SEEING, UNDERSTANDING, AND BUILDING CULTURE
Plenty of leaders say they want a culture of innovation, but they often struggle to define what they mean by “culture” or “innovation.” Turns out it is super hard to build something you can’t describe, and virtually impossible to know if you’ve reached a goal you can’t define. No wonder so many organizations struggle with this concept.
In this second SparkNote, we’re sharing a tool that helps people see, understand, and build cultures that are healthy, sustainable, and effective. Because despite what an MIT professor once told us, culture is not invisible. It’s actually easy to see if you know where to look. And the good news is, culture becomes actionable the moment it becomes visible.
Here’s to building better cultures!
-Lynne & Dan, The SparkLit Group
Defining Culture
We’ll start with a simple definition of culture as shared beliefs and behaviors. This definition is not only accurate and clear (and easy to remember!), it’s also a foundation we can build on.
Let’s break it down a bit. The word beliefs includes “things we believe are true” as well as “things we believe are important.” That second category is often referred to as values or priorities. And while people tend to think of beliefs as intellectual, our beliefs have emotional components too.
The term behaviors is also an umbrella term. It includes actions and rituals, norms and habits, the stories we tell and the language we use. It’s all the stuff a camera would capture you doing.
And keep in mind, no culture is perfectly homogenous. Individual members might express different beliefs and behaviors at times, while still being part of the culture.
Seeing Culture
That brings us to SparkLit’s Culture Map. It’s a simple 2×2 chart (below), with beliefs along the vertical axis and behaviors along the horizontal. We’ll put mildly held beliefs at the bottom, strongly held beliefs at the top, occasional behaviors on the left and frequent behaviors on the right.
Using our definition of “shared beliefs and behaviors,” the upper right quadrant generally represents a group’s primary culture – the set of strong beliefs and frequent behaviors that the group as a whole tends to exhibit.
The upper left and lower right quadrants are contradiction quadrants, where beliefs and behaviors are misaligned. The lower left quadrant is the non-culture, where we find mild beliefs and infrequent behaviors, or things that the group does not share.
Understanding & Building Culture
To use this map, we like to bring a team together for a conversation. Step one is to pick a topic like failure and explore the group’s shared beliefs about that topic. For example, do we collectively believe failure is not an option or do we believe failure is part of life? Do we believe failure is shameful or do we believe failure is a positive contribution to learning? Maybe we don’t have any shared beliefs about failure after all. We invite the group to write the belief on a card and place it at the appropriate place along the vertical axis.
Step two is to discuss the group’s behaviors related to that topic. For example, do we regularly have honest conversations about failure? Do we frequently hide / deny / punish failures? Maybe we don’t have any consistent behaviors related to failure. Move the card to the appropriate spot along the horizonal axis and see which quadrant it now falls in.
We might have similar conversations around topics like collaboration, experimentation, safety, or competition. You get the picture.
Once a handful of cultural components are placed on the map, it’s time for a few questions. Do group members agree the arrangement accurately reflects the group’s current state, the beliefs and behaviors we generally hold in common? Does this map identify the most important and impactful parts of our current culture? Does it reflect the culture we want to be part of? Are there any beliefs we want to revisit or behaviors we want to change? What adjustments would make our culture better?
Those last few questions are the key to the whole thing. The map makes our current culture visible, and those questions make our future culture actionable, setting the stage for building the kind of culture we want to have.
To help get you started, we created an online SparkLit Culture Mapping App. It’s an interactive web-based version of the image above, with some built-in questions that are designed to spark insights and conversations. It’s still in beta so we’d love your feedback! Please take it for a test run and let us know what you think.
