The Farmers Market
Last weekend, I went to a farmer’s market in my home town of Winchester. What makes any market a ‘market’ is that each stallholder brings something different - attitudes, behaviours, values - and we collectively decide what's worth trading in.
This collection of differences makes it a place worth visiting and doing business in. Workplace culture is the same, although we often don’t think of it in this way.
Often, organisations will try and cast their culture in stone
WE ARE THIS
WE DO THIS
WE VALUE THESE THINGS
WE BEHAVE LIKE THIS
The intentions are often good, yet it’s what people bring on the day that makes the difference and defines the kind of culture that it actually is.
Too many professionals behave as if they're mere shoppers at this cultural ‘market’, passively accepting whatever's on display. ‘That's just how things are here’ they will say, as if to publicly absolve themselves of the responsibility for change.
Yet your organisation's culture exists by consensus, maintained through thousands of micro-interactions, decisions and behaviours every single day. When someone makes a sarcastic comment in a meeting, and everyone laughs nervously rather than challenging it, that's a consensus. When deadlines are regularly missed without consequences, that's a consensus. When innovation is celebrated only in speeches but punished in practice, that's consensus, too.
The moment you recognise that culture is a social agreement is the moment you reclaim your power to change it. You don't need permission from senior leadership to demonstrate emotional intelligence, to collaborate effectively, or to recognise a colleague's contribution.
Cultural change doesn't require a complicated, expensive transformation programme. It requires people with the knowledge and courage to break the consensus, to trade different goods at the market and to create an experience worth visiting every day of the working week.
