The Building Blocks of Culture: Mood, Style, and Conveying Practices
I remember as a very junior consultant arriving on site to the central offices of a large gas supplier and remarking on the fastidiousness of the car park, where every car amongst hundreds had reversed neatly into their parking space. Inside, the walls were postered with advice on proper staircase etiquette – rules followed to the letter by the office employees. As an outsider – and in the classic manner of an arrogant consultant – I interpreted these as indications of micromanagement, overbearing bureaucracy, and an organisation that didn’t trust adults to act as adults.
However, after some weeks working with the regional field teams I changed my tune. The crews on the ground were engaged in treacherous work, responding to reports of gas leaks and repairing mains gas supplies buried in busy roads and amidst a sea of electricity and water infrastructure. Many of the people working “on tools” had fathers and grandfathers in the same line of work and had grown up hearing stories from a time when safety regulations were not so well established. On the way to one job site, the aftermath of a recent explosion was pointed out to me – more rubble than building. I realised that these were people who understood in a very real way the risks of their work – a risk that in my arrogance I had been totally naïve to.
For managers in this organisation, making sure a crew came back to the depot safe was far and away the most important part of their job. It was a responsibility they took seriously, and it mattered to them that the organisation lived that commitment from top to bottom. On my return to the central offices, I saw the car park and staircase regulations in a new light. The standards they had developed and maintained in the office setting were not excessive micromanaging – they conveyed a core value of the organisation. Whether you are repairing a leak in the field or writing a memo in the board room, your job is to return home safe.
For people who had spent some time in the organisation – even those in the office space – this understanding had become so intrinsic to them that they couldn’t even observe it. Like breathing, they did it naturally. It wouldn’t be long before I did it too, and what was previously alien became unremarkable. It was a powerful lesson in humility and a memorable introduction to the phenomenon called culture.
Culture & Culture Change
As a consultant I work across a variety of organisations, and have had to adapt appropriately to whatever culture I find myself in. What is interesting is that adapting to a culture is not all that challenging – we have all unknowingly developed the skill since childhood. In fact, we are so practised that the most common culture challenge our teams face is “going native”. Over and over again, we find that – unless carefully managed – teams working with a client for 3-6 months will begin taking on the culture of that client. In the process, the teams lose many of the distinctions that made VISION valuable to the client in the first place.
For a team “going native”, the phenomenon is invisible; it requires an outsiders’ eye to recognise and intervene. Cultures are powerful because they are intrinsic – shaping behaviour, decision-making and identity without the need for oversight. That same trait, however, makes changing a culture challenging.
Many people think of a culture as an organised set of beliefs and values. If this is true, then changing a culture is an intellectual exercise in persuasion. Our experience, however, has been that whilst it may be possible to convince others of the benefits of one belief or value over another, this does not produce a lasting transformation. Over time the legacy culture will pull people back towards the status quo.
VISION’s philosophical grounding points us towards something different –organisational culture is not based in beliefs, but on the different skilful practices that have been developed to deal with the business of the organisation. How do people come to agreement? How do they evaluate performance, or celebrate success? The shared practice of working through these moments in a particular mood and style is what creates and reinforces the culture. To change it, you need to introduce new practices, in a new mood or style, that convey the culture you want people to adopt. Put very simply, people learn by doing, not the other way around.
Today, when I work with new clients, I am always developing an assessment in those three areas: mood (what matters to people?), style (what approaches to work are valued?), and conveying practices (what are the regular, repeated conversations that convey the culture?). They are the essential elements that create a context for making sense of the world; the building blocks of culture.
The framework provided below outlines the most typical moods, styles, and conveying practices VISION observes in clients. It is one I still use to make sense of the worlds I find myself working in. With a little more experience today, I have a new language for describing what I observed in the car park earlier in my career. I see a culture where safety is taken seriously, with a mood of zeal, a perfectionist style, and conveying practices that reinforce the message: come home safe.
1. Mood: What matters to people
Mood informs what matters to people within an organisation. It determines how employees perceive their work, work with colleagues, and respond to challenges and opportunities. In a mood of hope, innovation and shows up as an opportunity, and matters to the extent that it might contribute to a better future. In a mood of fear, innovation matters to the extent that it threatens your role.
Typical Organisational Moods
Positive moods
Hope I care about creating a better world
Admiration I care about making heroes of my colleagues and customers
Zeal I care about furthering the mission in a disciplined way
Joy I care about creating great shared outcomes with my colleagues
Negative Moods
Fear I care about avoiding threats
Resignation I care about minimising disruption (because nothing ever changes anyway)
Resentment I care about punishing the opposition
Arrogance I care about showing I’m better than you
2. Style: What approaches to work are valued?
Style is the way an organisation operates—how decisions are made, how people work together, and what behaviours are encouraged or discouraged. We assess style by examining what an organisation values. Perfectionist cultures value meticulousness and relentlessness. Pragmatic cultures value efficiency and common sense.
Typical Organisational Styles
Pragmatic Look for great tradeoffs to deliver a good enough outcome
Perfectionist Strive for absolutes, never settle
Developmental Focus on personal growth – of teams, customers, products
Get Stuff Done Always be in action, improve productivity
Opportunistic Look for and exploit advantages
Trend-Setting Influence others by leading opinion
Collegial Maintain harmony
Play to Win Strive for first place in everything
Just Do for others what is their due
3. Conveying Practices: The Tools for Culture Change
Culture is often understood as a set of implicit beliefs, organised and expressed through rituals and stories. We have a quite different interpretation, which is that the practices of an organisation convey the culture. Put another way, we believe people build their interpretation of the world as an outcome of doing, not thinking. This is crucial because it means that changing a culture of an organisation happens by developing new practices for dealing with work, not new ways of thinking about working.
Common Types of Conveying Practices
Coming-to-resolution How decisions are made (e.g., open discussions vs. top-down commands).
Performance evaluation How employees are assessed and rewarded (e.g., focusing on teamwork vs. individual competition).
Hand-off How work is transitioned between teams or individuals (e.g., seamless collaboration vs. bureaucratic handovers).
Celebration How achievements are recognised (e.g., peer recognition vs. formal awards).
