T-Space Director and Specialist Culture Consultant, Dr Karen Gray, talks to Lateral Dialogues to explore around Illuminating the hidden aspects of organizational culture: How can we uncover the less obvious aspects of culture? What happens when we expose what may be uncomfortable truths of how our organisation functions? Why culture often doesn’t shift even when we explicitly cascade how we should behave differently? For more info, contact Karen directly on karen@tspace.org
Once you become aware of them, as a leader, you can determine which, if any will support and/or detract from your strategic intent, and devise ways of being/behaving to pull some cultural levers at leadership level. We can help you plan cultural developments, activate behavioural programmes & track progress to achieve significant cultural shifts.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” – Peter Drucker
In making this quote in his 2011 book “Business Strategy – An Introduction”, Drucker was applying his professional experience to emphasise that no matter how leaders want/need their employees and their organisation to alter their focus and drive strategy, the prevalent culture can and will dictate, often unconsciously, just how much change and therefore strategic progress can take place.
This is because organisations have a history. As they started up, original workers will have taken on the attributes, characteristics and mindset of the Founders. The ways of working found to be successful will be repeated and become embedded as cultural themes. As the organisation grows, new employees are inducted into, and expected to behave in line with these cultural guidelines, and the culture is gradually deepened. The successful ways of being, both conscious and unconscious become woven into the organisational identity where they are taken the norm. Whilst the conscious cultural practices usually serve to support delivery of the organisational task, their unconscious counterparts can every so often, and outside the awareness of workers & leaders, mount a determined defence against organisational change. As a result, leaders’ intent to implement a determined strategy or a specific organisational change is subtly thwarted and culture wins out. Becoming aware of these deep forces allows alternative approaches to be considered and deployed.
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Our practical and innovative methodology of organisational culture analysis is informed by systems psychodynamic principles and has been formulated through rigorous academic research and ongoing practice development.
The process of analysing corporate culture takes around 3-4 months in total. Firstly, scope, focus & data sources are confirmed with Leaders/Stakeholders and a schedule is developed to organise within. The data collection phase next commences, comprising observation, interviews, focus groups and professional supervision processes. A data analysis phase follows which collates evidence and applies systems-thinking interpretation to illuminate the themes of corporate culture, or organisational ‘ Ways of Being’ and ‘Images of Organisation’ which have become known. These cultural findings are presented back to Leaders/Stakeholders within a feedback loop, providing an opportunity to respond to, experience and interact with the cultural themes one by one. Within this process some less conscious elements may be uncovered which may well be a result of, or impact on, the organisational task or core identity. These deep findings can prove very valuable in understanding the organisation operates at a less conscious and experiential level, so offering significant opportunities to energise organisational progress.
Once you have undertaken a cultural survey or process of cultural analysis and received the results, our culture consulting team can work closely with you to determine and map how your culture is currently, and will potentially, impact your intended strategic direction. We can also facilitate you & your co-leaders to consider where your culture may be contributing to difficult processes or lower productivities within your operation, and be curious around how your behaviours in the leadership space may be propagating this effect, even at an unconscious level. Armed with a deeper awareness of culture, you can then decide as a leadership team the 2-3 focal points of cultural advancement that you’d like to consciously work on. The T-Space culture team can help you to develop a unique ‘Ways of Being’ cultural shift programme which you can work towards, and will also provide a containing process of both group and peer support to positively energise the process.
Planning a cultural development after survey or analysis findings will take around 2-3 months, and the development process will then run over 1-2 years. Continual review/reflection processes will be built in to realise the shift in progress, and refine cultural awareness at leadership level.
