3 Things most Leaders Get Wrong About Culture

Culture Is Unique

The first assumption leaders get wrong about culture is that their culture is unique. Most leaders describe how unique and special their culture is and then proceed to tell you about how great the people are, or how supportive of each other the teams are, or how great the benefits are. See where this is going? Most positive company cultures aren’t actually all that unique. While toxic company cultures could be toxic for a variety of reasons, healthy company cultures have a LOT in common.

Culture Is About Artifacts

The second assumption leaders get wrong about culture is that it’s about artifacts. Ask what many leaders are doing to build culture and they’ll describe things that can be easily seen. They’ll talk about the foosball table or the quarterly celebrations. They’ll point to the mural of core values that they commissioned a local graffiti artist to put in the lobby. But researchers on organizational culture point out that these “artifacts” just scratch the surface, and that underneath what you can see lie a set of espoused values and shared basic assumptions. Those values and basic assumptions matter a lot more when we’re building and shaping a culture.

Culture Is About The Company

The final assumption leaders get wrong about culture is that it’s about the company. Afterall, it’s most commonly referred to as company culture or organizational culture. And most culture experts and researchers examine culture at the organizational level. But if you think about most people’s experience of work, it’s shaped less by the culture of the entire organization and more by the culture of the team that they’re working on. We often hear the phrase “People don’t quit bad companies, they quit bad bosses.” In other words, the boss they have or the team they’re on influences their feelings about the company much more than a statement of core values or benefits and perks.

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