Culture Basic tacit assumptions about how the world works

Culture plays an essential role in our societal and organizational lives. It shapes us in a variety of ways.

Organizational culture is the attitudes, customs, rituals, values and beliefs shared by the members of an organization that govern their behavior.

Organizational culture is emergent. It is the result of the everyday interactions, behaviors, and conversations by the members of an organization.

Culture is the way that we do things around here that we all understand but we can’t really articulate.

Credit: Dave Snowden

Organizational culture is the basic tacit assumptions about how the world is and ought to be that a group of people share and that determines their perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and, their overt behavior.

Credit:  Edgar Schein

Culture and Conversation

We can view a society or an organization as a network of people engaged in a continuous, dynamic flow of conversations.

In this setting, we can unveil the culture by watching how people talk with each other.

By observing how people talk about things, the specific words they use, and the tone in which they say them, we can discern the level of various cultural elements such as:

• honesty
• trust
• respect
• openness
• excitement
• curiosity
• enthusiasm
• resourcefulness
• hope
• competitiveness
• spitefulness
• cynicism
• resignation

Conversation not only defines the culture but also implicitly transmits, sustains, and reinforces the cultural norms.

If you wish to transform a culture, one of the best levers is changing the everyday conversations.

Resources

• Blog Post: The myth of managed culture change by Chris Corrigan

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