Musings at Altitude

A good friend read my posting yesterday on ambitions, saw the bullet “build nirvana in a business culture”, and then sent me a short note with the following challenge – “I’m waiting for you to do this!” 

As most very short and very pointed emails do, that got me thinking.  What does it take to “build nirvana in a business culture”?  It’s not enough to just pop it out.  If I’m going to have it on my list of “to do’s”, then I better have some vision for what nirvana in a business culture is, and then even more important, some more than just basic understanding of what to do to drive a culture to that nirvanic level.  Otherwise, I’m not the one building anything.  I’m just the one waiting for someone else to build something and then take advantage of what they have built.

That got me thinking even more.  I’ve been in many organizations where strong (and sometimes insane) personalities drove or built the outward facing culture of an organization.  But with each dominant personality driving any specific outward facing culture, there was a behind the scenes culture driver that kept the engine of the organization running.  That individual typically wasn’t in the senior leadership role.  Instead, that individual was an influencer at a middle management level who watched the actions of the dominant one, interpreted what was really needed for success within the organization, and influenced the culture towards that required state of sanity and support behind the facade of the flamboyant leader.

If culture truly is “the things that happen when no one is looking”, then leaders set the stage; leaders set the tone; leaders (by their actions or inactions) define how hard it will be to create nirvana in a business culture; leaders (in their team member selections) paint the facade of an organization and define what will be seen up and out (but not necessarily in).  BUT, from my experience, leaders (of any organization bigger than a handful of people) don’t build the culture of an organization.  They certainly make it easy or hard to create any meaningful culture.  They certainly act as enablers or disablers to culture.  But they don’t build it themselves.  Others build the culture.  Others define and drive the desired culture.  Others, through their actions or inactions, define what happens when no one is looking.

So in any organization of any significant size, different cultures will exist at different levels.  I’ve seen one culture in a headquarters building, and then a very different culture at the mission serving level.  I’ve also seen one culture in the project overseeing level and then a very different culture at the component team level within that particular project.  In each of these cases, the tone was set by each overseeing layer, but the culture was defined and built at that layer of individuals who banded together to create that optimum environment for them to succeed in their own service environment.

The more I ponder on this, the more I realize that “build nirvana in a business culture” is going to require something much more than popping it out there and wanting it to happen.

For the one that challenged me with that short, blunt email, gee thanks!

Now I got some thinking to do!