Busi­ness cul­ture is an accre­tion of lay­ers, just like the crust of the earth. While the sur­face often rep­re­sents the cur­rent moment in his­to­ry, dig a lit­tle and you are like­ly to find some­thing less sophis­ti­cat­ed, empow­er­ing, and inclu­sive. A “default” busi­ness cul­ture — mean­ing what we revert to giv­en no oth­er input or direc­tion — lies below the felt aspi­ra­tions of many firms to cre­ate more open work­places. This default cul­ture is a set of prac­tices and assump­tions based on the neg­a­tive side of old-style for­mal hier­ar­chy. It includes such “invisible rules” as:

These and oth­er relat­ed beliefs do not oper­ate all the time, but are still in the ground beneath our feet, and some­times by only a mat­ter of inch­es. Some­times, when things become dys­func­tion­al, that default sys­tem comes back from the grave. Effec­tive lead­ers reject these old­er beliefs and act in ways that ensure the “zom­bie” cul­ture stays in the ground where it belongs.

To ful­ly “drive fear out of the workplace,” it is essen­tial for every­one to be involved in active­ly reject­ing this anti­quat­ed cul­ture that divides the world into mes­sen­gers who get shot and lead­ers who don’t lis­ten. Both are stereo­types reflect­ing our fears of one anoth­er and our need for self-pro­tec­tion. “Active­ly reject­ing” means mov­ing into action and per­son­al­ly behav­ing in ways that con­tra­dict these neg­a­tive back­ground beliefs.

The courage to speak up and the courage to lis­ten are the way out, and they require us to “stay in the ten­sion” of the moment, the anx­i­ety, step­ping past all of it, par­tic­u­lar­ly the fear that our sin­cere engage­ment with oth­ers will cause dam­age, dis­tress, and reper­cus­sions or that we will sim­ply expe­ri­ence humil­i­a­tion and anger because noth­ing will be done about the obvi­ous orga­ni­za­tion­al prob­lems we chose to bring for­ward. If we have two ene­mies in this work it is pre­cise­ly the fear of reper­cus­sions and the belief that noth­ing can change.

Change can hap­pen, but only if we active­ly choose to cre­ate a dif­fer­ent kind of work­place, one where peo­ple seek and express under­stand­ing rather than make dis­con­nect­ed and insen­si­tive speech­es behide one anoth­ers’ backs. Change hap­pens only if we refuse to let fear guide our steps because fear is the essence of the old rules. Change hap­pens only if we choose to address what is right in front of us. 

This all works best when it is done in the name of being of ser­vice to one anoth­er and to our cus­tomers. This is a mat­ter of let­ting our best selves move for­ward together.

It is essential to understand that rejecting this background culture is not the same as rejecting people. 

We have all par­tic­i­pat­ed in the neg­a­tive side of the default cul­ture. We’ve all been car­ri­ers and are all respon­si­ble for its pres­ence. We have all con­tributed to it at one time or anoth­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly when things have gone wrong or there have been tough chal­lenges. Here are some of the ways we can move for­ward togeth­er. This is cer­tain­ly one of those cir­cum­stances that calls up the dic­tum often attrib­uted to Gand­hi: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

None of this is to say that our only task should be the rejec­tion of old ways. That’s only the begin­ning of a dif­fer­ent kind of work­place free­dom and with that rejec­tion comes the respon­si­bil­i­ty to define and live — as best we can — what cul­ture we do want. I was encour­aged a few days ago to find “Your Cul­ture is Your Brand,” an arti­cle by Zap­pos CEO, Tony Hsieh, as a great exam­ple of the exper­i­ments, inno­va­tions, and new think­ing that are need­ed to bring alive pos­i­tive, val­ue-based work cultures. 

Between these two realms of old and new, of uncon­scious vic­tim­iza­tion and con­scious choice, is a cul­tur­al cross-over point of major pro­por­tions. Many orga­ni­za­tions are ambiva­lent about which way to go and are some type of mashup of both worlds. Some seem to want to rely upon and return to the past; some strain for the future. This can be an anx­ious space but also a good one for forg­ing our own lead­er­ship. Oppor­tu­ni­ties abound. Sure­ly this is a time that will shape and define us and our orga­ni­za­tions for a long time to come.

Technorati Tags: Organizational Culture and Transformation. Link to blog posting. Link to Oestreich Associates website.