The Culture Of....

The Culture Of…

Do you remember the ice bucket challenge of 2014? Ice Bucket Challenge - Wikipedia

This challenge went viral and ushered in a new way of marketing, creating awareness and raising money. 

That all sounds positive, doesn’t it? In theory and limited practice, it remains a positive means to a purposeful outcome. 

Unfortunately, a creative new idea can become overused to a point where the value is minimized, or worse, it can go down the path of misuse as in the case of the Tide Pod challenge of 2017. 



What does this have to do with workplace culture?

I have watched as a creative new way of bringing attention to important business themes has eroded the value of the specific initiatives and limited success across the board. 

In the 1980’s the language of “culture of…” started showing up in business vernacular. 

The simple, authentic, and effective  “culture of…” statements made them highly desirable to replicate. 

By the 1990’s and certainly by the 2000’s this well-intended approach became so pervasive that it resulted in silos, conflict over resource distribution, confusion for employees, and undermining of benefits of the “culture of…”.

Yet, today businesses continue to lean into the “culture of…” as if we are addicts seeking the initial high, and benefits, we felt and experienced. The culture of safety, quality, LEAN, diversity, learning, nursing excellence, inclusion, etc. attempts to bring meaningful and impactful attention, commitment, action, and long-term results.

Absolutely! There is value in professions and movements defining and sharing best practices that businesses can customize and adopt as their best-for-us practices. At the same time, we have taken the “culture of…” trend to its natural end and it is time to shift our thinking for even better results.

With the current approach, employees struggle with prioritization and shared purpose because there are too many cultures. It creates confusion and leads to a lack of trust in the company when there are competing cultures. This isn’t because of a lack of desire to be a team player. Our brains are wired to make individual sense of competing information, and this means that there are as many cultures as there are people. 

My Suggestion

My suggestion to those who want a healthy and high-performing business is to tweak our thinking instead of completely abandoning the value the “culture of…” offered. 

To simplify and chunk the information in a way that enables a consistent and repeatable culture, I advocate for a single overarching umbrella. The umbrella I use as part of Infusion Leadership is, “A Culture of Sustainable Excellence.” Infusion Leadership and the S.C.A.N. protocol offer us a way of thinking where there is a single, overarching culture with initiatives that ladder up to the single culture.

While the overarching umbrella is “A Culture of Sustainable Excellence”, the other “cultures” are central themes that are infused into the way the organization, and its people, think and behave. 

The “culture of learning” is just another way of saying that the business wants

1.  Learning to be Synchronized with the business
2.  Agreed-upon Commitment to prioritizing learning
3. Bold action demonstrating Activation of the commitment 
4. Nimbleness built into the ongoing assessment of learning as a central theme so learning remains a constant, yet evolving focus of the business.

… and that ultimately the outcomes associated with learning initiatives are sustainable. 

We can say A Culture of Sustainable Excellence with learning as a central theme without losing the intent of “culture of…” All while improving the outcomes. 

This type of shift further feeds a state of flow that comes when a business adopts Infusion Leadership.

As a caveat, an overarching umbrella isn’t permission to pick up a larger plate to add more “culture of’s….”.   Discernment and intentionality are necessary to shift to infusive thinking. At the same time, a single culture doesn’t necessarily require a hard stop to anything currently in progress. There still needs to be a discussion about what critical few will live under the umbrella, but the umbrella is the constant. 

Having a single culture provides the necessary clarity and organizes and chunks information to make it easier for every employee to learn, apply and infuse into their daily habits and decision-making.

Can you imagine a workplace where everyone is an ambassador to the themes in service of the umbrella culture vs. siloed departments loading up on tactics in hopes of swaying people to paying attention to their “culture of…”? 

I’ve been working with companies for more than 20 years, focusing on creating healthy teams and cultures. I welcome a conversation to understand where your organization is on its journey to a single, umbrella culture, and let's explore how Ripple Effect Culture can help you improve your outcomes.