Management guru Peter Druker reportedly said “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, but other leaders and strategists express similar sentiments. The underlying message is, it does not matter how good a plan you have, if you don’t consider the human element then your strategy is unlikely to succeed.

Having worked with numerous companies on developing a strategy it can be all too obvious when grand plans are doomed to failure. One key metric is the delta between a company’s stated values and the behaviour of the people within the organisation. But to address this gap you first need to understand the organisational culture.

Why strategy fails

A strategy is a plan of action to achieve a long-term goal. As Richard Rumelt notes in his book Good Strategy Bad Strategy, a good strategy must diagnose the challenge to overcome, create a guiding policy to address that challenge, and then produce coherent actions that ensure that the policy is carried out.

Most people get the essentials of what strategy is. Where it generally fails is in the third element, the implementation; ensuring people carry out the actions is where things go wrong. This is often because the board level strategists fail to take culture and values into consideration. Actions are just behaviours, but real change is not brought about by one single action. It is the compounding effect of multiple actions over time. If you want to shift the way you want people to act you need to change their normal routines.

Routines are just one element of organisational culture. Changing our personal habits can be difficult, so why – do leaders – expect to change a whole organisation and the habits of hundreds, if not thousands of people, just because they say so? Making this sort of transformation requires careful consideration and to make a change in behaviour you first need to understand all the facets of the culture of a given group.

The importance of understanding organisational culture

Every group of humans has a culture of some sort. Every family, company, and sports team – let alone a country or nation-state – has its own culture. The problem is when we live within these tribes the culture is so ingrained, we often don’t think about it or can struggle to express it.

Therefore, it is useful to have a model to examine and explain a culture. The Cultural Web, the tool developed by Johnson and Scholes, is a simple and effective lens to use in this context. Johnson and Scholes break down culture into six component parts: stories, symbols rituals and routines, power structures, organisational structure, and controls.

The Cultural Web

The Cultural Web comprises of the following components:

Stories

These are the past events people talk about. The shouted successes and the whispered failures. The discussions around the water cooler. These narratives carry important messages about the underlying values of a people group. The language used to express these stories – the jargon, acronyms, and lingo of a group – are just as important. Every tribe has its own dialect.

Symbols

These are not just flags, badges, and company logos. Symbols are also expressed in how people dress, office décor, even in a preferred brand of software and technology! Every item you see around you is the result of a choice influenced by a principle. For example, why have that type of coffee? Because it’s the highest quality, a trusted brand, or the best value? Understanding the decision can reveal a value judgement.

Rituals and routines

Every tribe has its own rituals and routines. The time when people start and finish work, what people do for lunch, even how (if at all) people celebrate birthdays and successes are all cultural rituals. Meetings are one fascinating way of examining culture. The routines of how a meeting is conducted, who sits where, who speaks when, and the language people use, all speak volumes about the culture and values of a group.

Organisational structure

There are always formal and informal structures in any group. Both need to be understood. An organisational chart may capture the official structure but what are the networks that exist, the webs hidden below those regimented lines? Look to see the tribes that gather; the smokers and the lunch-time runners as well as the project or function-based teams.

Power structures

Power derives from people and particularly the individuals who are decision-makers. These power structures do not always follow the official hierarchy either. For example, the personal assistant who manages access to an executive can wield power that outweighs their perceived grade in any management structure. Think: who are the internal influencers?

Controls

Controls are the systems, processes, and regulations that an organisation develops. These controls assist the conduct of work but also regulate behaviours. These can include things like financial controls, contracts, and company articles but there are also a host of unwritten rules and ways of working in any group. If you don’t think that is true, then just ask the newest member of the team about what they had to learn to be accepted into the clan.

Culture is manifest in behaviour

Once a culture is understood you can start to identify potential levers of change. But that still does not mean it is easy, if you don’t believe me just try changing the dress regulations for any given team!

We are all creatures of habit and therefore change at any level requires overcoming inertia. We all know this. Habits can be changed but think back to the last bad habit you tried to modify. It is not easy, even when you do identify the cues, routines and rewards in a habit loop.

Therefore, even if the intellectual argument for change is compelling, there is a huge work to be undertaken once a strategy is agreed upon. As John P. Kotter shows in Leading Change, you must have leadership and a plan to take people through the change, not just set the target. To develop a plan, you need to understand the psychology of influencing groups of people and gently motivate them to act in the right way. This is the essence of nudge theory; people need subtle cues, personal incentives, and positive reinforcement to change.

How values should be expressed to inspire action

One way to engage a whole team or organisation in the change process is through a discussion of values. Values are symbiotic with culture, as it is our shared principles and corporate beliefs that are expressed in the symbols, structures, and stories that we share in an organisation.

