MINDSET AND CULTURE - Top Down Or Bottom Up – Who Creates The Culture In Your Organisation?

BY ALAN.MATTHEWS

A common complaint I hear when I’m training is, “Well, that’s all very well but it won’t work here, it’s not part of the culture in our organisation.”  Sometimes it’s not actually spoken, it’s more of an underlying attitude amongst the participants.

This can come up with all sorts of topics, from coaching to running meetings to using PowerPoint in presentations. In fact, since all training is really about changing behaviour, it’s always a relevant issue.

But is it a valid point? Or is it an excuse for not making changes?

It depends what you mean by “culture”. That word can mean a number of things. It can include values, expectations, beliefs, behaviours. It can cover all manner of things from dress codes to language to management styles.

When people say, “that’s not the culture round here” what they usually mean is just, “that’s not the way we normally do things here.”

All organisations tend to develop norms of behaviour, a style of operating which its members will tend to reproduce. For example, I mentioned dress codes. If you go to any organisation, I suspect you’ll see people wearing a similar form of clothing for work. It may vary, of course, depending on people’s roles, so you wouldn’t expect to see someone in maintenance wearing a suit and tie, but often there’s a general norm. Broadly speaking, it will be more or less “formal”.

Often, this dress code is never actually stated. New people aren’t necessarily taken aside and given a list of acceptable clothing (yes, I know there are exceptions – in some cases, people might specify about things like piercings, for instance). Generally, people just pick it up by seeing what everyone else is wearing and, by and large, they fall in with the rest.

In other instances, the norms are actually set out. For example, I remember when I was a consultant being told I had to use specific types of PowerPoint slides if I was speaking to clients because I had to follow the “brand” of the firm I worked for. There was a handbook setting out the requirements for slides and other media because the firm wanted everyone who represented it to present the same image.

But no-one ever gave me a handbook telling me what management style I had to use. No-one told me there was only one way of running meetings. Of course, I did get some messages about how these things might be done through various means, e.g. training courses I attended, performance reviews, feedback from people around me.

But there were no “rules” sent down from senior levels of the organisation.

What I’m saying is that the “culture” of an organisation may or may not be set out explicitly. Some aspects of it will just be norms of behaviour which have developed over time. No-one may ever have actually said, “This is the way we do things”.

Some of these norms stick because they work, others continue simply out of habit because that’s how it’s always been done. And some of these may be bad habits, which continue to be used even though they’re not the most effective way of doing things. And that may simply be because the people doing them haven’t thought of a better way, not because someone has told them that’s how it has to be done.

So how is the “culture” changed?

Sometimes change comes from the top down. Someone in a leadership position introduces a new practice and encourages others to take it on and develop it. Sometimes people are brought into organisations specifically to find new ways of doing things, to shake things up.

Sometimes it comes from the bottom up. Sometimes it just happens that someone comes up with a better way, a new idea, and others begin to copy that so new practices come into use and spread.

Change can come from either direction. And I know that some organisations are better than others at encouraging people to come up with new methods, at rewarding contributions and at adopting change. I know that some managers and leaders don’t exactly welcome bright ideas from their teams, especially if it implies a criticism of their old way of doing things.

But changing the culture isn’t just about waiting for someone “on high” to make a decision and then everything will be different, it’s also about taking responsibility and trying to introduce new practices in your own work, your own team, your own part of the organisation.

So, if people say to me,” That’s not the culture here “, I don’t think they should use that statement as a way of saying, “I know there are better ways of doing things but I’m not prepared to do them until someone in a senior position says it’s OK “.

My response to that statement is, ” So… what are you going to do to change that? ”