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Insight Organizational culture

What is stated, what is reinforced

Two organizations can display the same value, in the same words, and teach their teams two opposite behaviours. This is not a question of sincerity: it is a question of mechanism.

Mosaïca ConseilsAugust 17, 20267 min read

A stated sentence, an organized rule, observable behaviours Three registers follow one another without ever merging. At the top, an institutional sentence: a single line held between two brackets. In the centre, an organized rule: a frame containing four regular lines. At the bottom, the observable behaviours: fifteen marks of unequal length, spread over three rows, partly connected by a continuous line. All three registers say something about the organization, but none replaces the other two.
A stated sentence, an organized rule, observable behaviours. None of the three registers replaces the other two.

THREE REGISTERS

An organization speaks about itself in three registers at once.

And it tends to believe that the first governs the other two.

01What is stated

An institutional sentence, a value, a commitment. It fits on one line and costs nothing to write.

02What is organized

Roles, rules, processes, working conditions, recognition mechanisms. This is already a decision, and it can be measured.

03What is observable

Dozens of daily behaviours, uneven, scattered, partly connected by a thread. This one obeys no decision: it builds up by accumulation.

An organization that works only on the first register ends up with a sentence.

THE SAME INTENTION, TWO NORMS

Two organizations can state the same thing and teach the opposite.

Take a sentence written almost everywhere in nearly the same words: we want people to voice their concerns. What separates the two trajectories cannot be read in the statement. It is read in what happens, every single time, to the person who speaks up.

Trajectory 1

A stated intention that repeated behaviours contradict At the top, the stated intention is shown as a line held between two markers. Below it, a line descends but is deflected three times by a crossbar: the objection is interrupted, played down or deferred. At the bottom, the learned norm is a short bar extended by a dotted line: speaking up shrinks.
  1. Stated intentionWe want people to voice their concerns.
  2. Repeated behaviourObjections are interrupted, played down or deferred.
  3. Learned normBetter to stay quiet.

Trajectory 2

A stated intention that repeated behaviours confirm At the top, the same stated intention is shown as a line held between two markers. Below it, a line descends without being deflected: at each stage, two short side marks leave the way clear, because questions are welcomed and trade-offs explained. At the bottom, the learned norm spans the full width as a solid line: contributing is part of the job.
  1. Stated intentionWe want people to voice their concerns.
  2. Repeated behaviourQuestions are welcomed, trade-offs are explained and disagreements are dealt with.
  3. Learned normContributing is part of the job.

Neither organization decided to teach its norm.

WHAT ACTUALLY GETS WORKED ON

A cultural code only becomes real when it is tested against situations.

Displaying a sentence costs nothing. Making it hold means testing it in front of the people who will have to decide: what do you actually do when that value comes into conflict with the deadline, the workload or a team's comfort?

That is the precise moment a statement becomes a reinforced behaviour.

Two facilitators in front of a screen presenting a company's cultural code — “We win together, we lose together” — during a session for managers.
A learning experience designed with the client: the company's own cultural code, worked through with its own managers, from real situations.

WHY AN ANNOUNCEMENT IS NOT ENOUGH

A new intention only becomes credible by changing what produces the behaviours.

A strategy, a change of leadership or a restructuring changes expectations. If the responsibilities, the decisions and the systems stay the same, the organization keeps reinforcing the old way of acting, and the new message becomes background noise.

What has to change in how things work for this intention to become credible?

An announcement, an unchanged mechanism, then a modified mechanism At the top, an announcement spans the full width. Below it, three blocks stand for the responsibilities, the decisions and the systems. As long as they stay the same, the output produces exactly the same result as before. When the middle block changes, a second output appears lower down and produces a different result.
As long as the three blocks stay the same, the output produces exactly the same result as before.

This text goes deeper into one dimension of our expertise The full mechanism, the situations that make it visible and the possible forms of engagement are set out on the expertise page.

Organizational culture

CONTINUE

Other insights on organizational culture.

What is your organization reinforcing, without having decided to?

A single conversation is often enough to locate what belongs to a management practice, to a system or to an already-established norm.

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