Culture defines a society or community, shaped by customary beliefs or social group norms, and a conduit for learning and knowledge handed down generation to generation. Culture may forecast decision and actions within a group or serve as the ultimate scapegoat for inappropriate behavior. Culture in our world has evolved from a descriptor to a ragout of thoughts, ideas, behaviors and excuses.
Organizations and their leaders strive to transform their culture when a leader transition occurs or liabilities outweigh profits. Leaders often believe an email, a speech, a presentation coupled with witty remarks, dramatic PowerPoint, and celebratory balloons and cake molds a cultural change. All of this is with the hope, pointless as it is, of enhanced positioning or profitability.
Acceptance of this falsehood is based on recognition of culture as an explanation for failed change or teams bereft of accountability. Culture, as an explanation, denies the notion culture is the accumulation of a society’s behavior and learning.
The evolution of culture over time and its reflection of shared beliefs is an essential element found within culture’s definition. A shared vision, decision making that leaps toward your vision, and instilling the culture with each individuals DNA establishes a culture. The email or celebration is simply a feel good for the leader.
Consider any large group – a workforce, civic organization, religious institution. Leaders move and out of all of them. Each leader will move the culture through their inquest style, requirements, and selection of an inner circle. Each action lends hue, timber, or animation to the group’s culture; rarely will it create a new canvas. A business that I work with has evolved it’s culture over thirty plus years. Each senior leader, junior leader, formal or informal leader reflects a shared knowledge, behavior, belief. There is folklore, story telling, and policy which embody the culture. As staff onboard and depart, each individual succeeds when they are aligned with the cultural norms and values. Tenure is brief for outliers. This hardwired culture lives within recruitment, promotion, and acceptance.
For this workforce, it’s culture is alive and well- some say thriving. At what cost?
The workforce’s culture has evolved through the decades and responsive to environmental drivers. Those who reside outside the cultural norms are not allowed to share their unique skills and talents. Instead, they are belittled and embark and unsuccessful journeys. If a spark was present during recruitment, it quickly is extinguished. Proper management hardwires opportunities to engage and share why journeys end abruptly, Unfortunately, the words shared are discounted and its collection a pretense. Any learning the potentially would evolve the culture is shrouded in a cloak of cognitive dissonance.
This business is successful. Profits are high and positioning among competitors strong. There is proxy support to keep the culture static. There are few reasons, and far fewer drivers, to recognize the talent and knowledge lost.
This business is not unique. A quick literature search would find an honor role of similar situations. The entrance to the building is littered with talented outliers, unique thoughts, innovative practices. When the outliers call to question leadership and management actions, the organizational culture is raised like a warring victor’s flag at the end of conflict.
Narrow minded belief and fear of diversity are not synonymous with a positive, rich culture that breeds success. It is oppression or passive aggression in its most raw and innate sense. Sigmund Freud wrote, “The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man… it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture.”
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