The unending quest for the ‘perfect’ organisational culture

In many organisations there is a multi-pronged pursuit of the often talked about but rarely seen ‘perfect’ organisational culture. If it can be found, the perfect culture promises unimaginable benefits for employee engagement, performance and productivity. However, the quest seems to have no end, much gold and effort has been spent in the pursuit but the longed for benefits seem just as unattainable. 

What if our quest is based on a false assumption? It may be time to take a different view. 

What do we think of as 'perfect' design? I think about clarity in function, balance in form, aesthetically engaging, coherent in composition, nothing wasted, harmony between the parts and the whole, a sense of completeness. 

How do we respond to perfection? We think of it as flawless. We set it apart. We admire it. We seek to preserve and protect it from the turbulence of life. We remove it from daily use. It should not be touched or interfered with—we cannot risk damaging it.

Yet, even though the quest for the perfect organisational culture is often led by the CEO, it remains elusive and distant. Just as you think it is within your grasp, it changes into something else and vanishes, often taking its captor with it. 

To put this post in context I need to expand on my own experience. I am often asked by senior executives desperately hunting the perfect organisational culture to describe what it looks and feels like. My response can range from a philosophical treatise on the nature of work and social order in human society through to a list organisational attributes that management practitioners and academics widely agree to be important in delivering high performance. 

But, I have a deeper problem with the question itself. It suggests there is one right answer—the perfect answer. The question often has a plaintive feel suggesting the perfect organisational culture is always just beyond reach. Nor is there a shortage of merchants offering intrepid adventurers a a map to find the 'perfect' organisational culture. Easy step-by-step guides are available that give comfort to the weary and hope to those setting off afresh—‘8 traits of the healthy organisational culture’, ‘6 components of a great corporate culture’ or 12 ways to a great corporate culture’. The reality is often more complicated. 

Interestingly, the idea of ‘perfect’ can also suggest a destination that is marked by homogeneity, sameness and repeatability. Once we have it we can stop thinking about culture. There is no need for improvement. 

Achieving perfection is a shield that can be used to hold back turbulence. It fixes organisational culture as an object to be kept in a glass case, sheltered from the elements, untouched by human hand and time—a museum piece to be admired but not handled.  It is stable and preserved. Question: if we found it, would we want it?

Maybe, instead, we should pursue an imperfect organisational culture. We might take a view that organisational culture is always incomplete and unfinished. It is open and susceptible to modification and adaptation. It allows room for compromise and transformation. 

It is does not have the perfect architecture of a cathedral; rather, it has the look and feel of many individual contributions that give it a collective aesthetic and value—a home rather than a house. It has the dents and bruises where it has been buffeted by life. This gives it the impression of imperfection but also speaks of learning and resilience.

Where does this lead us?

1. It brings our thinking about organisational culture into the present. Culture is not the object of a quest that is ‘out there’; rather, it is right in front of us. It is immediate and present.
2. It is a conglomerate formed through constant action and interaction that accumulates over time to produce the whole. So, we should feel no reluctance in engaging with it, influencing it, shaping it and challenging it. It is unlikely to break or dissolve through our efforts.
3. We are all custodians of our organisational culture. We all make a contribution to its care and feeding. It is not the responsibility of the CEO alone.
4. It accumulates slowly. It is bound together by social capital and individual effort. Much of the time the culture is passive and merely requires maintenance. Changes in culture are rare and episodic events that have lasting impacts. The effects of these open up new opportunities but also make old structures and habits vulnerable. True cultural change is traumatic and difficult.
5. It introduces the idea that culture has local and global attributes. It is accreted over time incorporating and integrating new attributes into old. It has many boundaries and local characteristics that work together to give it overall strength. Consequently, it has a sense of scale that moves easily from the global to the local. 
6. It is affected by forces near and far. Some forces may be working to reinforce and stabilise existing patterns of behaviour while others work to destabilise and decompose. The balance between these forces gives a sense of direction.
7. Polices and management approaches that are fixed on achieving efficiency but which are intolerant of local adaptation (eg one-size-fits-all policies) reduce the adaptability and flexibility of organisational culture. There is no silver bullet that will ‘fix’ the culture.

If there were a final cultural pattern in which all organisations could be arranged then change and adaptation would be outlawed since it would disrupt the perfection of the pattern. Maybe, working with an imperfect organisational culture is more beneficial than continuing the quest for a perfect one.

Sources:

For those with a literary background, you might sense that I was influenced a bit by Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits, 1876. 

Picture Credit: 

Photo by cobalt123 - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License  http://www.flickr.com/photos/66606673@N00