The problem is the behaviour of many individuals and teams are not aligned to the stated values of their organisation. This is often due to one of these three problems:

The wrong values

Sometimes a company just picks the wrong values. The values are generally not bad in themselves – virtues such as creativity, inclusivity or productivity are all good – but that does not mean they are the right values for that given group or capture the drivers for change in a strategy.

Corporate values need to express the key beliefs of that given group. They express how that team makes decisions, how they are different and most importantly why they behave that way. If you want to change the priorities of an organisation, as happens in strategy implementation, then the values need to align with that strategy.

If this is the problem – and values do not express either the current situation or strategy – then it is worth starting again, examining culture, and engaging as many team members as possible to identify the true values of the organisation and the core principles of the new strategy.

Poorly expressed values

Expressing values poorly is the next common problem. This is often the case when companies choose single virtue words to communicate their principles. Take the word creativity. I have seen creativity stated as a value for schools, legal teams, and accountancy firms, not just the obvious ones such as advertising teams, tech firms and artists.

So, if you pick a term like creativity, the question is, what does that mean within your given context? One simple way to improve the expression of a specific virtue is by coupling it with another word. Creativity could become continual creativity, collaborative creativity, playful creativity, or something else. But suddenly, with just adding one (or two) extra words that value statement becomes more personal to the group and can better express the way that value informs choices and behaviours.

Misunderstood values

And that thought on behaviours brings us nicely to the third point – misunderstood values. Even if a value is expressed succinctly it may still need further explanation to describe how that value informs the actions of that group.

Therefore, when considering corporate principles (or personal values for that matter), once the value has been identified and expressed, the next step is to define its meaning in terms of how it informs action. Every value needs a paragraph of explanation that unpacks how a value should inform the thought processes and behaviours of the team.

Expressing organisational culture through shared values 

So, don’t let your organisational culture eat your shiny new strategy for breakfast. If you want a strategy to succeed, having a good strategic plan is not enough. You need to bring strategy, culture, and values together. To do this you must:

• Understand the organisational culture
• Identify values that align that culture with the strategy
• Explain and demonstrate how those values should be expressed in behaviour and decision-making

This may not be a quick or easy process, but it is better to go slow than to race towards the strategy car-crash that is likely to happen if you try to enforce a change without following these steps. It is a thankless task – for managers and workers alike – to have to continually prod people to change direction.

But if a company’s strategy and values are aligned, and the team behaves according to those principles, then it is like a flywheel starting to turn. It builds up momentum to a point where the positive inertia pulls the organisation towards its goal. Then, as the boss, you can stop thinking about prodding and start thinking about what new ritual you might introduce to celebrate the success of the team!

Have you ever asked for directions in Nepal? You could get confused or frustrated if you are not aware of the cultural differences that affect this simple interaction. For example, if you ask how far it is to the next village it is unlikely that the person will point or give you a numerical estimate of the time or distance. In remote areas, it is more common to hear something along the lines of ‘not far’ and have the friendly local indicate the direction with a slight jutting of the chin. Half a day later, when you still have not arrived at the village, you might get annoyed.

But here the behaviour displayed reflects certain cultural differences. In areas where it might take several days to get to the nearest road – let alone the next town – it is a true belief that less than a day’s walk is not far. Also, because of the social rules, they would not want to be rude by pointing with a finger. And due to the values of hospitality and honour, they would not want to be discouraging (or assume that you cannot walk far) by saying it was a long way.

What is the cultural iceberg model?

So, as in the example above, behaviour can point towards deeper cultural meaning. The iceberg helps to visualise this. The iceberg model is a simple metaphor for describing organisational culture. An iceberg has less mass above the water (this visible part) as compared to the greater mass that lies below the surface (which is generally unseen). The main idea behind the iceberg model is that, in the same way as a physical iceberg, with any culture, there are obvious things such as behaviours that are visible, but there are lots of things hidden below the surface within a group or organisation driving these behaviours.

Who came up with the iceberg model? 

The iceberg analogy is first accredited to Edward T. Hall, an American anthropologist who specialised in intercultural communication and is best known for his book Beyond Culture published in 1976.

Gary R. Weaver, a professor of management, further developed the concept and started to apply this to corporate culture, ethics and values.

Why is culture described as an iceberg?

As mentioned previously, the iceberg analogy is useful as it helps us to remember that any behaviour we observe, can be due to various hidden factors. Within any team, the visible behaviours of individuals are driven by unseen beliefs, values, and mindsets.

What is culture?

In a larger, social context, Ting-Toomey (1999) defines culture as:

“A complex frame of reference that consists of patterns or traditions, beliefs, values, norms, and meanings that are shared in varying degrees by interacting members of a community.”

