Understanding Culture

One of the more commonly thrown around words in many walks of life is ‘culture’.

You probably hear at least daily references to ‘safety culture’, ‘risk culture’, ‘entrepreneurial’ and ‘toxic’ cultures; you hear it referenced in relation to nations, governments, institutions, companies and as a defining feature of successful or failing sports teams, orchestras and pretty much any form of organisation.  

Indeed, culture gets used as an explanation for success or failure from mergers and acquisition activity to childcare and everything in between.

Given the commonality of reference, the broad swath of its applicability and its impact on performance, you’d think that ‘culture’ would be deeply understood, researched, well defined and come with a similarly large amount of guidance on how to create maintain and change culture to your advantage.

Sadly, whilst there is no doubt of the impact of culture to any organisation’s success, the level of clarity and guidance doesn’t exist.

So, what is it, how might we understand it better for any chosen organisation and what can we do to have a positive impact on (and hence our organisations performance)?

Let’s start with a simple question. How do you define ‘culture’?

As simple as the question is, the answer is less easy – something of a worry when the term is used as liberally as it seems to be. I ask this question a lot and plenty of people struggle to find an answer.

In the most of simple terms, here’s a useful (maybe) starting point. What if we defined culture as “the way things are done here’?

Sounds good?

It’s simple, it makes intuitive sense, it can give us a framework for discussing how the culture of two groups might differ or how we might want to evolve our culture to create some form of change.

On the downside, as simple and deceptively accurate as that definition is, it doesn’t help much if we want to understand or change the culture of an organisation. It also gets to the challenge of defining and acting on culture - culture covers pretty much everything you might be able (and unable) to point a stick at and when it comes to action this is far from helpful.

Instead let’s get more specific (and I think more helpful).

What if we defined culture as “the set of behaviours that members of an organisation consistently display over time”. A lot wordier, but still easy to get your head around and it enables more structure to be bought to diagnosing and changing cultures.

This longer definition gives a clue as to which aspects of the organisation should get focus when we think about culture and or feel the need to change it.

When we think about culture, we are really talking about the interactions and experiences with the people that are in or representative of an organisation. These interactions will be driven by a range of environmental factors (inside the organisation) that we interpret as behavioural norms, and from which guide our perception of how things work here.

If that is what culture is, how can we understand what the culture of any organisation might be and why it is that way?

The good news is that – when it comes to culture – not all aspects of an organisation are created equal. If you want to quickly build an accurate picture of an organisation’s culture, gain an understanding of the following:

1.        What are the organisations beliefs? – Most organisations have some form of vision or mission statement – or some set of stated goals. Even if they don’t, these will be implicitly communicated and understood by its members.

These artefacts may not be accurate as the rhetoric doesn’t really match the reality. So don’t take things on face value and get curious to understand how the organisation views its ‘market’, what it sees as its primary strengths, how those differ from its competitors, how it defines its future and how it will be able to execute on it.

2.        How are important decisions made? – Don’t get focused on the decision-making forums and processes that exist but about what decisions are considered important, who has the power to make them, who influences those people and what do they base these decisions on?

A common pitfall in this analysis is the assumption that the most senior people make the most important decisions. Whilst this is generally a reality when we think about ‘big decisions’ – Capex, strategy, resourcing etc - but these are often not the decisions that drive the overall success of the organisation.

One of the easier examples to illustrate this are hospitals. Without a doubt, the senior people make big decisions that impact the institution, but the real decision makers are the clinical teams that deliver health outcomes for the patients. Understanding this is vital because what is important to the decision makers becomes important to the organisation and hence drives the behaviour and interactions with its members (i.e. it’s culture)

3.        What behaviours are commonly displayed by its members? - Every organisation has a self-policed set of behavioural norms. These will vary between specific individuals and teams but there will always be some consistency between them.

As a test think about the last time you took on a new job and your working style, language and interactions changed as you assimilated to your new role and relationships.

Understanding what these consistent behaviours are – from the perspective of those within the organisation and those who interact with its members but aren’t one of them – provides incredible insight on the culture but also on what drives it. Of specific note, look to understand which behaviours are recognised and which are ‘closed down’ (again dig deeper than recognition programs where they exist but listen to the stories about successful people and how they achieve their success).

Each of these areas overlap and influence the other, but together they provide a useful framework for understanding what drives those more visible behaviours and interactions that define culture.

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