Cultivating Culture

The other day, one of my clients was lamenting the difficulties of changing the culture at his organization.

“How am I supposed to change it when it’s already a full blown, tangled mess?”

Sometimes, I think about organizational culture as a big, mature, unruly garden. As gardeners, we can plant a few new plants here and there, remove destructive weeds, and reshape some of the more unruly vines, but we aren’t the ones in charge of growing. That’s the job of the plants. Our job is to lovingly provide the soil and water and sun exposure they need to thrive, and to grow into their healthiest, most vital selves. We don’t create culture, we create the conditions for it to thrive.

I could take the analogy further, but you get the point. Culture isn’t a building project, it’s a growing project. It takes years of careful preparation and constant attention. But once it’s established, there’s a harmony and a beauty that’s durable and self-renewing, and the fruit it produces can’t be had any other way.