A Strategy for Culture
I scrolled back to July 2015 looking for a story set on an office building floor where I worked. Going back that far means that the building would have had to have been the Baker Centre on 106 street south of Jasper Avenue because my Branch moved to the Forestry Building in February 2016 in advance of a Divisional re-organizations in April that same year.
I scrolled back that far and did not find a story. I have not written a story about my work in a long time. But I've been thinking about it lately because stories about life at my office are beginning to become my work. My Department has been conducting employee engagement surveys since at least 2012 when I started. They are a popular tool amongst management as the Edmonton Journal reported on the findings of a similar exercises at the City only this past week.
Stories about work are becoming my work because there is increasing awareness that organizational culture is a powerful force that affects employee engagement, loyalty, satisfaction, and productivity.
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast," is an axiom of organizational behavior. It is attributed to both Peter Drucker and to Mark Fields, though I first read it in the book, Strategy and the Fat Smoker, by David Maister. The importance of stories has been clear to me since I first became capable of thinking about Disney critically, but the potential for narrative theory to be applicable to my job was introduced during my very first year when Mary Jeffries and Lisa Grotkowski gave me a copy of Believe Me by Michael Margolis.
When Amanda Kohl interviewed me for the position of strategic analyst in 2012, I told her then that my goal was to work in a place that had a poster of the World Business Council's Pathways to 2050 on the wall, and felt like a cross between Pixar Studios and the Central Intelligence Agency. Today I would describe it as a mash-up of the Walt Disney Company and the CIA.
Who Said You Could Do That?
The nominal authority I will cite to justify my attention to these topics is in the Innovation Framework and the Environment and Parks People Plan.
Does Culture Change?
Pam Brinkley is fond of telling me, 'you can't legislate culture" but even she would have to admit that culture is malleable. If it wasn't, how could it change? She must be see that our organizational culture has changed. And if something can change, then it can be changed.
What do I mean by "culture"?: The Walt Disney Company and the CIA
When I was a child walking down Main Street USA in Disneyland, I would look up at the second story windows above all of the street-level stores, many painted with the names of real people and fictitious companies to honour the services of notable staff members, and I wondered who lived in the apartments behind the glass. I hoped that one day I would get to live there. But when I learned that the second and third stories on Main Street aren't even real, and that no one lives there, I realised that the only way I could live in Disneyland was to make my world more like it.
The DNA of culture is story. The same way DNA is the information which organizes amino-acids into proteins to create life, story organizes tangible and intangible elements of culture to create meaning. In his novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Columbian novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote, "What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” We are, every one of us, story-tellers. We tell stories to both ourselves and to others. We tell stories about ourselves and about others. Stories we tell ourselves about about ourselves shape our sense of identity. Stories others tell themselves about us shape our reputation. And these stories influence what we experience and what those experiences mean.
The cultural change can be brought about by influencing both what we experiences and the meaning we attach to those experiences.
I scrolled back that far and did not find a story. I have not written a story about my work in a long time. But I've been thinking about it lately because stories about life at my office are beginning to become my work. My Department has been conducting employee engagement surveys since at least 2012 when I started. They are a popular tool amongst management as the Edmonton Journal reported on the findings of a similar exercises at the City only this past week.
Stories about work are becoming my work because there is increasing awareness that organizational culture is a powerful force that affects employee engagement, loyalty, satisfaction, and productivity.
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast," is an axiom of organizational behavior. It is attributed to both Peter Drucker and to Mark Fields, though I first read it in the book, Strategy and the Fat Smoker, by David Maister. The importance of stories has been clear to me since I first became capable of thinking about Disney critically, but the potential for narrative theory to be applicable to my job was introduced during my very first year when Mary Jeffries and Lisa Grotkowski gave me a copy of Believe Me by Michael Margolis.
When Amanda Kohl interviewed me for the position of strategic analyst in 2012, I told her then that my goal was to work in a place that had a poster of the World Business Council's Pathways to 2050 on the wall, and felt like a cross between Pixar Studios and the Central Intelligence Agency. Today I would describe it as a mash-up of the Walt Disney Company and the CIA.
Who Said You Could Do That?
The nominal authority I will cite to justify my attention to these topics is in the Innovation Framework and the Environment and Parks People Plan.
Does Culture Change?
Pam Brinkley is fond of telling me, 'you can't legislate culture" but even she would have to admit that culture is malleable. If it wasn't, how could it change? She must be see that our organizational culture has changed. And if something can change, then it can be changed.
What do I mean by "culture"?: The Walt Disney Company and the CIA
When I was a child walking down Main Street USA in Disneyland, I would look up at the second story windows above all of the street-level stores, many painted with the names of real people and fictitious companies to honour the services of notable staff members, and I wondered who lived in the apartments behind the glass. I hoped that one day I would get to live there. But when I learned that the second and third stories on Main Street aren't even real, and that no one lives there, I realised that the only way I could live in Disneyland was to make my world more like it.
The DNA of culture is story. The same way DNA is the information which organizes amino-acids into proteins to create life, story organizes tangible and intangible elements of culture to create meaning. In his novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Columbian novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote, "What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” We are, every one of us, story-tellers. We tell stories to both ourselves and to others. We tell stories about ourselves and about others. Stories we tell ourselves about about ourselves shape our sense of identity. Stories others tell themselves about us shape our reputation. And these stories influence what we experience and what those experiences mean.
The cultural change can be brought about by influencing both what we experiences and the meaning we attach to those experiences.