I have learned that when I ask, “What is a culture?” I am likely to get a wide variety of different answers.
Culture is a word we use all the time, especially in organizations, but it is not always clear what we mean. We talk about good culture, bad culture, toxic culture, healthy culture, organizational culture, and workplace culture. We conduct culture surveys, put values on walls, and send people to workshops about culture. But what are we actually talking about?
When I talk about organizational culture, I mean how people in an organization have learned to behave, work together, make decisions, and respond to the circumstances they encounter. But there is an important part of that definition that often gets overlooked. I believe culture is both caused and learned.
Culture is caused
Culture does not simply appear because people work together. Something causes it. Every organization has a history of normalizing behavior. Someone made decisions. Leaders established expectations. Supervisors responded to behavior. Policies were created. Systems were put in place. People were rewarded for some behaviors and corrected for others. Some things were tolerated while other things were not. Over time, these experiences establish patterns of behavior, and those patterns become the organization’s culture.
Consider an organization in which leaders consistently expect people to take responsibility for their work. Supervisors address problems when they occur, good performance is recognized, poor performance is addressed, and people are expected to speak honestly about problems. Those conditions cause certain behaviors to become normal.
Now consider an organization in which poor performance is routinely overlooked, supervisors are reluctant to confront problems, employees learn that bringing bad news to management creates trouble, and some people are held accountable while others are given a pass. Those conditions cause a different set of behaviors.
Neither culture happened by accident. The culture was caused by the choices people in the organization repeatedly made.
Edgar Schein, one of the most influential writers on organizational culture, described culture as a pattern of shared underlying assumptions developed by a group as it learns to deal with problems and then teaches those assumptions to new members. His work is useful because it recognizes that culture develops through experience and is subsequently passed along to others.
In practical terms, people learn culture by watching what happens.
Then culture is learned
Once those patterns become established, people begin to learn them. This is particularly obvious when someone new joins an organization. The new employee does not need a formal class to learn the culture. They watch how the supervisor treats people, what happens when somebody makes a mistake, what happens when somebody does something particularly well, whether they can disagree with their supervisor, whether they can tell the truth when something is going wrong, and whether the rules are applied consistently.
They are learning what really matters around here.
Eventually, someone may say, “That’s just the way we do things around here.” That is culture.
The interesting thing is that the organization does not have to formally teach most of this. The lessons are embedded in everyday experience. People learn by observing what happens to other people, by experiencing the consequences of their own behavior, and by listening to the informal conversations that take place throughout the organization.
A new employee may arrive with a completely different set of expectations about how work should be done. Six months later, that person may be behaving exactly like everyone else. They have learned the culture.
Culture is reinforced
Once people learn the culture, they reinforce it. They normalize – repeat – behaviors that appear to work. They repeat behaviors that are rewarded. They repeat behaviors that affirm their status within the organization. They repeat behaviors that everyone else seems to accept.
If speaking honestly gets you attacked, people eventually learn to keep their mouths shut. If taking responsibility gets you blamed for everything that goes wrong, people may learn to protect themselves instead. If excellent work is recognized and supported, people are more likely to continue doing it. If poor behavior is consistently ignored, people learn that the behavior is acceptable.
This is how a pattern – normalization of behavior choices – becomes established.
Culture is caused, then learned, then reinforced.
Culture is not what you say
This is where I think organizations sometimes get themselves into trouble. An organization may say that it values accountability, but what happens when someone fails to do what they said they would do? An organization may say that it values communication, but what happens when an employee raises a difficult issue? An organization may say that it values people, but how are people treated when they make a mistake? An organization may say that it values teamwork, but what happens when departments disagree?
The answers to those questions tell you much more about an organization’s culture than the words printed on a poster.
There is nothing wrong with having organizational values. Shared values can be an important part of culture. The problem occurs when we confuse what an organization says it values with what its people have actually learned to value and practice.
Culture lives in that difference.
Leaders have a lot to do with culture
Leaders do not have complete control over an organization’s culture. Culture develops from many sources, including history, relationships, systems, and the behavior of people throughout the organization. But leaders have enormous influence over what becomes normal.
