Is your Corporate Culture like Schr?dinger’s Cat?

By Ailsa Carson

The concept of Schr?dinger’s Cat has both amused and fascinated me for many years, and reading the raft of reports of recent events at the Post Office in the UK, I’ve started to wonder if for some organizations their corporate culture is the equivalent of the cat in the famous quantum physics thought experiment*??

It seems to me that organizations often have a mythical view of what their culture actually is, they either believe a few outspoken individuals or satisfied team members that everything is rosy, or they base their assumptions on the atmosphere in the board room or a one off outsourced employee survey. Companies rarely ask or engage with all employees and even more rarely ask associates; suppliers or customers what they think. It's rare that suppliers are considered yet they are a critical component of the organization delivering its results.

So how do you open the box and see whether your culture is indeed alive or dead?

Firstly, be brave – you may not like what you find.? But blindly ignoring it and believing you are better off not knowing, will have wide repercussions.? Resignations, high absenteeism, quality failures will be the least of your worries if the situation escalates and it ends up in the media.

Have you ever checked out Glass Door?

Glass Door is a recruitment site that allows employees to leave ratings and comments about what it is like to work for a company.? It’s worth taking a look to see how your company rating on websites like Glass Door? One of my colleagues John Quirke always checks out what employees are saying before going to see a company. It’s real, you will get a glimpse inside the box. Not only that, this is what potential employees can see and this will impact how they feel and therefore behave when they join.? A great salary package may appease concerns over bad reviews, but they will have a negative impact longer term.

Create Systems

To discover the real truth you need to ensure you have a number of key systems in place for: Employees, ?Customers and Suppliers.? These systems should be designed in a way that provides 360 reviews as well as key performance indicators and key behavioural indicators. ?Systems thinking is at the heart of the SHINGO? Philosophy and you can learn more by downloading the SHINGO Handbook HERE.

To open the box fully you could also undertake what we call a world café. This is where we bring the whole operation together to talk about culture; align behaviors to strategy and agree behavioral charters.?

There are also some great cultural assessment tools available and we can also help you build a culture survey tailored to your organisation and your particular strategy which will help you align your ideal behaviors with your ideal results.

Culture is after all the sum of behaviours in a business and great cultures don’t just happen, they need to be supported by effective systems. Systems drive behaviours, and the rights systems need to exist for you to get the behaviours you both want and need.

Discussing this through with one of my colleagues Jordan Squire he also pointed out that the concept of Shr?dingers Cat also applies to operations.? Where senior leaders don’t visit operations through regular gemba walks do they really know what is happening. Can they for certain say that the business is operating effectively or efficiently or are they managing by assumption.? In the book Gemba Walks** Jim Womack quotes Fujio Cho, Toyota’s then Chairman “Go see, Ask Why, Show Respect”.? Going to Gemba is a fundamental pillar of operational excellence. By going to where the work is taking place and seeing you will get a true picture of what is working and what isn’t. ?

So my advice - go ahead and open the box!

But if you’re not brave enough we are always here to help ??

For more information on how S A Partners can support you please do email

[email protected] ?

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*About Schr?dingers Cat

Schr?dinger’s Cat is a thought experiment about quantum physics suggested by Erwin Schr?dinger in 1935. It is intended to demonstrate the idea in quantum physics that tiny particles can be in two states at once until they're observed. It asks you to imagine a cat in a box with a mechanism that might kill it. Until you look inside, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time.? Essentially by looking you will fix the physical state of the cat/object, so in organizational terms your culture can indeed be both alive and dead at the same time unless you take a look.

** 2011 Womack, J Gemba Walks Lean Enterprise Institute