Or by Haggett (1975):

“Culture describes patterns of behaviour that form a durable template by which ideas and images can be transferred from one generation to another, or from one group to another.”

What is organisational culture?

Even though the definitions above are rooted in social geography they can be easily translated into the corporate world. Any group of people, even one that gathers for work, becomes a community. This vocational tribe will develop its own unique culture and that is what we generally mean by organisational culture.

One useful model of organisational culture is the Cultural Web. The Cultural Web (Johnson and Scholes 2001) incorporates aspects that have particular significance within the business and describes culture as being made up of stories, symbols, rituals and routines, organisational structures, power structures, and controls.

Cultures within cultures and cultural change

It is worth pointing out though that there be cultures within cultures. Not only does a specific company reflect the culture of its host country (and the makeup of its workforce), but even within a single organisation, there can be various sub-cultures.  For example, anyone who has experienced the divides between the front-of-house functions (e.g. sales, marketing, communications) and the more operational and less customer-facing areas (such as logistics, I.T. or finance) will know that there can be considerable differences (and rivalries) between these different teams.

Furthermore, culture is fluid. As with Haggett’s definition, culture is used to pass down ideas and norms between people, but with each generation or team, the culture evolves. One simple example of this is language, particularly the English language. Language is one of the most useful tools to understand a culture, but it constantly changes. There are about 800-1000 new words added to English dictionaries a year – that is about 15 new words every day. Suffice to say, no culture is static.

What is an example of organisational culture?

Whichever model or definition we use, we can see that culture becomes manifest in the visible and the tangible, namely language and behaviour. Every company, business or team demonstrates these, some in more obvious ways than others.

One culture I have a lot of experience with is the British Army. Militaries can be insightful examples of organisational culture. That is not to say that these cultures are necessarily good but that they are often obvious because militaries often have long histories and have developed aspects of their cultures in very visible ways.

Just take one aspect of the Cultural Web – symbols – by way of example.  Militaries love symbols! Few other organisations have such a love for flags, badges, uniforms, logos, and other symbology. And all of these symbols have some deeper story or meaning that is not necessarily obvious to the casual observer. Historically symbols have been highly visible as military symbols are used to project the idea of strength and power, as well as having other more subtle connections.

But every group has symbols to some degree, even if they are to portray different values. Even not having a uniform becomes a uniform. For example, I have worked with start-ups where if you are not wearing something ultra-casual you would be seen as ab-normal! This counter-cultural statement can start to reveal something about the beliefs of the organisation. Not wearing a uniform might communicate wanting to be seen as relaxed, non-corporate, cool, or cutting edge. It is only by exploring the other aspects of culture that you can reveal what these hidden values are.

Why does the iceberg model of culture matter?

This is why the iceberg model matters. The iceberg analogy helps us keep in mind that there are hidden beliefs and values below the surface and that what we experience on the surface – the behaviours, symbols, or language – all have some deeper meaning.

For leaders and managers, this knowledge is particularly useful when it comes to change management. Leading a team through any change programme will inevitably impact, or be affected by, the culture of an organisation.

Mergers fail when cultures are not integrated. I have even seen a new I.T. initiative fail – something as simple as introducing new software – because people underestimated (or ignored) the impacts of culture on the changes that people were expected to make. People need to understand why change is good or necessary. The why question is addressed primarily by the hidden aspects of culture: beliefs, values, and principles.

What is below the surface in your organisation?

So, to put the iceberg model into practice think about the team that you are in. Even if you work on your own, as a freelancer or self-employed, think about the organisation(s) you work with, your network, or even your own family; they all have their own culture. Ask yourself:

• What are the beliefs that drive visible behaviours?
• Which values inform decision-making?
• What are the principles that define how people lead, manage, or work together?

Understanding your own culture is the first step in effective cross-cultural communication. In other words, if you want to work with other organisations, or bring change within your own, then this self-examination and awareness are key. And if you want to find out more, there is more on this topic in the post: How to stop culture eating your strategy for breakfast.

It was on one of my operational tours in the Balkans that the importance of trust in the workplace really came home to me. At short notice, I was deployed to an existing multi-national mission. I was given a team, drawn from various parts of the military, which had come together at equally short notice. As a leader, I was facing trust issues both externally and internally.

Externally, the other international partners were dubious about our commitment. The UK had been involved before but had then withdrawn. The new team was therefore met with scepticism by the very people I needed to establish good working relationships with.

Internally I had a group of people who had never worked together before and, coming from different branches of the army, were naturally prejudiced against each other. The tribal nature of the regimental system creates in-group/out-group biases that can be challenging to overcome. I knew I had work to do to change this mindset and culture.

