There is a range of tools that organisations use (intentionally or unintentionally) to affect its culture. Some of these tools include:

Employee promotion, selection, recruitment and removal

An organisation will promote those people who play the game and who play it well. The people who don't play the game become non-team players and reasons are found to replace them or remove them from the organisation.

The organisation will also hire only those people who it’s felt will fit in to the organisation's culture - whatever that is understood to be.

Conversely, removing certain influential players can be used effectively to send a strong message of the inappropriateness of certain attitudes or behaviours, or to protect the existing attitudes and behaviours.

For example, a culture that preaches equality and tolerance will have a problem with someone who demonstrates intolerance or racism.

Induction

Both through formal induction training and informally, new employees are exposed to the value system and practices of the organisation.

Normally there is not much room for debate here - the new hire is told what the expectations are, not asked if they are happy with it. The attitude is commonly, "If you want to work here, then this is what you need to do and think."

Carrot and stick

People who play the game get rewards. Those that don’t won't. And those who won't, and who do it badly, get removed from the organisation.

Role model

"If it's good enough for the boss, then it's good enough for me," plays an important role in modelling behaviour and attitude.

In the same way that nobody got sacked for buying IBM, nobody can be accused of fighting the system if they emulate the leader.

Involvement

In principle, strong involvement of the people being changed is a good way to enhance cultural understanding and commitment.

However, it's not a guarantee: poor implementation will only reinforce existing negative feelings and require strong remediation.

Sometimes a deliberate strategy to fight negative cultural behaviour or attitudes is to involve deeply the target person in a change initiative that has cultural overlays. To succeed in an important or sensitive, but highly visible initiative, the target must decide to either play along for the sake of the initiative and the organisation, or to resist.

If the change succeeds, the target's opposition will probably have diminished, and by association the target owns the change. That's a good win-win outcome.

If however the change fails as a result of the target's opposition, then the target will be, and be seen to be responsible and a strong candidate for removal - also probably a win-win as the target might be happier in another organisation.

Communication

The way the organisation 'talks' to its people and the way its people talk to each other is often a subtle way to reinforce the cultural values of the organisation, or conversely a way to suppress those attitudes and behaviours that are not appropriate.

Officialdom

A typical organisation records its expectations, standards and aspirations in its formal and official documentations and constructs.

These include its manuals, policy documents, structures, procedures and the way it allocates its resources across the organisation.

For example, an organisation that valued corporate governance would probably have robust governance procedures. An organisation that valued quality would have robust quality procedures and resources.

An organisation that valued honesty, sharing of knowledge and mentoring, for example, would embed them into their documentation and ensure that it formed part of the performance appraisal process.

In other words, organisations have the ability to ensure that their cultural hot buttons are embedded in all that they do to ensure uniformity, compliance and acceptance.

An organisation's culture is the collective behaviour of people in that organisation as defined by:

• the meaning they give to behaviours and activities;
• the values that act as guidelines for people's behaviour;
• the vision the organisation has of itself and into the future;
• the norms and beliefs adopted by its people;
• the language used in the work environment by its people;
• the systems and processes that are used and adapted to satisfy its nature and needs;
• the things they do that have been learned by their own invention, discovery and development;
• the symbols used in the work environment;
• the rituals and habits that people in the organisation display and which the organisation endorses.

These factors combine into a unique mental and attitudinal frame that is shared by employees and which is 'taught', normally informally, to new employees.

The culture gives the people within the organisation a sense of belonging, a group identity, a sense of family and a validation of why they think about things in a certain way.

It offers both an excuse for behaviours and attitudes while simultaneously providing the encouragement for those same behaviours and attitudes.

Culture can also confer on people power, status, authority, rewards and punishment, friendship and respect.

Parts of the culture may be documented into formal statements such as the Organisation's Vision, or the organisation's A Statement Organisation's Values. Other aspects remain informal and rarely documented.

People sculpt culture; people affect people; managers affect people.

Therefore managers and people, by the way they interpret the culture and support or oppose it, can influence the way the organisation's culture deals with matters - such as change.

Some large organisations with complex, distributed or varied activities, may have multiple sub-cultures operating simultaneously. This certainly complicates matters but its people are practised in navigating their way through the complexity.

