From the course: Creating a Culture That Inspires Your Employees

Draw out your hidden culture

From the course: Creating a Culture That Inspires Your Employees

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Draw out your hidden culture

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- There's a space between how we want work to get done and how it actually gets done. And it's your job as a leader to close the gap, getting culture to trickle down through the whole organization is really tough. It requires folks to buy in with a shared understanding of your core values and the behaviors, those core values represent. But what usually happens? Well, folks, smile and nod, and then they go about business as usual. Too cynical? I want you to imagine that you have a fully engaged team that has adopted shared values and behaviors. Even if you did over time, behaviors slip, people drift into old habits and you end up with two cultures. The one everyone says defines your organization and the way people really get work done, we've all seen this. So how do you fix it? You close the gap by drawing out the hidden culture. A great way to start is by talking to your new folks, it can be difficult to know what hidden culture exists in your organization, because well, it's hidden. I found that new folks have the freshest eyes for recognizing the gap between how a company says work gets done and how work actually gets done. Talk with your newest hires, ask them what's confusing. Ask about process, then engage your team more broadly. It's not uncommon to see cultural practices shift, and it's okay to make adjustments to behavior without shifting your shared values. At my organization, The Santa Barbara Zoo, we have 26 acres of lush gardens and beautiful animal habitats. We also have a myriad of guest paths. Now, inevitably guests will establish their own paths through lush lawns or across planted spaces, not talking about one guest, pushing through a few bushes, but a full season of guests forging a new path, picture a strip of dirt where thousands of footsteps have removed the grass and establish a new way. Now, we can approach these new paths in one of two ways, we can either replant or we can rethink. The fact that the path even exists tells us that many people decided this was a better way between two points, a more efficient way to get work done. Sometimes we agree. We might choose to pave that new route. Sometimes we have good reason for pushing people back to the paths that are already there. We might use large planters or a bench to block either of the newly formed routes. Now this ridiculous story translates. Your employees will make their own new paths, circumventing the explicit cultural norms of your organization. You'll have to make a choice. Do you allow the circumvention? If you do, I've found that calling it out, being explicit about it, being a new path, paving it, this will help you draw out your hidden culture. If you don't want the new path to stay, you have to make that explicit too. Why is it damaging? Is there a planter or a bench you can place in the way so others don't take that route? At the end of the day, work is getting done at your organization, whether it's hidden or explicit. Your goal is to draw out your hidden culture.

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