Many years ago, for my Master's in Industrial / Organizational Psychology, I wrote about virtual organizations and culture. This was before Zoom, Slack, Teams, Google Meets all invaded our lives and became much more common to use as communication tools. In the subtext of what I wrote, I thought a lot about how organizational culture was a product, in of itself, that was trying to address different personas.
Back in the late aughts and early teens, there wasn't a whole lot of holistic research of what virtual organizations meant for the org's culture as a whole. There was plenty of specific domain knowledge and observations in trust, knowledge sharing, and group coordination, but nothing really asking the question: what, and maybe more importantly, how do we create an organizational culture in this setting? How do we maintain it? And how do we get teams onboard with it?
More than decade has past since I wrote that thesis and we're still asking the same questions. We're still facing the same problems of isolation, of distrust, and identification (I am fighting the instinct to start citing APA style all of this). And it cuts both ways. It's part of the popular business discourse as more RTO mandates (or rumors of them) start to surface. And the "productivity" argument, I think, is simply a symptom of something much deeper.
We, as leaders, don't believe that organizational culture is a product.
And, no, I'm not talking about organizational culture being a product of the company. That's a given. It's that we don't think about it as a product - as part of the product / service offerings of the business. We believe that words on a wall or in some dusty manual that you're handed during your onboarding defines what the company culture is. Or if it's bean bag chairs, ping pong tables, and free coffee and fruit. (Well, it does say something about your organizational culture if it's just that.)
Organizational culture is defined by the behaviors and norms that you, as a leader, exemplify in the day-to-day. We, as leaders, have an outsized impact on how others will eventually behave and see each other. We, as leaders, set the guidelines of what is acceptable in terms of meetings, in collaboration, in sharing, in a whole host of tiny little things that happen every day - regardless if it's in the office or remotely over Zoom.
So, why do I say we fail to think about organizational culture as a product? We don't invest in it. We don't conceptualize and internalize that our organizational culture (i.e., our behaviors and norms that we set as leaders) have customers. We don't believe that our organizational culture is a vehicle to achieve the business goals we are seeking. We don't believe that organizational culture suffers from entropy, just like any other product that requires periodic maintenance.
We, as leaders, ignore this at our team's peril. Not ours. They're the ones who suffer from seeing that shady behavior is rewarded and hard work is rewarded with... more work. They're the ones who suffer when we fail to plan for the unforeseen. They're the ones who suffer with vague direction and a weak product vision.
So, now, that I've got you a bit riled up. Go take your favorite framework, if you want. Get a whiteboard, Miro, or Figjam, and think about what value your organizational culture brings to the company. What behaviors need to stop. What behaviors should the organization adopt. What pains and gains are you addressing with those.
And if you don't know what any of those are, just like any other product that you're building, go talk to the users. Go ask them about what hinders them of the culture? If X or Y process didn't exist, how would they go about their day? Because, while this might sound "trust me, bro", they know a lot better how those things impact them than you probably do.
This road won't be easy. I can promise that there will be some personal pain because you're doing a retrospective of what you bring to the table outside of your hard skills. But I can definitely tell you that the organization will be better off for it. And you'll be a better leader for it.
/r
