Every organization both consciously and subconsciously dictates what actions it allows or even encourages in the workplace. When I walk into my place of employment, for instance, I may have to be dressed a certain way. But the culture is not always forged so deliberately.
Many factors come to comprise it, without conscious effort or intent.
We have all been in situations where nonverbal signals were as instructive to us as any words could be. Sometimes these come in the form of body language, or telling glances, or tones of voice. We can often sense when an environment is uninviting or foreboding or when it seems welcoming and supportive. Though we may not always be able to identify concretely why a particular environment feels to us the way it does, the creation of culture is not a mystery beyond human control. The movement toward strategic culture change is part of the larger movement among high performing organizations to simply pay more attention to their cultures, and to not let them happen by chance.