The Thing About Company Culture

I was browsing a discussion board recently and came across a discussion on company culture.  The general gist of one person’s post was that if you can’t feel and touch culture, there’s nothing you can really do about it so get over it and focus on the work. 

No prizes for figuring out that contributor’s “ideal culture” but it got me thinking.  Yes, culture is very woolly and intangible, yet, we can walk into a company and within 5 minutes, we can start to feel its culture (which may or may not match up with the nice Values statement on the wall). 

If I had to define “Culture”, I would define it as “the unspoken rules of how people do things around here”.  It is usually generated from the top down, although within a team or department, a more junior person may have a large impact on the culture (positively or negatively). 

The most concrete evidence that culture exists, though, is how a culture can change with a change in senior management.  One or two personnel changes can make a huge impact and completely change “the unspoken rules”.  I would like to say that the impact of such personnel changes on culture can be either positive or negative in equal measure but experience would indicate that negative cultural changes seem to sweep in and rapidly set up shop while positive cultural changes creep in and are mistrusted until proven.