CRACKING CULTURE

To Look Far Beneath the Surface

MAPPING THE TERRAIN

In today’s complex world of work, can we still crack the code of an organisational culture and discover the system that lies beneath? Can we even tell the story of how an evolving culture was, is and could be? Can any stable sense of culture persist while the world shifts around it? This is the Wicked Challenge of modern organisational culture - and we’re here to help meet it head on.

The socialised communications and variety within our networks; the expansion of operations into homes and communities; and the new personal influence this brings to work surroundings - all add to a constant divergence in conversation, interpretation and ‘meaning making’ that constitute an organisation and create culture.

And yet there are times and places where agreement and understanding are required - where risks are high, or challenge is intense.

So where do we crack one code for our culture? And where must we crack and connect several? How do we navigate the space between, where language flows beyond a system? And what happens when we have to deal with all this at the same time?

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PRINCIPLES OF INTERVENTIONS

Culture is about connection - connection to each other, connection to actions, even connection to objects as tools and symbols e.g. Stories of success, company role models and weekly meeting rituals;

Culture is complex and multilayered - accepting that this offers us less control over culture, helps access more control within culture e.g. A team's external cultural experiences can offer useful ideas;

Culture varies and that variety is inevitable - this becomes a balancing act between individual efficiency and multiples of engagement e.g. Do we push a culture at people or draw on their individual input?

Culture goes deep and is naturally unmanaged - left to the unconscious processes, some situations don’t need conscious cultural interventions e.g. Someone has customer focused habits;

Culture naturally structures but can become synthetic - soft structures help bond groups but hard structures can be used to control e.g. People 'act' in line with documented values.

THE STORIES THAT BRING THIS WICKED CHALLENGE™ ALIVE ..

WHAT IS CULTURE ..

Culture is formed through agreements between people and their shared perspectives. It is not an external entity but a construct of the mind. Intangible experiences and knowledge shape our sense of meaning, and culture emerges when this meaning is agreed upon by a group. Repetition of meaning across multiple perspectives, facilitated by structures and communication, creates a shared sense of culture. However, variation and disagreement exist, challenging the formation of organisational culture...

CULTURES IN MOTION

We all live and work across cultural spaces which have a large impact on our thoughts and behaviours. In this story we’ll identify cultural spaces and outline why they’re useful. We’ll look at communication and meaning to understand how cultural spaces are formed and how their communications balance structure and fluidity. Finally we’ll start to explore the benefits of varying types of cultural space and think about the questions we can ask to use them in our organisations.