What is a Cultural Core?
What is a cultural core you ask? The cultural core is the set of actions, behaviors, and social norms that are rewarded with more power by your organization.
Every institution has at least two cultural cores. In most places, these two reward centers are the hierarchical core and the social core. In the hierarchical core you have the rewards that are given out by “leadership” or “management”. In the social core you have rewards that are given out by the social group or groups inside the institution.
Foundation building documents I recommend are:
Beliefs: A set of beliefs the institution lives to about the issue or product you are addressing, and the tradeoffs you are knowingly making to live into them.
Talent philosophy: A talent philosophy is a document that details the management beliefs of the organization and the commitments the institution will make to employees and vice versa upon employment,
Conflict Charter: a conflict charter is a document that outlines how you fight so you have guideposts to abide by.
These social and economic contracts are a bare minimum to keep the hierarchical and social cores in alignment
Tension: When there is tension between these two groups, things slooooooow down. Meetings tend to have a lot of people because trust has had some ruptures and no one wants to leave decision making solely in the hands of one group or the other. There is a lot of questioning and underlying tension - though no one can quite figure out why these two groups are far apart. Each group asks the other “what’s going on?” and everyone answers “nothing”. It is so hidden that when a person does understand what is happening they are likely told “it’s not that big of a deal”, and turn away. This is a moment of peak vulnerability for the institution. Leaders often inadvertently teach their team at this point that for something to get attention - it must be on fire.
Adversarial: When things turn adversarial between these two groups - work stops. Teaching folks only fires get attention, builds arsonists. In order to get “rewarded” by the cores, you have to lose social capital with the group you are in most alignment with. In this environment, for one group to win, the other must lose. Any difference of approach or belief turns toxic. This toxified state will require drastic changes in leadership or in the team because it is rare for these challenges to resolve without one cultural core realizing that accountability/transition for the leadership team, a layoff with the broader team, or an arrangement that allows for a healthy split. These two groups cannot work adversarially in perpetuity. It’s like a breakup you know should have happened a year ago but instead both people do actions daring the other to initiate the breakup. Those situations will cause trauma and scar tissue people will carry around for a non-trivial amount of time.
Warmly,
Karla
