Organizational Culture Exposed! (Why Is It So Hard to Explain?)
Imagine a space alien landed in front of you, ran out of their ship on a retro, retractable ramp, and demanded an explanation of a complex topic like "government". They need this information to make a plan for interacting with human governments now and in the future.
Your new space alien friend has noted that they don't want a description of your specific government or the general experience of governing/being governed– they need an explanation of the entire concept of government in all its geopolitical nuance and complexity. Also, they are a very busy being with a short attention span, probably exacerbated by the frantic pace of interstellar news, social media, and their existential awareness of the vastness of space, so you only have 30 seconds before they'll get distracted and stop listening. Ready?... Go!
Okay, no attention-challenged space alien is waiting for your response. Still, the point is, most of us would struggle to articulate a concise-but-thorough explanation of a topic like government (or human romantic relationships, orbital mechanics, why people care so much about the pronunciation of "gif") to someone else, no matter how much we may want or need them to understand and act upon that information.
Organizational culture is one of those complex concepts, and it's my job to introduce it to you, the reader of this blog post (probably not a space alien). So, how should I begin?
Apply a social lens?
There are people with formal & informal power in every org; innovative groups must focus on growing “power with” vs. “power over” others, and avoid concentrating power in the hands of a few.
A dictionary definition?
Organizational Culture (n.): the underlying beliefs, assumptions, values and ways of interacting that contribute to the social and psychological environment of an organization.
Try a simile?
An organization’s culture is like a planet’s gravity; it’s invisible, powerful, and it both enables and constrains how everyone in the system can move.
There's a lot we could talk about when it comes to organizational culture. In my opinion, the fact that culture is such a notoriously difficult concept to explain in a relatable and concise way is one of the most important things to understand. Here's why:
1. The ability to name & clearly define our experiences is a cognitive superpower that makes the invisible visible.
There are a few contexts in which science has demonstrated the importance and power of naming. Research in child psychology has shown that children's social wellbeing and academic performance can be improved through direct instruction in the vocabulary of emotion. In adult psychology and neuroscience, studies have demonstrated that naming feelings and experiences can reduce our brains' reactiveness to those emotions and reduce physiological reactions to stress/anxiety.
For example, in a study from UCLA, researchers put participants with a spider phobia in a room with some spiders and told them to move toward their greatest fear (note to self: never volunteer for scientific research). One group of these terrified participants engaged in naming the anxiety they felt about the spiders as part of the process. In contrast, other groups were assigned different strategies or none at all in the case of the control group. The participants who engaged in naming their experience, "had lower physiological reactivity to the spiders, as indexed by fewer skin conductance responses." The researchers found that naming their emotions impacted the participants' physical bodily reactions.
If we can't name, explain, and categorize an experience, we won't be equipped to respond effectively to it, analyze its causes or impacts, or do much to change the situation if it needs to be changed.
While we move within the possibilities and constraints created by our organizational cultures every day, the underlying forces shaping those conditions are usually invisible to us. When those forces fall out of balance and start causing problems, we may feel it. But, without having the named, categorized concept of "organizational culture" already available to us, we're unlikely to approach the issue through that lens.
2. The amount of difficulty we experience when trying to understand something affects our judgment.
The subjective ease or difficulty we experience when we process information is called "processing fluency." This matters because it's relatively difficult to understand culture, whether it's the overall concept or our own specific organizational culture. This makes us more likely to judge the concept negatively, ignore it, or write it off, regardless of its potential importance to us.
It also means that even if you do have a clear understanding of culture in your mind, if you find yourself trying to address a problem with your organizational culture, making the concept easy for others to process and understand is critical to getting their support. You'll have to deal with the challenges of changing culture AND explaining culture at the same time.
3. Humans tend to make sense of the world and share their understanding with others through narrative, but you can't tell a good story about something you can't describe.
One of the very best ways to spread an idea is with a good story, and building narratives around our experiences is a critical part of individual learning over time. When we can't tell ourselves meaningful stories about our organizational culture and its impacts on our experience, we can't integrate it into our long-term knowledge. Even worse, when we can't build an accurate narrative around a given experience, humans tend to either ignore it or invent plausible but inaccurate stories to fill the void. Nature, including the human brain, abhors a vacuum, and we humans have a long history of filling a vacuum with whatever nonsense we can get our hands on.
For example, germ theory has only been an established pillar of medical knowledge for less than 200 years, and we had lots of creative explanations for why people fell ill up to that point. During 17th century outbreaks of bubonic plague (which is mostly spread by pests), "contagion theories" caused doctors to cover their bodies in long robes and use rods to manipulate patients to avoid any physical contact with them. As late as the 1840's, the dominant theory in Europe was that illness was spread through bad smells in the air ("miasma"). The discovery of germs caused a significant shift in the medical establishment's behaviors and approaches to the prevention/treatment of disease. Still, the transition wasn't smooth, in part because people had to leave the plausible narrative of, "Bad smells, which everyone can recognize, make people sick, so stay away from those" and replace it with a disturbing new story that went something like this: "Tiny, invisible, scentless creatures are colonizing your body, and some of them make you sick. You can remove them by washing your hands, and by not doing that before you operate on someone, you've been killing a lot of people."
This is one reason it's so easy to get stuck (individually or as an organization) constantly struggling to patch the symptoms of a toxic, fragmented, or just non-optimal culture without ever realizing that all of the disparate problems our organization is experiencing may have the same root cultural cause (e.g., We invest in air-tight windows to keep out bad smells instead of collectively adopting hand-washing as a new cultural norm). We're often filling the void in our understanding of culture with other narratives that are easier for us to understand, but ultimately, less accurate.
Let’s sum up:
Organizational culture is a complex concept that's easy to explore, but hard to define. The fact that it's challenging to identify impacts:
Our ability to see the cultures we are part of and how they impact our thoughts, behaviors, and decisions.
Our judgment and willingness to address the underlying cultural issues that may be causing our problems as an organization.
Our ability to integrate our understanding of culture into our body of knowledge and share it with others through narrative.
What can we do about it?
OMG, so many things! That's a topic for a future post (or several).
The first steps are always awareness & attention. You may find it helpful to cultivate awareness of your opinions about organizational culture, and direct your attention to the forces at work in your organization operating below the radar to see if you can pull any of them up to the surface to get a better look.
