When an organisation is born, its culture comes from its first parents — the founders. With each decision made, the identity of the child is moulded. However, culture soon takes a life of its own in the behaviours of the team, the values we state as important, the choices we have made, and the underlying assumptions that inform all of the above.
Designing and orienting the culture is one of our primary responsibilities as leaders. From the layout of the office to how we conduct meetings; from the way we allocate salary to how we divide into teams; cultural expressions determine the fate of an organization.
Let us approach culture beyond buzzwords and lazy definitions. According to Edgar E. Schein’s (former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Managementand a notable contributor to the field of organisational development):
“The culture of a group can now be defined as a pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, which has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.”
This definition implies that our behaviour and that of our team is as a statement of the culture, of “the correct way to perceive, think, and feel”. And so are the communication processes, reporting structure, job descriptions, office layout, and other artefacts designed or curated by the team.
Meaning that, if we want to affect culture, we can not simply force a change on what people do, (the tip of the iceberg). We must also deal with the fundamental assumptions that led the group to the current artefacts and behaviours, (the big mass under the surface.)
One of the main tools we have to affect this system are the “company values”. As a statement of what is important, they lie in-between the visible part of the culture (choices in artefacts and behaviours) and our subconscious worldview (assumptions).
When values are defined properly, they inform and align choices across the organization, be it marketing campaign, on-boarding processes, or strategy. They can make assumptions conscious, avoiding disputes and facilitating delegation. However, if the values statement is rarely used and if our choices in artefacts and behaviour showcase a different picture, the stated values will be quickly forgotten by the employees.
Another risk is that people frequently misunderstand value statements. For instance, for person A, collaboration might mean to comment and debate each topic regardless of each’s area of expertise; for person B, it means that teams should “collaborate” by giving the experts sole control of their specific area. Words out of context have multiple and often contradictory meanings, so we as leaders must take action to avoid conflicts and disappointments.
The key to a useful values statement is striking a balance between defining them close enough to reality to have concrete definitions and ensuring they are slightly aspirational. The ideal values statement includes both the key characteristics of our “best self” and relevant examples.
Consider the following possibilities with different levels of completeness:
Now, what if, after defining our values statement, we find that too often we embark in counterproductive behaviours and our “best self” feels like an exception instead of the norm?
First, we must include the team in defining this challenge, as without participation, people tend to resist change. The case of Aena, a Fortune 500 healthcare provider, illustrates this principle. 3 CEOs attempted top-down culture change and failed. The board quickly replaced them. The 4th CEO in 5 years used a different approach, taking the time to visit and understand the perspective of employees. The cultural change succeeded and, in half a decade, the company went from losing $300 million to an operating profit of $1.7 billion.
In Aena’s case, as well as numerous others, change starts with discussions. However, it is not enough to make a values statement for a whole organisation to adopt a new pattern of behaviour. For example, if we say that we need to become more “entrepreneurial” but our organization’s past success had been attributed to careful planning and control (an assumption) and, in consequence, our bonus system was designed to reward only those who hit annually defined targets over those who innovate or generate learnings (an artefact), we will encounter that employees will resist taking the risk associated with being “entrepreneurial”. It doesn’t matter how much rhetoric we use or how much skill training we provide; culture change also requires redesigning artefacts.
Moreover, if we don’t take the underlying assumptions of a group into account, we risk driving problems underground instead of fixing them. For instance, in a manufacturing and retail company I consulted for, employees were found taking naps in a storage room while clients waited at the counter. Management instituted financial penalties for those found sleeping and put in place a system of random checks by a supervisor. But a few months later, a complex scheme between supervisors and line workers developed to cover for those sleeping during their shift. Instead of solving a problem, the initiative further degraded the culture by normalising not only sleeping during work hours but also scheming.
A better approach to culture change relies on, first co-defining the challenge, then co-creating a map of the culture and identifying leverage points for change, and finally ideating and testing initiatives.
When we applied this approach, in the case above, we found that “solidarity among colleagues” was a fundamental cultural trait. The employees perceived the leadership’s top-down approach as an attempt to extract more work from them, instead of a sensible request, and, naturally, united to resist the change.
We had to reframe the conversation by creating a positive and desirable vision for customer service (defining a value in the process), and then collectively ideating solutions (redesigning artefacts) to reduce employee fatigue by leveraging the same assumption of “solidarity among colleagues” . Employees stopped taking naps while clients waited, and the leadership found a few months later that outcomes were improving further thanks to spontaneous peer to peer mentoring.
Our external viewpoint was useful to map the culture, and our careful facilitation of the process contributed to success. But what really made the difference was the co-creation approach and careful consideration of the full system of culture: the stated values, the choices in artefacts and behaviours, and the underlying assumptions.