Are You Compartmentalizing Your Culture?

Organizational culture is often an aspirational quality that leaders plan to work on when they have time, attention, resources, or whatever. Culture becomes, at some point, a repository of the hopes and dreams of a high-functioning and internally consistent workforce that lives in its own little compartment of reality, separated from the operational and personnel practices that could make it a reality. Some leaders go so far as to insist that they have this aspirational culture – perhaps a fake-it-until-you-make-it principle is in play – while perpetuating practices that prevent the dream from becoming reality. This is to say that an organization says it is what it is not (yet), and does what it does not do (yet).

This can change if teams stop compartmentalizing culture from its antecedents and build cultural assurance into how they hire.

The first thing to understand is that a realized culture – the culture that actually exists, regardless of intended culture – is a product of the beliefs and values that the individuals truly identify with and practice. It is the net of all identities involved, and the more divided and dispersed those identities, the thinner and weaker the culture.  The second thing to understand is that none of this can be dictated. It can be grown with careful shaping and changing of values and identities, but culture cannot be commanded. Finally, know that a harmonious culture demands that those who join the team have strong values that they identify with, and that the values of all are complementary to the goals of the organization. It’s more about who each member truly is than the role they affect to get along at work.

To build a truly strong culture, hire people who already value and practice what you want your realized culture to value and practice. 

If you have an organization that wants to identify as having a safety (or just safe) culture, then you need to hire safe people. Find the sort that wear boots and eye protection when they mow their lawn, or the sort that put a traffic cone out when they are loading groceries. Simply hiring someone without safety incidents in their record doesn’t tell you if they identify with being safe – if safe practices are part of their nature; they may just be compliant with policy, or lucky.

Likewise, if you want an efficiency culture, you hire efficient people. You want those who order their shopping list to prevent backtracking at the store. Find those who drive efficient vehicles in efficient ways, or who have figured out how to arrange their closet for ease of identifying matching outfits. 

Sure, every member of the team needs a certain level of skill or accomplishment to contribute, but you can always train skills. It is far more effective to connect individuals who value the same things into a team than to try to change the disparate values and beliefs of individuals. Highly-skilled individuals lacking a common culture can skillfully tear a team apart by working from different foundations.

Note: This post first appeared as a LinkedIn blog by Dr. Mann on August 23, 2019.