Fractal ~ Culture
I would like to try to explain something to you. Culture in particular, or at least my mental model of it.
This is tricky of course, because my brain tends to be a bag full of cats and because culture is one of those things that everyone agrees exists and is important, but nobody can really agree what it is. (Cue thousands of anthropologists facepalming in unison). Because recently I was part of a discussion among corporate leaders talking past each other and they slowly realized that it was because while they were all using the word Culture, they largely understood it to mean different things. Each had their own color on what its scope was, how it was created, how to measure it, how to change it. This is not uncommon.
As humans are wont to do, they all hated everyone else’s interpretation of culture. Except mine. Only a few people hated my description of it, which is high praise once you apply the curve. So I’m here to share it. Worst case, I get some practice at the important skill of communicating a mental model to people — best case, I can help you look at organizational culture in a new and useful way.
If you’ve read my articles about the choices we make or how our values color our tradeoffs, then some of this will seem familiar.
I put a lot of emphasis in choices. You can look at me and define me by what choices I make, and how I…
