fits your features plays a big part in this. Too wide or too thin, too sharp or too round, and your nose can change how you look. Not to mention if you have a big wart or pimple on your nose, it immediately takes away from any of your other more appealing features. In the context of the organisation you lead, does your culture match your corporate image. Or rather, does it reflect the image you want to have. Does the way you treat your employees – the way they feel about the company – match what you say you are and how you present yourself?

4.???? If it’s unwell, it makes it difficult to do seemingly unrelated things. Have you ever tried to sprint when you have a blocked nose? You could breathe entirely through your mouth but you still can’t quite hit the proper stride. How about tasting something when you have a cold and congestion? Or what your voice sounds like? When you have an unhealthy corporate culture, routine tasks become unproductively harder to achieve. People spend more time second guessing each other, covering their backsides from fallout and avoiding ownership when things go wrong. Sometimes, you might even follow the wrong path or strategy simply because no one subordinate to you felt safe enough to point out glaring structural flaws to you. Things still get done, but it costs more effort and resources to achieve the same result.

5.???? If it’s working properly, it can help you identify that things are not right faster than your other senses. When there’s a fire somewhere, you’re likely to smell the smoke before you see the fire or feel the heat. When food is going bad, the smell of rot will catch your attention faster than any visual cues. Similarly, with a strong and healthy corporate culture, more people take ownership of the organisation and so more people speak up sooner. When employees are empowered, more people take the time to solve problems even before they’re escalated to the leadership. With the right culture you have more canaries in your coal mine, so to speak. Conversely, when things are not quite right, how often do employees hesitate to point out mistakes? How often do they stay ducked to keep out of a proverbial line of fire? What are key things that don’t make it to the leaders’ attention in time because there’s fear of retribution?

6.???? In small, subtle ways it has a big influence on our health and general well-being. In the same way our bodies and minds respond to smells, corporate culture has similar effects. Whereas inhaling essential oils through your nose will help calm the mind or invigorate the body, the culture of your organisation has a direct impact on the climate in your offices and how your employees show up to their jobs. Simon Sinek, the business and leadership author, tells of a story where he met a barista in a Las Vegas hotel. The barista, named Noah, also worked in a similar capacity at another hotel. Despite having the same skills in both hotels, Noah experienced very different cultures in the two organisations. Consequently, he approached the job differently in each, resulting in a very different customer experience.

(You can listen to Simon tell the story here https://youtu.be/vc4FEIYvkQc?si=e2B91ht1AQnE4nBo)

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Does this list make sense? Do you agree with it? What are the other ways you can think of that your corporate culture could be like your nose?