What I mean by company culture
Company culture is the set of habits of thought and action that people share without being reminded of them. You can see it in three very concrete situations:
- how bad news travels up to the leadership (or does not);
- how a decision gets made when the boss is away;
- how someone who has made a mistake is treated.
None of these appears in a strategy paper. Yet they are what reveals the real culture. A group can display trust on its walls and punish mistakes in its meetings: the meeting is what counts.
Two layers of culture not to be confused
In an international group, two layers always overlap. The first is the national culture of each team. The second is the culture of the group, the one you want people to share. Geert Hofstede's research showed that these two layers do not work in the same way: differences between countries lie mostly in deep-seated values, while differences between organisations lie more in visible practices.
This matters a great deal for HR. You do not ask teams from different countries to hold the same personal values. You ask them to share clear reference points for action, within which everyone keeps their own culture. That is the whole point of a well-expressed organisational culture: it provides common ground without erasing differences.
Three tools, three time horizons
To make a culture explicit, I use three tools that answer three different questions.
| Question | Horizon | If this tool is missing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vision | Where are we heading? | Very long term; it keeps moving away as you advance | People work without knowing why |
| Mission | What are we doing now, and for whom? | The present | The vision remains a fine speech |
| Values | How do we decide? | Every decision | Trade-offs become arbitrary |
The vision is like a horizon: you walk towards it, it never really gets closer, and that is precisely what makes it useful. The mission is the road under our feet: what we do today and what someone can check. The values are decision rules: when two paths are possible, they say which one to take.
I deal with vision and mission in Vision and mission: the horizon that keeps moving and the road under your feet, and with values in Company values: decision rules for teams from different cultures.
Why a group needs all three
Each tool on its own degrades in a predictable way.
- A vision alone inspires on the day of the away day and fades by the following Monday.
- A mission alone gives a good framework for execution, but does not answer the question "heading where?"
- Values alone give a code of conduct, with no shared direction.
Together they form a system: the vision gives direction, the mission anchors it in reality, and the values help you choose along the way.
Three observations to judge your real culture
Before putting anything into words, I recommend looking at three things on the ground.
- How bad news travels. How long does it take for a delay or a problem to reach the leadership? In some cultures reporting a problem is an act of loyalty; in others it is a personal risk.
- Who speaks in meetings. Who talks, who stays silent, and who contradicts the most senior person in the room? Silence is not always agreement.
- The stories that circulate. Which stories do teams tell a new recruit? They say what the culture rewards and what it fears.
These three observations give an honest basis on which to express vision, mission and values, rather than starting from a blank page.
How I work with a leadership team
My approach has three stages. I start by listening: individual interviews and observation of a few meetings. Then we express the vision, mission and values together, in workshops, with the people who will have to carry them. Finally, we test each wording against real, recent decisions: if a value would not have changed any of them, we rework it. I do not hand over a ready-made text, because a direction the team has not written itself will not be carried by it. For a project of this kind, I provide a tailored quote.
Put your group's culture into words
To look at your group's culture and express it with your teams, get in touch.
FAQ
What is the difference between organisational culture and values?
Culture is what people actually do; values are what the organisation chooses to express in order to guide it. The work consists in reducing the gap between the two.
Can you change a company's culture?
You can help it evolve, but you cannot decree it. The most powerful lever is to change what you reward, promote and sanction, far more than changing what you say.
How long does it take to define a vision, mission and values?
It depends on the size of the group and the number of countries involved. The workshops themselves are short, but the time teams need to make the result their own is counted in months.
Should a company culture be the same in every country?
The common framework should be the same; the ways of living it can vary. What matters is that the reference points for action are clear enough to be translated without losing their meaning.
Going further
- Vision and mission: the horizon and the road
- Company values as decision rules
- Executive coaching for senior leaders
This article was written by Marc Prager.