To address these issues, I made sure I was honest about previous failings and transparent about what we wanted to contribute. Then, I picked challenging tasks, but ones we could deliver on, to help build my team together while delivering tangible results to the international headquarters. I also gave my team leaders latitude as to how they would achieve their tasks; I just mandated what they needed to do. It was not all smooth going but we did manage to develop a culture of trust both within the team and with our international partners, and because of this, we achieved our mission.

This is just one example where I have faced important issues of trust in the workplace. I can think of many more – both good and bad – where the whole culture of an organisation is affected by the trust people feel for one another.

What do we mean by trust and why is it important?

So hopefully, with the example I have shared, we start to get an idea of why trust is important. But before we get ahead of ourselves let’s just check what we mean by trust. Which words come to mind when you think about trust? How would you define it?

Trust can be thought of as faith, belief, hope, conviction, or confidence. From these synonyms, we can start to see that trust has both a logical and emotional quality. We choose to trust a thing because of how we think and how we feel.

In relationships, trust is foundational, whether that is with friends and family, or with colleagues at work. In this context trust can be defined thus:

“Trust is the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the action of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action.”

Aljazzaf, Oerry, Capretz (2010)

So, whether we are starting to get to know someone and building rapport, or maintaining a long-lasting relationship, trust is critical. But, knowing this, how do you develop a culture of trust and psychological safety in the workplace?

The neuroscience of trust

The first thing we need to understand is how our brains work when it comes to trust. Paul J. Zak has spent many years studying the neuroscience of trust (HBR, 2017). His research has centred around how the hormone oxytocin is related to trust. His work demonstrated that higher levels of trust are linked to the brain producing higher levels of oxytocin.

It is great knowing that oxytocin helps to develop trust, but it is unlikely that we will be wanting to dose ourselves with synthetic hormones just to be more trusting! Fortunately, during his research, patterns emerged of actions that promoted oxytocin levels (positive behaviours) and things that inhibited its production (such as high stress). These were narrowed down to eight key behaviours that foster trust.

The 8 behaviours that foster trust in the workplace

So here are the eight behaviours, identified by Paul Zak, that can help to release oxytocin naturally and build a more trusting culture in the workplace:

1. Recognise excellence
2. Induce “challenge stress” (difficult but achievable tasks)
3. Give people discretion in how they do their work
4. Enable job crafting (let employees choose projects to work on)
5. Share information broadly
6. Intentionally build relationships
7. Facilitate whole-person growth
8. Show vulnerability

It is worth taking some time out to reflect on these. As a leader or manager, what are you doing to foster these behaviours? As an employee, how would you rate your team on each of these behaviours?

With these eight behaviours, we have started to link the neuroscience of trust to the psychology and practice of trusting cultures. As with the cultural iceberg, we are linking what is seen in an organisation with what is unseen. But there is another model that is worth being aware of, and that is the trust equation.

The Trust Equation – understanding the psychology of trust

Charles H. Green developed the Trust Equation, along with David Maister and Robert M. Galford, co-authors of The Trusted Advisor. They explored the psychology of trust by looking at professional services and how people relate to one another. The result of this study was the Trust Equation.

The equation is actually a measure of trustworthiness, in other words, how much trust we are willing to invest in a person. In this context, to have trust between two parties, you need someone who is trusting and another person who is trustworthy. The equation gets to the heart of that relationship.

Equation of Trustworthiness:

Trust (or Trustworthiness) = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy)/Self-Orientation

For clarity, it is worth exploring the terms that Green uses in the equation. Here are some questions you can ask to think about how someone might score against each of these terms.

Credibility (words)

• Is the person professionally credible; do they live up to their CV?
• Do the person’s words fit their actions?

Reliability (actions)

• Are they dependable?
• Will they do what they promise?

Intimacy (feelings)

• Do you feel safe or secure around the person?
• Do you trust that person with confidential or personal information?

Self-orientation

• Is a person self-centred, putting themselves before the needs of the vision and team?
• Are they self-obsessed (always framing an issue from their own perspective) or do they look at a situation more broadly?

If you want to quantify each factor you can give a numerical value (1-10) for the answer to each question. You can score someone you are thinking about (to better analyse that relationship) or you can score your team culture to examine the levels of trust within your workplace. Finally, you can also use this as a self-reflection exercise and examine how you perform in each area. Remember to think of evidence – of actual experiences – to back up your scores.

The steps to building trust

So, those are the steps to building trust. Understand the trust equation and you can quantify the levels of trust that you have with an individual or team. Then you can implement the eight behaviours to develop a more trusting culture in your workplace.

Therefore, which behaviour do you most need to work on today?