Sometimes they do, says Peter Honey, as he considers how HR can tighten its grip on this vague and ethereal creature
Culture is a slippery word. My dictionary gives seven uses including the raising of microorganisms, plants and animals, tastes in art and manners, and norms of acceptable behaviour within particular communities.
We have universal cultures common to all societies, such as the importance of the family unit, national and international cultures such as the treasured beliefs, at least in the Western world, about democracy and freedom of expression, and organisational cultures that shape the way things are traditionally done in organisations, both large and small.
All cultures are fascinating but, as a psychologist, I’m primarily interested in the latter. And lately the culture of organisations has been attracting a bad press. Within the space of a few weeks we have had cultures of denial, greed, blame, fear, inertia, bureaucracy and bullying - to mention but a few.
What a pity that ‘good’ cultures never seem to hit the headlines. There's rarely anything about trusting cultures, transparent cultures, supportive cultures, questioning cultures, customer-centred cultures, go-for-it cultures or learning cultures.
Mostly it's just depressing stuff about ‘bad’ cultures with the inevitable call for them to change. But I suspect culture change is an oxymoron (like deafening silence).
The word ‘culture’ is not only slippery, it is also a lazy catch-all. It isn’t precise enough to provide any sure footholds.
My favourite definition sums it up perfectly: culture is what’s left after you have described everything else.
How on earth could we set about changing something so vague and ethereal?
A promising way forward is to stop thinking about culture and instead focus on the recurring ways of behaving that combine to create a so-called ‘culture’.
For example, a culture of denial breaks down into key behaviours such as:
- concealing mistakes
- blaming circumstances ‘beyond my/our control’
- dismissing complaints/criticisms
- indulging in self-justification
I’m not suggesting that changing behaviours such as these is easy, but at least they give us something tangible to work with because they are the raw materials that comprise a ‘culture’.
We can observe what happens to trigger and reinforce the behaviours in question; the ‘befores’ and the ‘afters’ (or, if you want posher words, the antecedents and the consequences).
Every behaviour, good or bad, has ‘befores’ and every recurring behaviour is reinforced by ‘afters’, otherwise it would never have become established as a discernible behaviour pattern.
Through the complexity of it all I hang onto a simple formula: what people can do plus what they want to do added to what they think they are allowed to do equals what they do do.
The tragedy when it comes to so-called cultures is that peoples’ skills and talents (the ‘cans’) and their willingness and motivation (the ‘wants’) are so often mucked up by the ‘alloweds’, whether real or imagined.
As the late Dr W Edwards Deming once said: "Put good people in a bad system and the system always wins."
So, I make no apologies when I say: "To hell with culture, hello behaviour." Change the ‘alloweds’ and you stand a chance of creating the conditions where peoples’ skills and willingness blossom, resulting in greater individual fulfilment and organisational prosperity.