In trying to get to grips with culture I was reminded of a seminar I attended in the 1990s led by John Adair - then visiting professor of Leadership at the University of Exeter. Early in the session John asked the group, ‘what one word sums up leadership’. We pondered it for most of the afternoon without coming close and in the end John said: ‘The word is influence. If you can’t influence others you cannot lead.’
Twenty odd years later I found this moment coming back to me as I thought about culture. As influence is to leadership, what is to culture?
Homely phrases like ‘it’s the way we do things around here’ or ‘it’s what people do when the boss isn’t around’ don’t help much. However, one word keeps cropping up when you delve into the research (presumably because it is the most obvious output of culture) and that word is behaviour.
Reflecting again on the seminar, I think it is reasonable to argue that behaviour is as integral to culture, as influence is to leadership – in as much as it operates as a disciplining force. If you think about it, being asked to lead a culture change leaves matters open to interpretation. Rephrasing the request to influence changes in behaviour brings much more focus. It sets out an obvious pair of questions for a start; what are the behaviours we see today and what would we like to see tomorrow?
Behaviours alone, however, are not enough. You still need clarity about the purpose of an organisation.
Peter Drucker, the celebrated American management consultant, said of this purpose that: ‘the purpose of a business is to create a customer’1. Which is all well and good in business but what about education?