As an example, a company may have a Head Office culture while its operations in the mine fields may have an entirely different culture. A division of an organisation in one country may (and probably will) have a slightly or significantly different culture to a division in the same organisation operating in another country. The sales function in an organisation may have a different culture to the manufacturing division of the same organisation.

Remember too, that an organisation's culture is itself a sub-culture reflecting many or most attributes of the social and cultural context in which it exists.

It’s easy to suggest that multiple cultures in the one organisation lead to conflict. It certainly may, but most large organisations have multiple cultural nuances that do co-exist. The reasons for this are simple:

• Each culture works in its own context;
• The degree of overlap is minimal. The workers in the mine stay in the mine and the workers at Head Office stay at head office. Most commonly, they interact at senior or functional management level.
• When people of two separate cultures interact, they adopt a third neutral culture within which they will transact their needs. Everyone understands this and knows not to try to impose one's culture on the other.

For these reasons, multi-cultural organisations are still able to work effectively.

That doesn't mean that it's easy or that cultural mismatches never occur; they do, but the presence of sub-cultures does not automatically flag problems or failure.

Culture is one of the hardest (if not the hardest) things to change within an organisation, particularly a large one, yet it’s possible to achieve with care, preplanning, understanding, empathy and wisdom.

Despite the difficulty, culture should never be regarded as a given. Culture exists as a result of the organisation's evolution and its needs. Sometimes the culture helps the organisation do what it’s there to do, and sometimes it hinders its efforts.

As hard as it may be, sometimes it’s necessary to realign an organisation's culture with the organisation's objectives and intent.

The reason this is difficult is because people become familiar and comfortable with the various filters that define the organisation's culture. Being able to play the game is very important in many organisations. No wonder then, that when you attempt to change what people feel secure with, they will resist.

We noted previously that the organisation is never a culture-free zone. Apart from its own evolution, the organisation is composed of individuals, each of whom comes to the organisation with their ideologies and value systems. Sometimes they meld effectively into whichever organisational culture or sub-culture they are immersed in, and sometimes the melding process carries tensions and stress. Organisations are therefore rich with cultural overlays.

There is a range of tools that organisations use (intentionally or unintentionally) to affect its culture. Some of these tools include:

Employee promotion, selection, recruitment and removal

An organisation will promote those people who play the game and who play it well. The people who don't play the game become non-team players and reasons are found to replace them or remove them from the organisation.

The organisation will also hire only those people who it’s felt will fit in to the organisation's culture - whatever that is understood to be.

Conversely, removing certain influential players can be used effectively to send a strong message of the inappropriateness of certain attitudes or behaviours, or to protect the existing attitudes and behaviours.

For example, a culture that preaches equality and tolerance will have a problem with someone who demonstrates intolerance or racism.

Induction

Both through formal induction training and informally, new employees are exposed to the value system and practices of the organisation.

Normally there is not much room for debate here - the new hire is told what the expectations are, not asked if they are happy with it. The attitude is commonly, "If you want to work here, then this is what you need to do and think."

Carrot and stick

People who play the game get rewards. Those that don’t won't. And those who won't, and who do it badly, get removed from the organisation.

Role model

"If it's good enough for the boss, then it's good enough for me," plays an important role in modelling behaviour and attitude.

In the same way that nobody got sacked 'for buying IBM', nobody can be accused of fighting the system if they emulate the leader.

Involvement

In principle, strong involvement of the people being changed is a good way to enhance cultural understanding and commitment.

However, it's not a guarantee: poor implementation will only reinforce existing negative feelings and require strong remediation.

Sometimes a deliberate strategy to fight negative cultural behaviour or attitudes is to involve deeply the target person in a change initiative that has cultural overlays. To succeed in an important or sensitive, but highly visible initiative, the target must decide to either play along for the sake of the initiative and the organisation, or to resist.

If the change succeeds, the target's opposition will probably have diminished, and by association the target owns the change. That's a good win-win outcome.

If however the change fails as a result of the target's opposition, then the target will be, and be seen to be responsible and a strong candidate for removal - also probably a win-win as the target might be happier in another organisation.

