Organisational Culture: Art or Science?
For those of you that are from a more mature vintage in Australia, you’ll remember cracker night. On June 7th 1986 I was five years old and it was the last cracker night before fireworks were banned in NSW, Australia. Some of my fondest memories were of cracker night, the excitement, the danger, the noise, the smell, the beauty; it was absolutely magic. One of my favourite fireworks were paratroopers. It consisted of a roman candle with some toy soldiers stuffed in the top with tissue paper parachutes to bring them back down safely following being projected into the air via a small explosion….rather ironic. Nonetheless, they fascinated me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been curious about how things work. I loved science at school and liked to experiment beyond the confines of the school laboratory. When I was in high school, a kid in my year managed to get his hands on some fireworks. I begged him to give me some as I wanted to figure out how they worked to satisfy my curiosity that had been sparked eight years earlier. I was so desperate, I offered to pay him five dollars for a single cracker. You’ve all seen the images of thousands of small red firecrackers going off to cleanse the spirits for Chinese New Year. I bought one single cracker for five dollars! Yes, I was totally nuts. What was more extraordinary, I never even saw the firework explode. Instead, I went home sat it on a blank sheet of white A3 paper and carefully dissected it with a scalpel to reveal the raw materials used to make it. I wasn’t satisfied with simply seeing the magic unfold, I needed to understand how to make the magic happen.
After three years of lunchtimes in the library studying books, countless failed experiments at home involving coffee grinders, cardboard tubing, tissue paper and plenty of superficial burns, I performed my first fireworks display. That’s right, my very own fireworks display witnessed by about two hundred people. Let’s just say not all of them worked perfectly and I may have failed when it came to following any sort of safety protocol and thankfully nobody was injured…but they were all entertained. Somewhere in between a wayward rocket whizzing past my right ear and the deafening boom of a rogue mortar knocking the wind out of me, I realised that fireworks are a beautiful synergy of art and science. The spectacle only meaningful in the moment, witnessed by fascinated onlookers captivated by the sorcery unfolding before their eyes. This shared curiosity binds people at that moment, a shared experience to be remembered and reflected upon.
Organisational Culture
With such clarity and passion at an early age, you might wonder why I didn’t become a pyrotechnician. The truth is, that’s all I wanted to be. Following a behind the scenes tour of a prominent fireworks company I did ask if I could do an internship which was denied. The only intern they took on previously was supposedly killed in an unfortunate accident involving fireworks…there’s that irony again. With that, I meandered my way to university and eventually landed on psychology where strangely the question of art or science was still being asked. Even today, you might find people that believe Psychology belongs in the arts. Psychologists, on the other hand, do their darndest to ensure that they are taken seriously with their rats, stats and psychometric profiling. Unfortunately, we are often left with black and white perspectives on something that, just like fireworks, can only be fully appreciated when we combine both art and science.
Organisational culture must be one of the most contentious constructs ever conceptualised. Paradoxically, everyone can describe the culture of their organisation, but almost nobody agrees on exactly how it works. We all agree that it exists, but nobody has ever seen it. It’s this nebulous abstraction that behaves like a bad smell. When you first enter a room the smell hits you hard but after an hour or so, it slowly becomes normal to the point where you can’t smell anything anymore. Having tested my olfactory prowess on hundreds of organisations, and like my curiosity fuelled career as an amateur pyrotechnician, I’m on a mission to understand the science underpinning culture. I’m not the first to investigate, nor will I be the last but one thing I have observed is that much of the focus has been placed on ‘Culture Change’. To me, if the fundamental understanding of culture has not yet been agreed upon, how is anyone meant to change it. Moreover, what are you changing exactly? For anyone in this space, you don’t have to look too far to discover the overwhelming number of failed culture change programs. Furthermore, due to their scarcity, the few high-profile success stories often appear to be more like a magical culmination of perfect timing, perfect leaders, and usually a giant slush fund to ensure it all goes off without a hitch. The reality is, culture happens whether you like it or not. Like water running down a mountain following a massive downpour, the water will find it’s own path. If however you can be bothered, you can influence where that water flows. You can’t always know when it’s going to rain, nor how much it will rain but you can plan for it. The remainder of this paper explains culture through my lens…..both art and science. I define it for you, I break it down into its components then show you how to make the magic happen. All you need to do is be curious.
Culture defined
For the following definition to make sense, you need to accept the following assumptions[i]:
Assumption 1: Organisational culture is an individual phenomenon i.e. It can only ever be perceived and experienced by one person.
