The Golden Thread

How consistent culture creates purposeful people and high performance

Leanne Hamley

• Publisher: Practical Inspiration Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781788602655
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

The Golden Thread is a blueprint for authentic organizational culture: what it is, what it isn't, why it matters, and how to build it.

If you are passionate about creating an environment where people thrive, you'll understand the value of real engagement and values alignment. But how do you make it happen? Consciously or not, company culture runs like a golden thread through any organization, and where it is not thoughtfully nurtured it unravels - leaving a toxic environment filled with bureaucracy, politics and poor mental health.

The Golden Thread guides business leaders through this concept – exploring cultural diagnostics and revealing what they really mean. This book will show you how to design and develop your own target culture, one that is right for your people and business. It then takes you step by step through the employee lifecycle, helping you to weave your new cultural and values through everything to build a happy, healthy, high performing organization.

Leanne Hamley is an experienced leader and business coach specializing in behavioural change, leadership development and organizational culture.

1

The golden thread of culture explained

To write about culture, we must first address strategy and leadership. Some leaders bandy the word ‘strategy’ around like some magical panacea – thinking that the word will endow them with protection due to its elusive nature. The overused and misused term ‘strategy’ needs some clarification. Strategy is a set of actions designed to achieve a long-term or overall goal.

When we are talking about culture, we need a plan that is aligned to the overall business strategy. Cultural shaping cannot be completed without first understanding the long-term goal the business is trying to achieve.

To design and execute strategy you need leadership. Both strategy and leadership, in whatever form, should be visible to those being led.

Culture, however, is harder to grasp. Culture, unless clearly defined, is anchored into the unspoken actions, behaviours and mindset of those employed. What is not challenged becomes the acceptable form of culture. An unconscious culture is one where leaders do not deliberately and thoughtfully set the culture. Instead, how they lead automatically becomes the culture itself. Maybe you can recognize some of these examples from places you have visited or worked: the turning of a blind eye to poor behaviour because it gets results; the erratic and voluminous emails flying every which way; the direction in the whole company – or lack of it. These are behaviours that, when replicated top-down, create an environment which is claustrophobic and limiting.

Or maybe, the organization has defined a culture. There is a clear statement of values artfully emblazoned on every wall of the office… but the day-to-day behaviour of the people in that office doesn’t match up. If the behaviours and the stated culture are misaligned, the behaviour will override and determine the culture. This too is how a defined culture can unravel.

A conscious culture, on the other hand, is one where the culture is defined, along with the leadership style – and those two things are congruent! Furthermore, the behaviour of both leadership and employees are aligned as well. Then you have a hallelujah moment, and a healthy, self-sustaining culture!

Established theory

This is not an academic textbook. It’s not about understanding the theory and ignoring the practice, and the majority of the following chapters will focus on pragmatic steps for cultural development. However, a theoretical grounding is important in establishing good practice, so it is key to look briefly at the academic research around what culture is, and the research into the types of culture and how they originate.

Edgar Schein’s Model of Organization Culture

Edgar Schein, renowned professor of the MIT Sloan School of Management, studied extensively in the field of organizational management. In 2004 Schein developed the ‘Model of Organizational Culture’.¹ Schein pointed out that for a culture to be shaped, we first must understand how a culture arises. Groups of people can determine the culture because they have history, have grown together, solved problems together, and won or grown the business together. New people may have joined and challenged legacy behaviours, and along the way the culture may have changed because of it, but the organization is already entrenched in a set way.

In Schein’s research, he proposed that organizational cultures were built on three factors:

1. Artefacts: This is the visible culture, clothing, office space, technology and communications.

2. Values: These are the ‘espoused’ values, the documented company’s values (e.g. the values printed in huge letters on the wall!).

3. Basic assumptions: These are the actions people take; for example, the volunteering of a new idea or concept, or the lack of sharing it for fear of putting one’s head above the parapet.

We can see from Schein’s work that understanding an organization’s culture and where it has come from is not necessarily straightforward. The questions that need to be asked must go deeper: questions about the beliefs which people hold, the assumptions that people make when making a decision, spending a budget or changing team structures. Questions that understand the problem-solving methodology, how solutions are created and who is involved, and what it looks like when the pressure is on. Questions on what behaviour is rewarded and what behaviour is ignored and questions that ask about the perceptions of the internal teams.

Only by really exploring the deeper level of culture – the assumptions, the values displayed – will you then identify whether they are congruent with the artefacts and company values and whether what you have is the culture you want.

