"A human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy." — Viktor Frankl
At the end of last week, two emerging conversations on LinkedIn captured my attention. The conversations were about organizations and their culture, systems, structures, hierarchies, people, etc. Topics that I find incredibly fascinating.
I wanted to join the party but didn't want to rush an answer just to be there. I wanted to contribute. So, I saved the conversations for later in the day. By the end of the day, however, there were more than 40 comments. I thought reading them all was a good idea, so maybe I could add something meaningful. The participants shared some deep thoughts, so it was too late to share something when I finished reading them. And in any case, I had so many ideas running through my mind that I couldn't distil any meaningful contribution. So, I decided to get back to it during the weekend. In the meantime, an idea was emerging within me.
Anyway, when I returned to those conversations the day after, willing to share the new insights that emerged from my reflections, the number of comments between the two was way beyond the hundred.
That's when I realized that I am probably too slow for these kinds of conversations. I need time for ideas and thoughts to sink in, crack some inner walls, and allow insights to emerge.
That's an excellent insight about myself, for which I'm already grateful.
I got a second powerful insight out of this process.
Culture is an output, not an input.
It's the output of the combination of an infinite number of parameters.
So, we can't pursue a new culture or a culture change directly.
Instead, a new culture ensues from working on the many ingredients that give form and shape to a culture.
Yet, there's a caveat (my third insight).
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." First sentence of Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina
The Anna Karenina principle, based on the opening sentence of the eponymous novel by Tolstoy, states that "a deficiency in any one of a number of factors dooms an endeavour to failure".
There is no guarantee that we will get the desired output even if we change a large number of factors.
So, if we start a project to change the culture of an organization, we should remember that:
Culture is an output, not an input.
There are infinite factors contributing to culture creation (many of them unknown).
Have no attachment to the outcome. Defining the desired culture is essential, but only to set the direction.
P.S. This morning, I cheated. I had to double the time for my daily apple practice. I was planning to write about this insight on culture, but somehow my fingers decided to write about the process in the first fifteen minutes. So, I gave myself permission for a second apple today.