You already have a company culture!
Posted on September 15, 2021 by Jonathan Goza, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
Many business leaders think what they their company culture to be like. Understand what it is now, so you can make changes to what you want it to be.
Most business leaders appreciate the concept and power of culture. You can read thousands of articles about creating company culture, or maybe you have picked up some books about company culture. Much of this material will talk about creating a healthy culture, but one thing that many business leaders miss is that YOU ALREADY HAVE A COMPANY CULTURE.
All organizations have a culture. The culture may not be what you want it to be, it may not be what the values on your wall says it is but your company does have a culture. Edgar Schein says that a culture is a result of organizational learnings that show up as a system of beliefs, values and behavioral norms that have become so ingrained they become basic assumptions (Schein, 2017, p. 6). If you have not deliberately influenced these beliefs it may be hard to articulate your company culture.
If you can’t articulate your company culture, how do you influence it? How can you decide what parts you want to reinforce and what parts you may want to change? The first step is to act like a sort of anthropologist and study your culture until you can articulate what it is, only then will you be able to dig deeper on how to leverage or change it.
While there are many great exercises out there about discovering you own company’s culture, in this post I’m only going to focus on one. The first method is to look at three levels of analysis (Schein, 2017). First, look at what you company says about its own culture. What is the stated mission, vision and values? What does the company say about itself in annual reports or perhaps HR documentation? Some companies will have an abundance of material about themselves from magazine articles and regular blog posts to internal communications (Schein, 2017). Others may not have much, either because they haven’t thought much about it or because the company is young. Regardless of the amount of material, this is only the first level of analysis.
The next level to look at is actual “artifacts” of the organization. What is communicated through the physical location of the organization, the office itself, the way people dress, the way team members communicate (Schein, 2017). Other artifacts may include policies, compensation methods or the formality of the office. One simple way to think about these artifacts is thinking about going into a restaurant. Have you ever gone into a restaurant where things just didn’t seem quite right? Maybe the bathrooms were dirty, or you overheard employees arguing with each other…maybe you saw the health inspectors’ grade of D- on the wall. Without even intentionally considering these factors the artifacts told you a lot about that business and the people running it.
Finally, after you have looked at the first two levels what basic assumptions about an organization are revealed (Schein, 2017)? What does artifacts of the organization in light of what it says about itself really reveal? If an organization says it values its’ customers and you consistently are greeted warmly, served well and charged a fair price what does that say? Maybe the assumption is that everyone has value and we respect that by treating them well. Have you been to a gas station and asked to use the bathroom only to be given a key attached to half a broom stick? It seems like the assumption there is that people cannot be trusted, even the bathroom must be guarded.
While the first level of analysis may be fairly simple for most organizations the artifacts and assumptions can be terribly difficult to uncover. Not because they are not there, and probably not because they are hidden…they are hard because it is hard to see it when you are a part of it. As they say, “the fish always discovers water last”. Do you have new employees in your company that could help shed light on your culture? Do you work with others outside your organization that could help? Uncover what exists already, so you understand what changes you want to make and how to make them. You already have a company culture, once you understand it, then you can shape it.
Schein, Edgar. (2017). Organizational Culture and Leadership. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
