Confusing culture with ambiance
I keep reading articles and blogs and opinion pieces about companies bringing people back to the office because they want to re-ignite / keep the culture alive.
I think we made a sharp left turn a while back in how we think about – and define – culture.
Having people in the office, gathering around a water cooler (literal or figurative), having meetings in person…these create a vibe. It might be a low buzz or a boisterous hum. There might be gentle, warm lighting or the flicker of ugly, fluorescent bulbs. Maybe there’s the smell of popcorn wafting through the air, or the heavy scent of someone’s reheated fish lunch.
These are all things that create the ambiance of a place. Some work, not all are great, and others are downright obnoxious (you fish-warmer-uppers know who you are…).
Culture is entirely different.
Culture is about the norms and rules – spoken and unspoken – of a place. These all mash together to create the culture – the throughline, the lifeblood – of an entity.
If you want to have a great culture, there is no singular way to do that. It seems like people think you can go out and buy a culture starter-pack, unload it, and BOOM! Culture implemented! Comes with whimsical mugs, a ping pong table, and framed Dilbert comic strips. You know…because our culture here is FUN!
The REAL culture of a place is not always visual. It’s in how people feel about a place, how they experience it, how it exists. Culture is created BOTH by intentional behaviors AND inadvertent behaviors. Which means it is something built carefully and purposely but also highly influenced by what we might be ignoring or simply not noticing.
Do you have a culture of transparency? That’s not true simply because you have glass walls, but it may be true if, every day, you practice radical transparency in every conversation from why you no longer have decaffeinated coffee to why that person’s desk is empty today when it was occupied yesterday.
Do you have a culture of innovation? That’s not true simply because you have colorful pens and post-its in the supply room, but it may be true if co-workers are routinely noticed and celebrated for trying an experiment (whether it fails or succeeds), a key ingredient to innovating.
So…do you have a CULTURE or just AMBIANCE?
