Culture is bigger, stronger and faster than strategy Micro-blog series
Intuitively, we know that a lot of communication happens before someone even starts talking. And a lot more than the actual words are communicated well before we finish a sentence. And we’ve learned that this is due to “tone of voice” and “body language” which communicates 93% of what people are saying. Not untrue. But it also discounts a much larger factor.
Your culture, at an organizational level, is all the things you collectively know and understand to be true. And it’s your culture, or your well tuned cultural filters, that is doing the listening. And it already knows a lot of ingrained “truth” about how things work around here.
Among those truths are probably things like:
“Leaders hide things”;
“People can’t handle the truth”;
“We’ve always done it that way”;
“Here we go again”;
“Don’t rock the boat”;
And a dozen other hidden assumptions and contextual constraints that never get dealt with when you are rolling out new strategy. These tightly clutched pieces of baggage being dragged along from the past will not be displaced by corporate truisms like:
“We’re in it for the team”;
“This will have no negative impact on anyone”;
“We trust you”;
“We value collaboration, transparency, and accountability”;
So, don’t fool yourself that anyone will listen to your brilliant strategy until you’ve dealt with the hidden cultural norms, the silent conversation, which is already happening while you talk.
When you speak first to the culture and directly address those unspoken concerns…well, the culture is now satisfied and willing to listen. And then it WILL listen to your brilliant plan and now you’ve got a place to start a REAL conversation.
