Introduction Today’s post is the second part of our two-part article on rethinking strategic and cultural change, an article first published exactly 35 years ago but which has stood the test of time. Last time we focused on strategy; in today’s post we turn our attention to corporate culture.
I feel almost overwhelmingly unqualified to comment on Rethinking Strategic and Cultural Change. I felt the same last week with regard to Part I, and the overwhelm got the better of me. But this topic has perplexed me for several decades, so I'll give it a go.
"A corporate culture is not so much something a company has as something it does."
Hallelujah!
Culture is not an it, a 'thing' that can be designed, managed and changed. I learnt how to spot an abstraction from several people, one of them being James Wilk, and this one has bells on.
The it-that's-not-an-it is a verb — one we could refer to as culturing.
And an individual's experience of this culturing — the organisation doing its thing in the only way it currently can — is subjective.
The common elements of these subjective experiences represent the pattern described by James.
So if culture cannot be changed because it's a doing and not a thing, how might the it-that's-not-an-it be changed or recreated?
Ah, the penny has dropped. Cutlure is not an it, but the pattern is an it and this is what must be ... not changed, but replaced.
I feel almost overwhelmingly unqualified to comment on Rethinking Strategic and Cultural Change. I felt the same last week with regard to Part I, and the overwhelm got the better of me. But this topic has perplexed me for several decades, so I'll give it a go.
"A corporate culture is not so much something a company has as something it does."
Hallelujah!
Culture is not an it, a 'thing' that can be designed, managed and changed. I learnt how to spot an abstraction from several people, one of them being James Wilk, and this one has bells on.
The it-that's-not-an-it is a verb — one we could refer to as culturing.
And an individual's experience of this culturing — the organisation doing its thing in the only way it currently can — is subjective.
The common elements of these subjective experiences represent the pattern described by James.
So if culture cannot be changed because it's a doing and not a thing, how might the it-that's-not-an-it be changed or recreated?
Ah, the penny has dropped. Cutlure is not an it, but the pattern is an it and this is what must be ... not changed, but replaced.