Why You’re Thinking About Culture All Wrong --

Most organizations look at culture as a set of values -- values are behavioral priorities. Partially necessary -- not even close to sufficient. It can be a useful part the puzzle.

Clayton Christensen articulated a culture formula that is far more useful. Notice how this looks far different than a set of values: Priorities (vs behavioral priorities) > resources > processes (formal and informal/values)

Here's a different way to think about culture: Priorities, resources, formal processes, policies, guiding principles

1. Your culture starts with your priorities -- priorities aren’t values. Priorities are the choices the organization makes when it cannot do everything.

What wins when there’s a trade-off? What gets attention, budget, and talent

What leaders reward? What determines speed vs. rigor? What gets escalated vs. delegated

2. Your culture is enabled by aligned resources: people, dollars, technology etc. If an organization says innovation matters but puts its best people and most dollars on maintenance of the legacy business → that the culture is not innovative.

3. Your processes/systems bring culture to life. It's the way you do things. Your business processes, talent processes, systems (including compensation) all need to be aligned to your priorities and resources. Christensen calls these "formal processes". If you want collaboration, but incentivize individual achievement with no collaboration component, your culture will not be innovative.

4. Your policies need to be aligned to enable your priorities. Many times legacy policies are cultural drag.

5. Your guiding principles help people make everyday decisions where there are no formal processes. Values don’t tell people how to behave. Guiding Principles tell people exactly how to behave when judgment is required. They say: "We do this, not that". If your culture is not explicit enough to help people make the right decisions when there's no oversight or process, it's not useful.

Culture is ultimately a force multiplier or detractor for the organization, but it requires you to make choices and operationalize those choices. It's far from soft.