…You have to study them and discover them to really understand.

In double-loop learning, the individual must question the assumptions he is operating under when making decisions.

When studying organizational culture, the change agent must question and discover the assumptions underlying the culture to really understand what is going on.

In order to really learn, to really understand the world around us, we must continually question the assumptions that we operate under. Often they are outdated, incorrect, and just plain wrong. So if that is the case, then how can you make correct decisions, especially those of critical importance? One must understand, question, and validate their operating assumptions when making decisions within the organization. Even the organization as a whole, when looking at its operations and strategy, must question their assumptions concerning the economy and marketplace in order to make a wise decision.

There’s a reason that old saying has become a part of our language.

While I have no problems with the content of this article from Harvard Working Knowledge called 10 Reasons to Design a Better Corporate Culture, I do have an issue with the title.

Cultures aren’t designed. They aren’t like a car, or a shopping cart. You can’t just design and create it, and then built it to specification. Cultures grow and develop over time. They are living, growing, developing, and constantly changing.

The management of an organization should take proactive steps in nuturing the creation of a strong, supportive corporate culture. But, in the end, it is up to the overall constituency in the organization to accept and take hold of this culture. Management can spend their time creating public ceremonies, or workplace rules that foster creativity, but in the end, it is up to the workers of the organization as a whole to accept the culture as a shared experience.

Edgar Schein defines a corporate culture as

a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems. (Organizational Culture and Leadership, p. 17)

A culture is learned. It isn’t designed by managers and leadership. It is created through a shared learning process by the organization as a whole as they work to solve problems. If you think that you can walk in and design a culture to fit your liking, then I would suggest you head back to the drawing board.

Knowledge @ W.P. Carey has an article about the importance of water cooler talk:

It is an idea that Ashforth advances under the banner of “tribalism” in a chapter he authored for the forthcoming SAGE “Handbook of New Approaches in Management and Organization.”

After all, says Ashforth, a pack of paralegals or a covey of consultants drinking java or hanging about the proverbial water cooler is not so different from a tribe of Neolithic hunters sitting around a campfire. We as a species have come a long way since the days when the morning commute meant braving saber-tooth tigers but, at our core, people are still very much the same social animals we’ve always been. We want to feel like we belong and we value our closest connections beyond people we don’t know.

In a very real sense, organizations big and small would benefit by seeing themselves framed by a variation of Former U.S. House Speaker Thomas (Tip) O’Neill Jr.’s maxim, “All politics is local.” People care about the big issues, but place a very large importance on whether the potholes on their street are fixed and if there are jobs to be had in their town. So it is with organizational culture: The big issues matter but employees are most likely to judge an organization by their most local contacts — their boss and immediate coworkers.

Ashforth says an organization’s success is largely linked to its smallest social units, the tribes who congregate around the coffee maker.

Ashforth does make a worthwhile point about the connections made and the translation of higher-order communication to the lower level, he neglects to mention the downside of such talk: office gossip. Every office has it, and I rarely ever see it as a positive. Generally, the gossip is negative in nature and really doesn’t do anything to benefit the organization. I don’t really see the groups that gather around the office as tribes…I think they more resemble packs of hyenas looking for tidbits of news to prey on.