What do we mean by culture? The definition of organisational culture has been debated for more than 40 years, and there are now over 300 definitions. This can make it feel indefinite or nebulous, which in turn makes it feel more challenging to manage.
Definitions I like describe it as the commonly held and relatively stable beliefs and attitudes that exist within an organisation; often cited as how we think and do things around here, reinforced by norms and behaviours which reinforce core values.
Culture places an emphasis on shared learning experiences that lead, in turn, to shared, taken-for-granted basic assumptions.
Edgar Schein, 2004
That is all very well and good, but what does it actually mean day to day? It shows up in whether you feel excited to see your colleagues the next time you turn up for work, or get a knot in your stomach on a Sunday night. Does your heart race in excitement or trepidation? When you make or notice an error, do you feel comfortable telling people about it, or do you feel a need to hide it? When you notice an opportunity for improvement, do you brush it away as silly or assume nobody will be interested, or do you talk about it and explore whether the idea could be developed?
I often think of the culture of an organisation as being like the soil in your garden. You may not notice it or pay it much attention, but when you tend to it you see bigger flowers, more fruit and healthier plants. Left to its own devices, your plants might grow, but they might be weaker. Weeds might take nutrients away from the things you really want to flourish. You may not grow anything at all.
Investing time and energy in understanding and developing your working culture not only supports colleagues and the people you serve — customers, clients or patients — it supports other organisational priorities too. If you want to improve colleague wellbeing and reduce sickness absence, creating a compassionate and inclusive culture supports that investment. If you want to improve customer or patient experience, start with colleague experience. If you want to reduce turnover, create an environment people do not want to leave, or want to return to after gaining further experience.
Why is culture so tricky to change?
Culture gets talked about as though it were a mood — something in the air that leaders can adjust with communication. In practice, it behaves much more like a system. It is produced by a set of interacting things:
- Behaviour that gets rewarded and tolerated. What actually happens to the manager who hits targets while burning through people tells everyone what the organisation values.
- How power and information flow. Who gets told things early, who gets consulted, and who finds out afterwards.
- Processes that quietly shape behaviour. Appraisal, reward, rotas, workload allocation, how concerns are handled and how mistakes are treated.
- Relationships and history. Old restructures, broken promises and long-running tensions between teams have a longer memory than most leaders expect.
Because these interact, culture is stubborn. Change one element and the others pull it back. That is why so many culture programmes produce a burst of energy and then quietly subside.
What part do leaders have to play?
As Edgar Schein says, “when we examine culture and leadership closely, we see that they are two sides of the same coin; neither can really be understood by itself…it can be argued that the only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture.” Leadership is the number one influence on organisational culture. Compassionate cultures have high levels of compassionate leadership, and compassionate leaders demonstrate positive support through every interaction.
Every interaction by every leader, every day, shapes the culture of the organisation — through the behaviours they demonstrate, what they talk about and what they monitor and reward.
Michael West, 2016
Compassionate leaders listen to understand and act, which leads to better outcomes. Sometimes, compassionate leaders must make hard decisions and take tough action with compassion.
What is compassionate leadership?
Michael West describes four elements:
- Attending: paying attention to staff and colleagues — listening with fascination.
- Understanding: sharing an understanding of what colleagues face.
- Empathising: feeling distress or frustration without being overwhelmed.
- Helping: taking intelligent action to serve or help.
The World Health Organization similarly describes compassion as recognising that suffering exists; allowing that awareness to lead to empathy; and responding with a desire to act to relieve or prevent suffering.
What can you do about it?
Identify a systematic approach with involvement that is real, not decorative
Start with a planned approach rather than random interventions, and identify the people who need to be involved. How you deliver this work is just as important as what you deliver. People who help shape a change are far more likely to sustain it, and they see things that no external consultant will.
Involvement means co-designing the approach, taking ownership of diagnostics and reviewing data already held. It includes engagement from senior leadership teams — inconsistent or poorly engaged senior leaders can undermine the change you are seeking. Together, people can co-design the specific behaviours that would make the vision real and change the plan in response to what they hear.
Understand the culture you currently have from a range of perspectives
Do leaders perceive the culture differently from everyone else? What do the people you serve notice? What do your performance measures say about staff experience, turnover, sickness absence, complaints and productivity? Are any groups not contributing to the conversation? If so, why, and what would help them feel comfortable joining in?
When you bring all of this data together, what does it tell you? Prioritise a handful of items, not a long shopping list.
Co-design the approach
Build on what is working well and address the areas for improvement. Having invested time, effort and sometimes courage, people need to see and feel change. The most effective culture work usually involves a small number of specific, observable changes in leadership behaviour — how meetings are run, how bad news is received and how decisions are explained — rather than something like a values relaunch.
Identify where pain is felt most and take demonstrable action to reduce it. It may be a frustrating process that consumes time, or a group of staff who feel particularly excluded. Acting to change it will be noticed by others too. Create a culture strategy that describes the findings and the next steps people can expect, and communicate it in different ways and places.
Deliver on the things you said you would do
Identify the systems and processes that need to change to reflect the culture you want while still delivering operational objectives. Back the statements in your culture strategy with action. If you ask for collaboration and reward individual heroics, the reward wins. Culture change often means changing a handful of processes that quietly say the opposite of your stated intent.
Throughout, maintain open and regular communication so teams understand what is happening, why it is happening and how they can get involved.
Why culture change fails
In practice, the common failure modes are predictable:
- It is delegated to HR or OD alone, so it reads as an initiative rather than how the organisation is run
- It is announced before anyone has understood the current state
- It is done to people, who then comply visibly and disengage quietly
- It relies on training, so people know what to do but the conditions do not support doing it
- It is measured only by survey scores, which improve last
- It stops when the external support leaves, because no internal capability was built and no ownership developed
How long it takes
The culture of your organisation has been a long time in the making, and it will probably take time to unmake too. The behaviours in place are now habits, and those habits need to change. Like giving up smoking or beginning a new exercise regime, that takes time, work, effort and encouragement. Culture change is no different.
Understanding the current culture well usually takes weeks. Visible change in everyday behaviour usually takes months. Change that has genuinely embedded — where new people absorb it without being told — takes longer than any programme timeline, which is precisely why the goal should be capability rather than completion.
That is not a counsel of despair. Teams often feel a difference quickly, because the experience of being asked honestly and listened to is itself a change in culture.
A reasonable place to start
If you recognise several of the signals above, the useful next step is not a bigger initiative. It is a clear, honest picture of what is happening now and why — and a conversation about what you would be genuinely willing to change as a result.