Inside the walls of every workplace exists a culture—an invisible, self-sustaining operating system that defines the difference between a company’s ultimate success or demise. Whether stated or simply understood, there is no denying culture’s presence. Those who’ve lived with it longest have made their adaptations. Meanwhile, newcomers must learn cultural norms if they are to come to grips with its underlying power. Though culture may not always seem ominous, it is omnipresent. It sweetens or sours the flavor of the environment and affects output in almost every way. Understanding the “real” culture you have is especially crucial during cycles of rapid and extreme change, aptly described as permanent white water*.
Many formerly successful businesses have succumbed to the sudden effects of white water. For example, the 200-year-old publisher Encyclopedia Britannica went from being the world’s largest, most highly respected leader of encyclopedia sales to nearly non-existent within five years. Due in large part to a culture that was built over decades of unrivaled success, Encyclopedia Britannica failed to notice the three concurrent sources of permanent white waterthat suddenly swept it all away: a deep economic downturn, digital technology as an alternative to print, and social change as a young generation grew up with computers.
Ronn Lehmann is an authority on culture. He has helped dozens of business owners and executive teams understand the cultural operating system within their organizations. “Culture is the way we do things around here,” he explains. Through a live and interactive process, Lehmann deciphers the real versus perceived cultures existing in his clients’ organizations. “The culture envisioned by a company rarely assures leaders that people support its values and behaviors,” says Lehmann. “For example, an unwritten value may be to keep your opinions to yourself. While such a value may help to avoid conflict, it doesn’t do much to support a culture that claims to embrace innovation.”
There’s a significant amount of value that can be obtained from comparing how closely an organization’s operational culture resembles its perceived culture. Nevertheless, Lehmann’s approach to auditing culture tends to be more complex and insightful. Often, he will uncover thermal layers that prevent an organization’s desired culture from permeating beyond executive walls. Thermal layers can easily occur between a company’s leaders and its customer-facing employees. They also can form between departments, divisions, remote locations, and wherever else a separation of workgroups exists. Thermal layers have their own subset of rules which confuse and may even conflict with desired behaviors. As a result of disclosing these thermal layers, Lehmann enables clients to clean up their communication channels, encourage employee initiative, and reward and reinforce behaviors that assist a company in moving forward.
In 2020, the government’s shelter-at-home mandate prompted a distinct and lasting focus on remote workforces. Company culture now extends beyond the workplace and into an increasing number of employee homes. Consequently, workplace culture becomes intertwined with personal life in a more pronounced way. This blending of work and family life emphasizes the importance of a culture with clear and compatible values. Unless the culture connects people emotionally with their company’s vision and values, further degrees of separation are likely to occur and thus jeopardize employee engagement and retention.
By providing a snapshot of the culture that currently exists within an organization, Lehmann helps business owners, executives, and leadership teams to consider their resilience and readiness to make the changes they need to succeed in a complex and oftentimes borderless work environment. Cultural audits are vital to executing new and refined strategies in a rapidly changing market. They function as a roadmap for anticipating and navigating the changes ahead.
Furthermore, during times when resources are scarce or difficult to acquire, a cultural audit informs leaders whether they are operating at high capacity, or if there are obstacles that should be considered, adjusted, or removed altogether. In some cases, the audit reveals where a small amount of “fine-tuning” may increase performance substantially. Additionally, within a cultural audit, leaders may discover risk-mitigating insights that help them avoid making uninformed or premature decisions which could end up being counterproductive to their strategy.
Given the rapidly changing, white-water business environment, it simply makes sense for leaders to include cultural auditing among their top tools for maximizing efficiency and overall performance. For more information, visit successauthorities.com or contact Ronn Lehmann for answers to your pressing questions.
*Permanent White Water is a metaphor first used by Peter Vaill in his book, “Managing as a Performing Art: New Ideas for a World of Chaotic Change,” circa 1989.