I’ve been asked this question, too. And of course, I’ve done countless culture surveys to assess how close an organization’s perceived culture is to its desired culture. But I agree with you, Claire, measuring culture itself isn’t possible. Especially because culture is an emergent property. Culture guides behavior, and our behavior is created from our beliefs. Our beliefs are created from our experiences. And leaders get to create and shape the experiences their employees have.

Sometimes there are misalignments, though, between what leaders say they want their culture to be like and the experiences they create (because they’re not intentional).

Let me give you an example of a misalignment. Let’s say that you want to create a high-trust culture. You want your employees to trust each other, to trust management. But there is a policy for clocking in. So, the processes and policies of the organization do anything but breed trust. And then leaders are surprised when the employees are skeptical and untrusting of managers. Their experiences don’t lead them to believe that it is high trust, so they don’t behave the way leaders hope. And then leaders and employees both have their guards up, and each person’s energy goes into protecting themselves, since they don’t feel like they can trust others. This is not how you create a highly productive organization.

There are 2 main ways to create intentional experiences for employees to shape culture. 1 is building the knowledge and skills of the leaders so they can stay calm and empathetic even in stressful situations. And 2 is intentionally designing the organization so that processes, policies, and structure create the desired experiences (like eliminating the clocking in process to create experiences where the employees feel trusted).

Thanks for this awesome, succinct message on not measuring culture Claire!