Culture Building: Understanding the Impact of ‘Layers’ of Growth

I’ve been talking to clients a lot lately about culture. In my profession we talk about culture work – particularly shifting a culture – being the most difficult type of work to do. Leaders can’t mandate a culture. Policies and procedures can’t create a culture. Individual employees don’t determine a culture. But all of those things layered one on top of one another can make a culture. Leaders need to walk the talk – every minute, every action, every communication. Policies and procedures have to actively support the culture – it’s not enough to be neutral or ‘not negative’. Individual employees have to want the culture, champion the culture, and see it reflected back to them in the ways they engage, collaborate, treat each other, and make decisions.

Cultures are layers and layers of commitment, intentional thought, and grassroots unwritten rules. And they all begin with some ‘piece’ of something that is the catalyst for the layers around it. A founder’s vision. A corporate purpose. Something around which the culture can be built and sustained. It takes time and commitment to through challenging times to make a culture and make it strong. Exactly as a pearl begins with a piece of grit and is built up over time by layers and layers of beautiful nacre, so grows your culture. The more layers, the bigger and stronger it becomes.

So wear your pearls.