What Comes First, the Culture or the Egg?
It started with a vague notion and a corresponding question during a team meeting: How do we (as Organizational Effectiveness consultants and practitioners) make ourselves obsolete? Or in a different voice: How could we assist a well-minded leader/client to be more proactive about how to best manage an emerging culture and to better engage the type of desired culture they seek?
My question seems to be a straightforward line of thought however, like so many grandiose, underdeveloped ideas, once spoken these thoughts tend to lose their luster. So I set out to do some modest research, attempting to indentify what theoreticians believe when it comes to how best to manage emerging cultures.
I consulted Organizational Development (OD) text, numerous online resources, the thoughts’ of colleagues and fellow practitioners, and even the personal insight of an iconic management professor, but no answer seemed complete and I found no major body of research concerning the management of emerging cultures.
Why? Is there no set of OD guidelines or rules that would allow a start-up’s leaders to prepare themselves when their new culture does emerge so they already have strong mechanisms in place? Or are we as practitioners of OD condemned to be reactionary entities in a constant buzzard-like holding pattern waiting until a potential client recognizes they have a need for change?
The best answer I found, however insipid it may seem to me, leads to a central precept of organizational theory; that culture is most influenced by the values of the founders and leaders. The values they formulate and how clearly they communicate and emulate the norms, mission, vision, etc. of the organization or their failure to do so, is the single greatest factor in ascertaining success.
In my emerging culture query, I will only accept the influence of leadership as part of the answer because it prompts another question concerning the genesis of a culture: If leadership is primarily responsible for the successful assimilation of a culture, then should we assume that emerging organizational culture begins with the leadership as well?
Management icon Edgar Schein states, “Culture is a learned product of a group experience and is, therefore, to be found only where there is a definable group with a significant history.” According to Schein, the number within a group is not as important as the amount of shared experiential products between members. So, if a group fulfills this criterion, then the culture does indeed formulate through leaders. As a practitioner of OD consulting, one should be able to manage an emerging culture through this group of leaders.
One final consideration though: Does culture have to be present before someone takes actions to shape it?
I know some of your immediate reactions, “How can you shape something that does not exist?”
Try this on: If you have ever worked at a company that has standards and/or behaviors that drive you crazy, or may not be congruent with your beliefs and work ethic, you say, “If ever I start a company I will make sure never to do “x” to my employees,”?
In that moment of enlightenment, you are preparing your future professional self by setting guidelines in which your theoretical organization will better function based on your beliefs…
