Organizational culture – in at the deep end

In a previous post, I wrote about a workshop on cultural assumptions that I had facilitated with a new management team. These ‘deep cultural patterns’, when surfaced, were expressed largely in negative terms.  Nevertheless, the senior manager felt compelled to couch these in positive language when playing them back to the team. The six statements are reproduced below.

What matters in this company is:

• #1 - Being seen to deliver and being associated with success.
• #2 - Being politically astute, with the right connections and able to present information in the most effective way.
• #3 - Being a team player.
• #4 - Having a confident, positive, can-do attitude.
• #5 - Being recognised as a key player in the company's business
• #6 - Putting business success first.

In contrast to the ‘rawness’ of the themes that the team had actually identified during the workshop, these statements were essentially aspirational. 

Dynamics of organizational culture

In cultural terms, these might be thought of as contributing to the “culture as articulated”.  That is, it would be statements such as these that would be drawn upon if senior managers were asked formally to describe the organizational culture and ways of working.  However, what people actually experience ‘on the ground’ (the “culture as experienced”), and the taken-for-granted assumptions (or “deep culture”) that these spawn, depends on the ways in which such aspirational statements are made sense of and acted upon by people. And this sense making takes place in the down-to-earth reality of people’s day-to-day experiences. 

So the manager’s statements defined an idealised state - either a version of the current, high level "culture as articulated" or his desk-top design of a new, desired culture. Either way, our quest to explore the messiness of the "deep culture" was sidetracked temporarily, as we retreated into the more comfortable and well-ordered world of normal management discourse.

A brief excursion into cultural change

Before relating how things progressed from here, it is worth touching briefly upon how idealised designs such as this usually form the basis of cultural change programmes. According to established practice, the 'new culture' would be communicated to the wider organization and then be 'built’ through a series of formal management actions. However, this approach fails to addresses both the “culture as experienced” (which is assumed to coincide with the ideals stated in the design) and the taken-for-granted assumptions of the “deep culture”. These latter manifestations of organizational culture emerge from the hidden, messy and informal dynamics of everyday organizational life.  And, where a tension exists between these and the designed version (as is frequently the case), it is the former that tends to dominate. It is these underlying assumptions that have the greater impact on the patterning of ongoing sense making and action taking.

Getting back on track

The manager’s decision to express the statements in positive language meant that these were couched in terms far removed from those that arose in the original discussions. And the suggested reliance on aspirartional statements such as these also failed to acknowledge the powerful dynamics that shape culture in the ‘real world’. 

In the follow-up meeting, therefore, we looked at these aspects in more depth.  As part of this challenge to the ‘design and build' approach, we also looked at a number of potential risks and paradoxes involved in taking these statements at face value. 

When this underlying complexity is acknowledged and embraced, the “So what can we do about it?” question becomes much less problematic – even if not formulaic!

And finally ...

To complete the story, the risks and paradoxes that we explored will be the subject of the next post.

Comments

[Tom Gibbons]

I often think that this need to make culture seem rosy and positive on the part of senior leadership comes from the rampant hero myth that pervades senior roles. They are cast as, and see themselves as heros, accountable for the creation of their organizations and as such anything less than wonderful is a failure of varying degress or creates a focus of blame on those 'under' them for not being wonderful.

Finding ways to help senior people be ok with being human is often a tough challenge but can really add sustainalbe value for them and their organizations. It will be interesting to hear the next part of this story.

[Chris Rodgers]

Thanks, Tom.

I agree wholeheartedly with what you say. I talk in the book about "the leadership paradox", in which leaders are both in control and not in control at the same time. The hero myth that you mention demands that leaders are seen to be in control all of the time. And this, coupled with people's general desire to make sense of the world in ways which imply that they (or others on their behalf) have control over outcomes, places a high premium on seemingly rational explanations and approaches.

In this regard, Keith Grint talks about what he calls "the banal paradox of management" (in Fuzzy Management). He argues that much of the management theory found in books and on courses is banal, in that it tells us what we already take for granted and know to be true. At the same time, it is a paradox because, despite being full of common sense, it doesn't seem to work!

In this case, the senior manager involved was genuinely keen to get a feel for the taken-for-granted assumptions that create a tendency to think and act in particular ways. However, besides the above pressures to demonstrate his being in control, I suggested in the last post that he was also unknowingly caught up the in the assumption that being seen to be negative was unacceptable.

Cheers, Chris