People pay attention to what leaders notice and what they ignore. They notice who gets rewarded, who gets corrected, and who seems to be exempt from the rules. If a leader says, “We hold people accountable,” but repeatedly allows poor performance to continue, the organization learns something. If a leader says, “Bring me the bad news,” but becomes angry whenever someone delivers it, the organization learns something. If a leader says, “People are our most important asset,” but routinely treats employees as inconveniences, the organization learns something.
People are remarkably good at figuring out what an organization really believes. They watch what happens, they learn from it, and they adjust their behavior accordingly.
That is why leadership and culture are so closely connected.
Culture can make work easier or harder
A functional organizational culture does not mean that everyone likes everyone else. It does not mean there are no disagreements, difficult conversations, or mistakes. It means that people understand how they are expected to work together and can reasonably predict how the organization will respond when things go wrong.
That predictability matters. People can work in demanding environments when they understand the rules of the game. They can disagree with their supervisor and still respect the supervisor. They can make a mistake, acknowledge it, and work to correct it. They can raise a problem without wondering whether doing so will damage their career.
The opposite is also true. When people cannot predict how decisions will be made, when accountability depends upon who is involved, when poor behavior is tolerated from some people and punished in others, or when employees learn that speaking honestly creates problems, the culture begins to work against the organization.
The result is often more politics, more defensiveness, and less attention to the actual work.
Climate and weather are not the same thing
There is also an important distinction between organizational culture and day-to-day behaviors. I think of it this way: weather is the choices people make; climate is the pattern those choices create over time. A single choice is like a day of weather. Repeated choices become its culture. Culture, therefore, is not what an organization says it believes. It is the pattern of behavior created by the choices people make over time.
The two are connected, but they are not identical.
So, what is a culture?
If you want the academic answer, there are many definitions, and there is no single universally accepted definition of organizational culture. The literature has been debating and refining the concept for decades.
If you want my answer after years of working with organizations and the people who lead them, I would make it much simpler.
Organizational culture is the pattern of behavior people learn from the conditions, expectations, experiences, and examples established within an organization.
And I would add three words that I think are important: culture is caused, culture is learned, and culture is reinforced.
If you want to understand your organization’s culture, don’t start by reading the mission statement. Watch what happens. Watch how people treat one another. Watch what happens when something goes wrong. Watch what happens when someone tells the truth. Watch what happens when a high performer violates the rules. Watch what happens when a supervisor needs to hold someone accountable. Watch what leaders do when the pressure is on.
You will learn a great deal about an organization’s culture by watching those moments because ultimately, culture is not found in what we say we believe …
It is found in what we repeatedly do.
If you have a problem you’d like to discuss in a confidential, no-obligation Zoom visit, you can self-schedule it by clicking on this button:
Use this form to be notified about new articles as I publish them!
Author’s Note: The content provided in this article is designed exclusively for educational and informational purposes, reflecting opinions shaped by decades of leadership training and organizational consulting experience. It should never be interpreted as formal professional advice. By reading or engaging with this material, you acknowledge that no professional-client relationship is established and that these insights do not substitute for tailored guidance from a qualified professional familiar with your specific circumstances. Consequently, readers are strongly advised to seek independent counsel from licensed legal, financial, medical, or other appropriate advisors before implementing any strategies or making decisions based on these perspectives. Ultimately, you assume full personal responsibility for any actions you choose to take or omit as a result of reading this material, releasing the author and publisher from any liability for outcomes arising from your reliance on the text.
Additional Reading
- Edgar H. Schein, “Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture,” MIT Sloan Management Review — Schein’s foundational work on how organizational culture develops and how shared assumptions become embedded in groups. MIT Sloan Management Review — Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture
- CIPD, “Organisational Culture and Climate: An Evidence Review” — An evidence-based examination of organizational culture, climate, behavior and organizational performance. CIPD — Organisational Culture and Climate
- American Psychological Association, “Organizational Culture” — Background on organizational culture and the relationship between shared values, group behavior and organizational life. APA — Organizational Culture and Industrial/Organizational Psychology resources
