What is This Thing Called Culture?

Culture influences everything we do and think within the organization. It extends out to the farthest reaches of the organization surmounting geographic and social barriers, and it is amazingly resistant to change. Culture is the social container in which everything in an organization takes place. Ignore it at your own risk!

Why is culture so pervasive and so strong?

Well, it’s the job of culture to make sure that nothing in the organization gets so out of balance that it becomes unstable, unpredictable or threatens the survival of the organization. “Better safe than sorry,” is the motto of culture; its core unifying principle is values, and the enforcer is the norms.

It’s also the job of culture to make sure that important survival and success-based knowledge survives and is passed on. A lot of this knowledge has to do with skills, but more importantly and subtly it deals with the transmission of the group’s values and norms, assumptions and beliefs. Thus, we can say that the purpose of culture is to maintain order and the status quo, and to contain and transmit the sum of organizational experience and knowledge to ensure continuity. (more…)

August 26 and 27: Join Ariane David, The Veritas Group and Bill Bellows, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, for Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne’s monthly “Ongoing Discussion” webinar. The topic this month is “Sustainable Thinking Transformation”.

Click here for the Participant Survey and to receive the conference call information once you complete the survey.

From Bill Bellows, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne

“Ariane and I have been meeting regularly for the past 5 years, with many conversations on the topic of culture, as well as thinking about thinking and the limitations of defining Systems Thinkers as those who “think of the big picture,” as if “big” could be enclosed and not actually be made larger and larger still, well beyond big.

“An advance might be to think of systems of all sizes as sub-systems, fitting into still larger sub-systems.

“Our topic for this month follows from designing a 3.5 hour seminar on the topic of sustainability, with respect to a thinking transformation, such as the ongoing efforts within PWR that began in the mid 1990s.

“We were moved to explore sustainability after comparing notes and sensing that much of the content of sustainability conversations that surrounded us appeared to emanate from a greater need for environmental awareness. (more…)