Communication

The way the organisation 'talks' to its people and the way its people talk to each other is often a subtle way to reinforce the cultural values of the organisation, or conversely a way to suppress those attitudes and behaviours that are not appropriate.

Officialdom

A typical organisation records its expectations, standards and aspirations in its formal and official documentations and constructs.

These include its manuals, policy documents, structures, procedures and the way it allocates its resources across the organisation.

For example, an organisation that valued corporate governance would probably have robust governance procedures. An organisation that valued quality would have robust quality procedures and resources.

An organisation that valued honesty, sharing of knowledge and mentoring, for example, would embed them into their documentation and ensure that it formed part of the performance appraisal process.

In other words, organisations have the ability to ensure that their cultural hot buttons are embedded in all that they do to ensure uniformity, compliance and acceptance.

An organisation’s culture is the collective behaviour of people in that organisation as defined by:

• the meaning they give to behaviours and activities;
• the values that act as guidelines for people’s behaviour;
• the vision the organisation has of itself and into the future;
• the norms and beliefs adopted by its people;
• the language used in the work environment by its people;
• the systems and processes that are used and adapted to satisfy its nature and needs;
• the things they do that have been learned by their own invention, discovery and development; 
• the symbols used in the work environment;
• the rituals and habits that people in the organisation display and which the organisation endorses.

These factors combine into a unique mental and attitudinal frame that is shared by employees and which is ‘taught’, commonly informally, to new employees.

The culture gives the people within the organisation a sense of belonging, a group identity,  sense of family and a validation of why they think about things in a certain way.

It offers both an excuse for behaviours and attitudes while simultaneously providing the encouragement for those same behaviours and attitudes.

Culture can also confer on people power, status, authority, rewards and punishment, friendship and respect.

Parts of the culture may be documented into formal statements such as the organisation’s vision, or the organisation’s statement of their values. Other aspects remain informal and rarely documented.

People sculpt culture; people affect people; managers affect people.

Therefore managers and people, by the way they interpret the culture and support or oppose it, can influence the way the organisation’s culture deals with matters - such as change.

Some large organisations with complex, distributed or varied activities, may have multiple sub-cultures operating simultaneously. This certainly complicates matters but its people are practised in navigating their way through the complexity.

As an example, a company may have a Head Office culture while its operations in the mine fields may have an entirely different culture. A division of an organisation in one country may (and probably will) have a slightly or significantly different culture to a division in the same organisation operating in another country. The sales function in an organisation may have a different culture to the manufacturing division of the same organisation.

Remember too, that an organisation’s culture is itself a sub-culture reflecting many or most attributes of the social and broader cultural context in which it exists.

It’s easy to suggest that multiple cultures in the one organisation lead to conflict. It certainly may, but most large organisations have multiple cultural nuances that do co-exist. The reasons for this are simple:

• Each culture works in its own context;
• The degree of overlap is minimal. The workers in the mine stay in the mine and the workers at Head Office stay at head office. Most commonly, they only interact mostly at senior, technical or functional management levels.
• When people of two separate cultures interact, they adopt a third neutral culture within which they will transact their needs. Everyone understands this and knows not to try to impose one’s culture on the other.

For these reasons, multi-cultural organisations are still able to work effectively.

That doesn’t mean that it’s easy or that cultural mismatches never occur; they do, but the presence of sub-cultures does not automatically flag problems or failure.

Culture is one of the hardest (if not the hardest) things to change within an organisation, particularly a large one, yet it’s possible to achieve with care, preplanning, understanding, empathy and wisdom.

Despite the difficulty, culture should never be regarded as a given. Culture exists as a result of the organisation’s evolution and its needs. Sometimes the culture helps the organisation do what it’s there to do, and sometimes it hinders its efforts.

As hard as it may be, sometimes it’s necessary to realign an organisation’s culture with the organisation’s objectives and intent.

The reason this is difficult is because people become familiar and comfortable with the various filters that define the organisation’s culture. Being able to play the game is very important in many organisations. No wonder then, that when you attempt to change what people feel secure with, they will resist.

As noted previously is that the organisation is never a culture-free zone. Apart from its own evolution, the organisation is composed of individuals, each of whom comes to the organisation with their ideologies and value systems. Sometimes they meld effectively into whichever organisational culture or sub-culture they are immersed in, and sometimes the melding process carries tensions and stress. Organisations are therefore rich with cultural overlays.

