I had the good fortune yesterday to spend a few hours with some really smart folks talking about organizational culture. The conversation reinforced for me how complex the topic of culture really is. While I’d love to report that I walked away from that conversation with some great learnings about culture that I could share with you here, that wasn’t the case. What I did come away with was a list of questions about organizational culture.
Here are some of the headline questions for me:
- What exactly is culture? Is it something that actually exists or is it simply a way of describing the impact of the other stuff we do in our businesses?
- Does culture come before the people or do the people make up the culture?
- How do micro-cultures within departments and teams affect overall corporate culture?
- Does culture exist beyond the leader? Said another way, does the leader always drive the corporate culture?
- Does culture drive brand or does brand drive culture?
If you have any of the answers or have some opinions to share one way or the other, I’d love to have that conversation here.