What Culture Means to Me

I originally started working on a tool to assess and guide culture as early as 2009. The "culture" in my company that I had co-founded in 2005 was nothing like the "culture" that was dominant in 2009. I wanted to know why.

It is useful to tease apart that word, "culture" to understand what we are talking about.

Culture is the set of norms we operate under at work that are the underlying currents of how people in the company communicate and collaborate together to get work done.

How about that for starters?

In a culture that aligns with your values, work comes easily and you often feel a sense of belonging and of getting things done. In a culture that does not align with your values, you feel like you're operating outside, that you're swimming upstream, and work feels frustrating.

• What are my priorities?

• Who do I need to talk to or coordinate with in order to get them done?

• How do I know I've completed work and done it well?

• Who do I need to report my progress to and how often?

• How much leeway do I have in completing my assignments?

• How am I rewarded or punished?

• How often does that reporting structure and set of tasks change?

The answers to these questions are highly influenced by the values at the top of the company hierarchy and reinforced by the dominant values in the organization.

What culture is not, is the posters on the wall talking about this or that culture value.

I've found over the years, that alignment with culture values with an organization makes work a whole lot more fun, fulfilling, and more easily can access a "flow state".

A flow state is a mental state where you're completely immersed in a task, and you're so focused that you lose track of time and ignore distractions. It's a state of optimal performance and concentration where you're so involved in your work that you're no longer thinking about yourself!