Last night, I was taught something which has an interesting business application.

It seems so simple when boiled down to its roots like this, but I doubt many managers have used this explanation of why their company’s actual culture sometimes doesn’t match it’s gloriously-framed mission statement.

Your culture is the combination of your organization’s daily, repeated choices.

• “Culture” is made up of collected traditions… what people do and when.
• “Traditions” are made up of collected habits… reasons why things are done are often forgotten. Here, we see the bricks of status-quo being fortified thickly and repetitively.
• “Habits” are simply things done repeatedly. That’s all. They come from the same choice being made to solve the same problem over and over.
• “Choices” are the root of all of this–both choices to do and to not do create habits. Your staff is watching how you react to situations which arise. They will often do what they think you would do (or what you would not do).

Here’s the rub: Once you make certain choices repeatedly enough, or often enough, and without spending enough time showing or explaining situations where you would make that choice differently, your staff will unquestioningly follow the CULTURE you’ve created, even if it goes against how they might act in their personal life, or how they–personally–would want to be treated.

Why? Because they work for you. They represent you. And, especially when it comes to front-line staff, even if they would tell their closest friends that they don’t like working for you, when they are there, they will go to long-lengths to follow what they feel is “policy” even if it hurts you.

This is because they are paid to “do what’s policy”. It’s ingrained in us. And, I believe, people will go get another job if they don’t agree with your policy before they ever, ever raise their hand and ask you why things are the way they are.

[As an example, the Kohl's debacle I wrote about yesterday has absolutely nothing to do with employees actively disobeying the company's mission statement--and everything to do with the obviously sloppy traditions exhibited by in-store staff leads and managers in right on the floor. If the leads and managers wanted this store clean--and actively and constantly cleaned it (from picking up things to firing sloppy employees), this store would be clean.]

On the plus side, leveraging this can also create very powerful cultural traditions in your company if you teach and train them through your own choices and encouraging and rewarding the out-of-bounds things employees may do that support your vision.

How can you put this to work in YOUR organization (office, business, civic group, church or family?)

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