Assumption 2: Organisational culture is constantly changing. Like a cloud in the sky, it takes form and shape when it binds with your imagination but when you look away for a moment it changes into another form, forever evolving.
Assumption 3: Organisational culture is made up of critical ingredients that when combined in the right quantities create a ‘chemical’ reaction. Like fireworks, if you don’t have the right combination of chemicals, you will never produce the desired effect.
Assumption 4: The key ingredients and the required quantities of each keep changing based on the environment. If you’ve ever tried lighting a campfire in the rain, or strong wind or when it’s hot and dry, you’ll appreciate what I’m talking about.
Assumption 5: Culture matters. If it’s broken, so is your organisation’s future success. The bottom line is….it affects the bottom line.
With these assumptions in mind, culture can be defined as.
“Culture is a reflection of moments upon moments, shaped by what you expect and believe will happen”
In every moment, you experience something which you can reflect upon. In that same moment, another person experiences you at that moment which they can reflect upon. Imagine that it’s as if we are all walking around like shards from a broken mirror, each reflecting our experience into another person’s reflection, we confirm our own beliefs through our behaviours and our relationships. Our bonds with others are solidified when they reinforce our behaviour and therefore demonstrate that they too share our beliefs. I’ll step out of metaphor for a moment just in case I lost you. Simply put, as individuals that turn up to work every day, what we believe shapes what we do and what we do shapes who we develop relationships with. Our relationships then reinforce our beliefs and so the cycle continues. These three elements are what forms culture or what I also call ‘brand’. The culture or brand of your organisation is an expression of the shared beliefs, behaviours and bonds that exists within the organisation and externally with your suppliers, customers and marketplace. There is one overarching element that has a governing role when it comes to influencing culture. That is the environment or background that your organisation is nested in. See Fig 1. For a diagram outlining the culture model.
Fig 1. Culture Model
The importance of the environment
The environment or background is the least controllable element of culture. On a macro level, it includes that marketplace, public perceptions, the economy, industry regulations, political standing and the list goes on. At a micro level, the environment includes engagement and morale, management capability, geographic location, physical surroundings, local leadership stability etc. Taking it one step further, given one assumption about this culture model is that it is an individual phenomenon, the environment extends to each person. This includes their situation, where they live, their prior experience, and their overall physical and mental health. If you’re pursing your lips and raising your eyebrows on this last point, consider the impact the last bullying or harassment claim had on your business. What was the emotional impact? What was the financial impact? What was the impact on the relationships, behaviours and beliefs that needed to be addressed as a result?
For better or for worse, the micro and macro environment are critical factors that need to be constantly evaluated if you want to effectively build your brand in a way that aligns business success with a strong organisational brand. The environment is often what makes culture so complex, unpredictable, and difficult to alter. As I write this, the world is facing a macro-environmental challenge with the COVID -19 virus. The ripple effect that this creates for beliefs, behaviours and bonds alters everything.
Getting the balance right
When I first began learning about fireworks, I had to understand the fundamental ingredients that when mixed create gunpowder. At it turns out, there are three core ingredients:
Potassium Nitrate (Oxidizing agent) =75%
Charcoal (Fuel) = 15%
Sulphur (Catalyst or heat) = 10%
What the textbooks don’t tell you is that these ingredients come in many different forms and with varying degrees of quality. The grade of powder also has a marked impact on the result. Like most things, with a higher grade of quality and a finer grade of powder, the gunpowder burns much cleaner, faster and brighter. Another factor that the textbooks don’t teach you is that gunpowder is incredibly hygroscopic, meaning that it is prone to absorb moisture from the air. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that moisture isn’t going to be very good for fireworks. How is it possible to overcome these challenges to produce safe, beautiful and predictable fireworks? From witnessing what they did at the fireworks factory, the answer lies in experimentation. Each batch of powder created is unique and has to be modified to achieve the correct outcome. The result is consistent performance but the ingredients had to be changed for each batch to match the environmental conditions. A blind approach of mixing the ingredients without any form of iterative testing would result in disaster.
