The Culture dimension explores the values, behaviors, and social norms that define your organization. This involves assessing employee engagement, diversity and inclusion, and the overall work environment. A positive and inclusive culture fosters innovation, collaboration, and employee satisfaction, which are crucial for sustained success and growth.
Peter Drucker famously said, "culture eats strategy for breakfast." This isn't to imply that strategy is unimportant. But, no matter how good your strategy is, when it comes time to execute, if the people in your organization aren't unified by a common culture there will be trouble.
What do I mean by culture? In this book, we use the same definition of culture that was used in the book, Startup Patterns. That definition was:
"Culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next."
Let's unpack that for a moment: Behaviors, beliefs, and values that are accepted usually without thinking about them. They are passed around your organization by imitation from one person to the next, along a subconscious communication channel. In a social system, generations are grandparents, parents, children, and grandchildren. In the context of businesses, though, generations could be seen as successive waves of employees who come and go. It can also represent the promotion path of individuals, who often learn their habits from their boss.
Culture begins to take shape very early in an organization. In fact, as soon as you have more than two people, norms will begin to emerge for how they communicate with one another, what they agree is true about the world, and who they see as their allies and adversaries. These unspoken rules of communication crystalize very quickly in human groups, and then define and shape behavior in subtle and implicit ways.
Think about it. What could be more powerful than culture in affecting how people in your organization behave?
In large organizations, changing culture can be very difficult due to the sheer size and complexity of the organization. There are many layers of influence, much of which goes unquestioned. And most managers learned how to manage by watching their own manager's behavior when they were a junior, rather than explicitly learning management through training.
If very senior bosses behave in a certain way, it is usually because that behavior has served them well in the past. Since managers tend to copy the management style of their own boss, senior leaders pass this management behavior along to their reports. In fact, they likely reward the behaviors that they deem appropriate for bosses to enact, thus further recreating management styles for the next generation of leader. Swimming against this current can be a challenge.
However, at the same time, culture is very fluid, and you can start affecting it from anywhere in an organization. It takes focus and persistence, but it can be done. Despite the subconscious transmission of culture, ultimately, leaders can influence their company's culture. But they have to be aware of the various patterns at play, and take action to guide those patterns in one direction or another.
In a startup, a growth stage company with hundreds of people, or even a department or division within an organization, you have more of an opportunity to influence culture in a positive direction. But it is going to work best if you can start as early as possible.
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McAfee, S. (2016) 'Startup Patterns: How great startup teams work'.
Edmondson, A. (2018) 'The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth'.
Kilmann, R. (2023) 'Mastering the Thomas-Kilmann Instrument (TKI)'
Mironov, R. (2008) 'The Art of Product Management'