Culture is like the air we breathe; it determines if we thrive or die and like the air we breathe we are not in 100% control of it. We can influence it through our collective actions, but it takes understanding, a plan and perseverance.
In organisations, culture directly impacts performance, the success or failure of change, the recruitment and retention of talent, the motivation and engagement of teams and ultimately the bottom line, brand and reputation.
So we should care about culture, just like we care about the air we breathe.
Culture performs an important function in organisations, it provides a shared view of how it is and how things work. It stabilises and reduces uncertainty in times of change to provide continuity of identity. It also provides meaning and purpose by defining what we care about and the behaviours we adopt to demonstrate this care.
As Lou Gerstner, former CEO at IBM said ‘I came to see in my time at IBM that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game’.
So, how do we play the game of shaping cultures that enable people to thrive in uncertainty?
Culture has two main components, namely beliefs and behaviours. When doing cultural change we change beliefs and behaviours using an inside out and outside in approach. Inside out, involves changing beliefs so that people start doing things differently and outside-in involves supporting people to do or experience something new to influence the beliefs they have.
In organisations, culture is shared by observing, copying, correcting and coaching each other to align with how things are done around here. We humans are social creatures, we like to fit in. This means culture is sticky and stabilises around a collective comfort zone. To move the comfort zone requires that we work with clarity and consistency across the organisation to address the specific beliefs and behaviours that need to change. The process of influencing culture is rather like cooking we ‘stir’ to move behaviours in the other direction to stop things sticking.
