On a recent trip to the United Kingdom I hired a rental car to go and visit family, while driving…
By: Craig Hatting
Tags: Change, Team Collaboration, Culture Change, Culture, Leadership

On a recent trip to the United Kingdom I hired a rental car to go and visit family, while driving on the highway I had an epiphany about generally accepted norms and how culture gets communicated, or more importantly the adoption of a culture. Given that the context of this revelation was outside my home country it made me ask these 2 questions?

First, how is culture effectively communicated? Secondly, what factors create a critical mass of adoption?

I realise that culture is a fairly all-encompassing term but as a set of behaviours they are either clearly defined and enforced, generally driven by external forces or they are unspoken and yet generally accepted behaviours, these are innate and learned, such as mannerisms, lingo or practices that a group ascribe to. What I want to share is a story about how critical mass can accelerate adoption and perhaps how this critical mass communicates what culture is, or should be, as a groundswell instead of a rule book. Which, ironically, brings me to Rule 264.

Rule 264 — You should always drive in the left-hand lane when the road ahead is clear. If you are overtaking a number of slower-moving vehicles, you should return to the left-hand lane as soon as you are safely past. Slow-moving or speed-restricted vehicles should always remain in the left-hand lane of the carriageway unless overtaking.

One rule, hidden away on the UK Government website, most probably required to be known when having your driver’s license test, but otherwise not sign posted anywhere (or at least not that I saw) on any road or in any vehicle rental pamphlet, but a rule of the road nonetheless! Now to compare this to my home country, South Africa, if you travel on any major road between cities or even on a highway around a city, you will be guaranteed to see at the very least one road sign telling you to “Keep Left, Pass Right”.

So, at this point we can agree that Rule 264 would form part of an external culture driver, a behaviour that we would expect drivers to adhere to. But external factors of culture will only be adopted in 2 scenarios, in my opinion.

The external factors are imposed and policed externally, non-conformity is punished and this creates a compliance to these rules.

The external factors become internal forces which compel us to act in a certain manner and create a collective compliance. These internal forces can themselves be expressed either unknowingly or intentionally.

What vs Why

After a few hours of driving on the highways and noticing a consistent pattern of cars overtaking then moving to the left I adopted a new (more appropriate for the context) behaviour based on the very obvious and observable mass adoption of a “rule”. Because my own behaviour was repeatedly identified by those around me, as a behaviour not adhering to the norm (PS. thanks for the repeated hooting and flashing lights — sorry for my ignorance), I adjusted my previously normal behaviour to this new generally accepted driving behaviour.

The environment around me created a culture which I did not conform to, not intentionally but because of my ignorance. Yet, ignorance in South Africa is not an excuse given the repeated signs explicitly informing me of the expected behaviour. So, coming back to my epiphany, I realised that the consistent environment and behaviours of the context I was in supersedes information or expectation of the culture I should be displaying.

Point being, you can come up with motivational posters and programs to try and create the culture you want, but the best way is by actually modelling it, encouraging correct behaviours and focusing on making the culture an internal driver rather than enforcing behaviours externally. Shift your focus from WHAT people are doing to WHY people are behaving the way they do! On reflection I realised that traffic flowed more freely and efficiently, people were considerate and when everyone behaved in this consistent manner (again, so sorry!) it just worked, people understood the value and behaved appropriately. Conversely, in South Africa where this rule is not expressed consistently, we have a lot of frustrated drivers and inefficient traffic, the only time people follow the rules are when they are actively enforced by traffic officers.

If this article interests you or you want to explore the concept further I would suggest the following books:

Good to Great — The chapter on “Pushing the Fly Wheel”

Originals — They talk about change and communication a lot, a particular point I was intersted in was that “Change is under-communicated by a factor of 10" . Although, as I have explained, communication alone is not the answer, South Africa has all the right signs and all the wrong behaviours.

I would love to hear your thoughts on culture and how you shape it in your organisation?