Culture is what we create every day

Culture is thousands of small moments that accumulate. It is often described as though it is something an organisation can design. A set of values. A program. A presentation. Perhaps a document somewhere on the company intranet. But culture is much more ordinary than that. It is:

A conversation in a corridor.

A difficult meeting.

A promotion decision.

The way a leader responds when someone disagrees.

The way mistakes are handled.

The way we talk about people when they aren’t in the room.

A person taking a risk and discovering that it was safe to do so.

Those moments accumulate and eventually people know what kind of place they work in. They know whether the organisation creates:

Trust or fear

Confidence or self-doubt

Curiosity or compliance

And eventually they make a judgement about what really matters in the company that they have decided to work for. Not because of what appears on the values statement, but because of what they have watched happen.

I used to ask myself, “If a team memberwatched me for six months, what would they conclude I truly valued?”

Would they believe I valued people? Or would they conclude that people mattered provided this month’s numbers were good, and if not, then the focus might shift to short term financial levers being pulled at the expense of people?

Organisations are remarkably accurate mirrors. Not of our intentions, but of our behaviour.