Here’s an example. I was in a company, researching a merger that had taken place seven years before, and I could tell very quickly that the whole situation was a land mine. The current culture was dire, and in speaking to the employees, it was clear that they were still scarred by the takeover. It was never spoken about as a merger… The words that followed always referred to that time when ‘they collided the businesses together’. People were still bruised, and there was still very much an ‘us and them’ attitude. When I asked why they stayed in a business that had made them so unhappy, it was mostly because they didn’t want to leave the part of the business they were in – as they didn’t want any more people ‘from the other side’ getting into their area. It was ludicrous! To me, it was like standing in the queue for a food van when someone offers you dinner at the Savoy, and saying ‘no thanks, I don’t want to lose my spot!’

To say there wasn’t a strong culture would be completely wrong. The culture was so strong. Politics were rife; people referred to ‘the other side’… and by other side I mean the other physical side of the same building, each naming the other side ‘the dark side’. Humanity was gone, and what was left was a whole host of assumptions, made because of how employees were made to feel during the process. Instead of working to build the performance and culture of two organizations, the leaders went in gladiator style, not seeing the long-term damage on those they employed. Years later, still the labels stuck. No effort had gone into understanding who they were and how they could work together effectively. The artefacts said one thing, the company values another – but the basic assumptions were not where they needed to be. Strong culture, yes. Effective? Not by a long shot.

Competing Values Framework

The Competing Values Framework, or CVP, emerged from research to identify organizational culture and organizational dynamics.² The framework gives a classification of four corporate cultures. It is more complex than Schein’s three-factor theory. The framework was built off the back of a tonne of research which resulted in the discovery of two major dimensions.

The first dimension relates to organizational focus, which ranges from an internal focus on wellbeing and development of people in the organization, to an external focus on the wellbeing and development of the organization itself.

The second dimension differentiates organizational preference for structure and this represents the contrast between stability and control and flexibility and change.

This is paradoxical, hence the name! The theory has continued to evolve and now in simpler terms the four competing values have been identified as Collaborate (Clan), Create (Adhocracy), Control (Hierarchy) or Compete (Market).

Competing Values Framework, based on Quinn and Rorbaugh³

Below is a brief description of each of the four competing values; you may find that you can immediately associate some organizations with each of these values.

Collaborate (Clan culture)

These organizations typically resemble a large family. A cohesive team with a high level of flexibility. The organization is internally focused – their people, their employees are core to the business. There is a strong sense of loyalty on the part of the business and the employee.

The leadership in the business will be approachable, pull (ask) over push (tell). Leaders who empower their people.

How this might look in the physical environment: teams working cross-functionally, agile teams, open-plan offices, creative and collaborative areas. Making it easy for the employees to work together.

Create (Adhocracy culture)

These organizations also operate with a high degree of flexibility, but their focus is external. Dynamic and innovative, creating future solutions for the customer will be at the heart of what they do. They can be seen as the rule breakers.

Leaders often seen as visionaries, and also risk takers. These organizations want their product or service to be the industry leader; therefore, personal initiative will be encouraged. When they fail, they learn from their mistakes.

The physical environment is creative and innovative, with tools designed for their employees to create and thrive.

Control (Hierarchical culture)

Hierarchical cultures execute control which is internally focused. Procedures, processes and spans of control are dominating factors. Organized work and clean processes create an environment where the organization runs smoothly and efficiently. The governance of the organizations and the attention to detail give it stability, and the results relate to efficiency in process.

Leadership along with process is far more bureaucratic; innovation is potentially stifled for the demand of consistent process.

The environments are typically formal and structured.

Compete (Market culture)

Opposite to the flexibility of the Collaborate and Create culture, the Compete culture poses a high degree of controlling behaviour. Coupled with the external focus, these are the organizations where speed and results are king.

The employees are actively encouraged to be competitive. Goal oriented, leaders will strive for success and reputation in the external market and manage performance closely to ensure that the goals are achieved. They are fast decision makers with directive traits.

Within the environment, targets, achievements, awards and top performers are all very clearly on display; this is an organization that has an ego and that will be known.

These values compete in a very real sense, and are often determined by resources, leadership, time and budget. For example, if you have identified that you are in the Control category and yet your core strategy is to go into new markets (or you have a need to increase your pace of change because you’ve just been smacked in the face with a global pandemic!) then let’s face right up to this. It’s not going to be easy, as culturally you have a Ben Nevis to climb.

To complete this assessment on your own organization you can access cultural assessments, such as the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI). This particular assessment consists of a series of questions, made up of the ‘as is culture’ and questions about the ‘to be culture’. The questions are typically put forward to a cross-section of key stakeholders from across the business. You can do this either by sending the report out for individuals to complete alone, or you create forums to debate collectively and to delve deeper into the questions. My preferred method ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The golden thread of culture explained
• Chapter 2: Untangling the thread: The data story of your business
• Chapter 3: The thread of thought: Creating a culture
• Chapter 4: Laced in gold: Discovering and defining values
• Chapter 5: The thread that binds us: The employee lifecycle
• Chapter 6: Threadbare: The impact on culture when stress tested
• Chapter 7: Over to you
• About the author
• Acknowledgements