Usually, when we think about strategy, we don’t think about culture. Culture is a given – it’s just there. In this post, I propose that culture is always an implicit aspect of strategy and that, by recognizing it as such, we can better position ourselves to achieve extra-ordinary results.
Theory
It can sometimes be helpful to review the assumptions we take for granted. In that spirit: culture is defined in various ways, but for our purposes, let’s tease it apart to reveal three dimensions:
1. First, it’s a complex of inter-related beliefs and assumptions, which give rise to values. These beliefs, assumptions and values are often expressed in stories, or metaphors.
2. These beliefs and assumptions give rise to patterns of behavior.
3. These patterns of behaviors give rise to institutions, such as organization structure, processes and reward systems.
For example, the retailer, Nordstrom believing that customer satisfaction is essential to its business success, famously oriented its associates to deliver exceptional customer service. Stories of truly exceptional customer service circulated both throughout the company and the community. And, you can bet that Nordstrom’s processes and reward system ensured that that behavior would continue to occur.
Cultures tend to be self sustaining, which is one of the reasons we take them for granted. They are like the air that we breathe, and they often seem impervious to change. One of the reasons for this is that just as our beliefs shape our behavior and our institutions, our institutions also shape our behavior and our experience of what “works” (and therefore, to some extent, our beliefs and assumptions). For this reason, changing culture is notoriously hard.
Yet, as the Nordstrom example illustrates, an organizations culture makes a big difference in what it can achieve and how easily it can achieve it, in the same way that who-we-are as individuals shapes our possibilities and the energy we must invest to achieve our goals.
Is it possible to change organization culture? Well, given that an organization is comprised of people, its collective history, and its structures, processes, and reward systems, we might ask whether it is possible to change these elements. Certainly, we can change organizational structure, and reward systems. We can reframe and evolve our collective story…. But, can people change? Is it possible to change ourselves?
I suggest that we can learn a lot about how to evolve our culture by learning how to evolve that bit of culture that we all carry with us: our beliefs, assumptions, and our habitual patterns of behavior. This kind of change is at the heart of transformative leadership, a key focus of this blog!
Practice
1. What is your organizational culture? What methodologies do you use to know?
2. How well does your culture support your objectives and explicit strategies for achieving them? Are there gaps? How might you begin to close those gaps?
3. What has been your experience with successful change, at a personal level? What enabled you to be successful in making the change?
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