Processes and culture are in a tug-of-war
While enjoying a coffee with my friend Vicki, she shared a story about her workplace, which got me pondering the culture-process divide and the consequences for people’s endeavours.
Culture is how people choose to do things repeatedly, and processes direct people on how to do it. And when those two things are out of sync, you have a problem.
Whether it’s a culture problem or a process problem is a chicken-and-egg question.
In reality, it’s both. Either way, it’s a brand problem because it creates friction, which is the enemy of how much value is stored.
Author and Wharton professor Adam Grant highlights practice or daily routines as contributing to culture1. In organisations, daily routines are structured in part by processes. So, it stands to reason they colonise culture regardless of what the company handbook says.
Consider a scenario where an organisation says it has a trust-focused culture. Trust is stated in its values, talked about by leaders, and baked into the hiring spiel. However, bureaucratic processes cause people to question whether it’s really important.
For example, purchasing processes require employees to get a manager’s sign-off to buy even low-cost items, which understandably frustrates everyone. Micro-managing the budget not only stymies work, it assumes and makes people feel they will make wasteful decisions.
When workers are on opposite sides of what you intend, culture pulls and processes push, making them victims in an endless tug-of-war. So why don’t culture and process play nice and agree on how things get done?
Several reasons include the role each plays and who leads them and the relative weight of related activity.
Boosting culture usually falls to the organisation’s people team, which thinks in terms of engagement and motivation. At the same time, Operations or a similar function design processes around productivity and minimising risk. Add to that, the frequency of daily routines shaped by processes will always outmatch cultural initiatives.
To even the odds, try reframing culture. It’s a pilgrimage, not a monolith. In that light, all the organisation’s unheroic work, including designing and deciding processes, is culture work, and everyone is part of the culture team.
The relationship between culture and processes is similar to how you think about behaviours attached to values, which must be loose in who and what and pointy about how.
As a side note, values are how you choose to do things, and culture is those things done on repeat, so the idea is deeply relevant. Applying the model, culture is loose, and processes are pointy.
For example, back to the organisation which claims a culture of trust. They could start with trust as a foundation, making all processes enable and support it, or, at worst, have a neutral impact.
Instead of hierarchical purchasing processes with spending limits regardless of the purpose, make approval the default within specific, clearly communicated boundaries. Then, trust (most) people will do the right thing and tackle outliers who don’t on a case-by-case basis.
For example, you might say that sign-off is not required for items related to a planned task. Prospective purchases should already be approved in the planning phase, making additional sign-off redundant. While operating within the plan gives employees the autonomy crucial to feeling trusted and provides managers with a measure of surety.
The oft-quoted aphorism, “How you do anything is how you do everything,” might sound glib. Still, it contains more than a kernel of truth about why you should craft a deliberate relationship between culture and processes.
The chasm between them undermines efforts on all fronts, resulting in misaligned processes and a happenstance culture. Any effort to close the gap will reward you with a brand overflowing with value. And a value-rich brand frees up other capitals so you can do more work.
Thanks for reading.
Michel
1. Hidden Potential by Adam Grant, p158
