An organisation's culture

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Culture is the traditions, customs, rules and the way of life that a group has and which the group upholds. It is the ‘way we do things here!'

The culture of an organisation grows out of shared feelings, beliefs, expectations ethos, aims and values. Culture exists, though it is invisible. It can be identified but not touched. It can be an intangible asset or a huge barrier to change or effectiveness.

Identifying culture

As it is not physically tangible, organisational culture has to be inferred indirectly, through watching people, talking to them and asking questions such as:

• How are meetings are managed?
• What happens at Christmas or other holidays?
• How are birthdays and retirements celebrated?
• How do people get promoted?
• Who gets to talk to the boss or the board?
• How are new people welcomed into the group?
• How is achievement rewarded?
• Are knowledge and ideas shared?

Discussing culture

Group discussions can be a useful way of exploring culture. You could, for example, run a focus group with employees, asking questions such as:

• What is our mission or reason for being here?
• How do we want to be seen?
• What are our unwritten rules?

Auditing culture

Some organisations evaluate their culture through a culture inventory audit, where people complete questionnaires anonymously.

The questions can be as straightforward as the ones above, or more complex to establish the preferred way of thinking. The Hermann Brain dominance instrument  and Great Place to Work Institute are examples of organisations that can facilitate culture audits.

A Likert scale questionnaire is another way of auditing culture. Likert’s research identified the important determinants of organisational effectiveness. In this example Likert scale questionnaire (Word, 46kb), attitude questions have been adapted for UK third sector organisations.       

Interventions to change culture

There are many different approaches to changing organisational culture. If you are thinking about changing your organisation's culture then a good starting point is to think about these questions:

• How much of the organisation needs to change?
• How urgent is the change?
• Are you clear what the change needs to be?
• Are you sure of the desired outcome?
• Is the organisation ready? 
• Who do you need to involve? 
• How are you going to inform people? 
• How will you involve people? 
• Who will lead the change? 
• Do you have the right resources inside the organisation?
• How do people react to change?
• Do people trust the senior team? 
• Are the informal networks helpful or possible saboteurs?

You will need to talk to your senior team and you might want to undertake a culture audit. You should also work with your HR team and consider the options with them.

You might use your internal capability or you might decide that using an external change expert is a good investment. 

Final pointers on changing culture

When setting out to change organisational culture, the most important things to understand are:

1. Structural or procedural change will not succeed if the culture is not aligned to the new ways of working.
2. You cannot guarantee the outcome. In fact you can expect the unexpected; sometimes it's a helpful discovery and sometimes you might uncover issues that you weren't previously aware of.

For further information, see Changing organisational culture.

Useful links

• Organisational consultancy service: from Cass Centre for Charity Effectiveness.

Further reading

• Changing Culture: New organisational approaches, A Williams, P Dobson and M Walters (Institute of Personnel Management, 1993) ISBN 0-85292-533-6

• Changing Organisations: Clinicians as agents of change, ed. A Cooklin (Karnac Books, 2000) ISBN1-85575-218-2

Have your say

What are the things that define your organisation's culture? How do you change culture?

Talk with others on the Organisation development forum.