Some universal truths regarding culture and strategy:

• Strategy can succeed despite an unsupportive culture.
• Strategy can fail despite a supportive culture.
• A strong strategy can fail if the culture determines it to fail.
• Neither culture nor strategy universally prevail. Each can be more critical to success depending on context and objective.
• Culture is changeable. 
• Not understanding culture bodes trouble as managing changes in attitude, behaviour and performance is often a significant factor in successful change management.

An organisation’s culture is the collective behaviour of people in that organisation as defined by:

• the meaning they give to behaviours and activities;

• the values that act as guidelines for people’s behaviour;

• the vision the organisation has of itself and into the future;

• the norms and beliefs adopted by its people;

• the language used in the work environment by its people;

• the systems and processes that are used and adapted to satisfy its nature and needs;

• the things they do that have been learned by their own invention, discovery and development;

• the symbols used in the work environment;

• the rituals and habits that people in the organisation display and which the organisation endorses.

These factors combine into a unique mental and attitudinal frame that is shared by employees and which is ‘taught’, commonly informally, to new employees.

 

The culture gives the people within the organisation a sense of belonging, a group identity, sense of family and a validation of why they think about things in a certain way.
 

It offers both an excuse for behaviours and attitudes while simultaneously providing the encouragement for those same behaviours and attitudes.
 

Culture can also confer on people power, status, authority, rewards and punishment, friendship and respect.
 

Parts of the culture may be documented into formal statements such as the organisation’s vision, or the organisation’s statement of their values. Other aspects remain informal and rarely documented.
 

People sculpt culture; people affect people; managers affect people.
 

Therefore managers and people, by the way they interpret the culture and support or oppose it, can influence the way the organisation’s culture deals with matters - such as change.
 

Some large organisations with complex, distributed or varied activities, may have multiple sub-cultures operating simultaneously. This certainly complicates matters but its people are practised in navigating their way through the complexity.
 

As an example, a company may have a Head Office culture while its operations in the mine fields may have an entirely different culture. A division of an organisation in one country may (and probably will) have a slightly or significantly different culture to a division in the same organisation operating in another country. The sales function in an organisation may have a different culture to the manufacturing division of the same organisation.
 

Remember too, that an organisation’s culture is itself a sub-culture reflecting many or most attributes of the social and broader cultural context in which it exists.
 

It’s easy to suggest that multiple cultures in the one organisation lead to conflict. It certainly may, but most large organisations have multiple cultural nuances that do co-exist. The reasons for this are simple:

• Each culture works in its own context;
• The degree of overlap is minimal. The workers in the mine stay in the mine and the workers at Head Office stay at head office. Most commonly, they only interact mostly at senior, technical or functional management levels.
• When people of two separate cultures interact, they adopt a third neutral culture within which they will transact their needs. Everyone understands this and knows not to try to impose one’s culture on the other.

For these reasons, multi-cultural organisations are still able to work effectively.

 

That doesn’t mean that it’s easy or that cultural mismatches never occur; they do, but the presence of sub-cultures does not automatically flag problems or failure.
 

Culture is one of the hardest (if not the hardest) things to change within an organisation, particularly a large one, yet it’s possible to achieve with care, preplanning, understanding, empathy and wisdom.
 

Despite the difficulty, culture should never be regarded as a given. Culture exists as a result of the organisation’s evolution and its needs. Sometimes the culture helps the organisation do what it’s there to do, and sometimes it hinders its efforts.
 

As hard as it may be, sometimes it’s necessary to realign an organisation’s culture with the organisation’s objectives and intent.
 

The reason this is difficult is because people become familiar and comfortable with the various filters that define the organisation’s culture. Being able to play the game is very important in many organisations. No wonder then, that when you attempt to change what people feel secure with, they will resist.
 

The organisation is never a culture-free zone. Apart from its own evolution, the organisation is composed of individuals, each of whom comes to the organisation with their ideologies and value systems. Sometimes they meld effectively into whichever organisational culture or sub-culture they are immersed in, and sometimes the melding process carries tensions and stress. Organisations are therefore rich with cultural overlays.