I see Organisational culture in much the same way and is made up of these three key ingredients:
Bonds/Relationships (Oxidizing agent or oxygen)
Behaviours/Actions (Fuel)
Beliefs/Values (catalyst or heat)
The overarching influence of the environment needs to be accommodated to get the outcome you’re looking for. If the balance isn’t right in response to the environment, you either get no spark at all or the whole thing will violently blow up in your face! Balancing the right proportions in response to the environmental influences enables the chain reaction to occur. What it creates is a brilliant fusion that equates to a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Look no further than the simplicity of fire. Once you have the right mix of wood, oxygen and a spark to get it started, you establish something that is both beautiful to observe, provides warmth, heat for cooking food and boiling water, and light to be able to see. Your brand or culture is the fire you create in your team or organisation. If you leave it unchecked in a hostile environment, the fire can rage out of control and cause catastrophic consequences. In contrast, if the environment is cold and damp, the flame may be weak and go out altogether. A healthy culture has a flame that burns brightly and organically but remains carefully controlled in response to the ever-changing environmental conditions.
Creating an aligned culture strategy
Before jumping in and creating a ‘culture change’ strategy, it’s important to understand each of the elements as they are currently. The best place to start is by asking the following questions across multiple stakeholders at all levels of the business. The objective at this point is to not change anything but to simply understand how your brand interacts with the current environment (both micro and macro).
What are the current beliefs you have about your organisation? How are these beliefs helping or hindering your organisation? How do those beliefs influence the brand or culture of the organisation?
How do people interact with one another? Are they friendly and sociable, busy and frantic, individualistic and isolated or efficient and respectful? Are the behaviours of your people (Staff, clients, suppliers, partner) enhancing the brand of your organisation?
What sort of relationships do people have with one another at your organisation? Are they mutually beneficial? Are they clinical, professional and a touch cold? Are they challenging, robust and growth-oriented? Or do they feel like an annual family get-together around the Christmas table; obligatory and a tad dysfunctional?
What is the current environment (micro i.e workspace, team, engagement) you’re operating in? What are some of the broader environmental factors (Macro i.e market trends, political factors, national security, public health concerns) that are facing your organisation?
Now that you have a clear understanding of the factors underpinning your organisational brand or culture, and the environmental factors (both macro and micro) influencing it, you need to be ruthless about whether it is supporting your organisation to succeed. The point being, your brand or culture might be perfectly pleasant but if it isn’t aligned to the growth targets, customer service charter, employee value proposition, or shareholder expectations, you’re leaving your success up to chance.
Our results are good…. why do we need to bother about our brand or culture?
For those of you that are agreeing with the emboldened question above, I hope you’re not in a leadership role. If you are, read the next paragraph carefully.
Your brand and culture are what enables you to deliver excellent service, fantastic products, innovative client solutions, or world-class employee experience. Your bottom line only exists because of the nebulous cloud-like construct we have coined as ‘culture’. Countless organisations have had amazing financial success but ultimately failed due to cultural or brand challenges. See the following list of some well-known organisations and brand names that have either ceased to exist or had a catastrophic fall from grace.
Kodak
Ansett
Schwinn
Toys R Us
Dick Smith
Enron
Polaroid
Lehman Brother
Atari
Commodore Corp
Radioshack
Nokia
General Motors
Compaq
The above list is a reminder of how ephemeral success can be. Furthermore, the need to constantly innovate, challenge, rediscover and push through complacency is critical for continued success. Your brand or culture is made up of the relationships you form, the beliefs you hold, and the behaviours you reinforce. Their combination creates the flames that forge a personal and organisational legacy. How you want to be experienced in the world is directly reflected by how you interact with the world. If you are feeling somewhat underwhelmed by the culture of your organisation where you currently work, before judging, remember the definition. Culture is a reflection of moments upon moments shaped by what you believe and expect will happen. If the culture doesn’t align to you, it doesn’t make it bad or wrong. It simply means that you don’t fit. My advice, try mapping out your own beliefs, behaviours, and bonds that you want to experience at work. Do a sense check based on the current micro and macro environments then start looking for an organisation that fits what you want. If however, you choose to stay in an organisation that doesn’t work for you, your reflections on the brand and culture are a reflection of how you see yourself. In other words, everything you hate about the culture, you become. Finally, to answer the question is Organisational Culture art or Science? I say it’s both. In art, you find science and in science you find art. Your ability to create both in a consistent way that captivates others is what will set you apart.
About Me:
My name is Joe Hart and I’ve spent my life thus far seeking to understand why people do what they do. I’m an Organisational Psychologist and am also obsessed with patterns. Patterns underpin everything we do, everything we think and everything we feel. Organisational culture is like the Rubiks cube of human behaviour. It seems impossible, but there is a method to what seems like chaos. If you’d like to crack the code that’s holding you and your team back.
Contact me here:
M: 0425 224 825