Peter Drucker
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”
The unwritten rules, assumptions and behaviors of a group are its culture. And culture (by its nature implicit) is a deeper influence than explicit rules.
The feedback loops a culture provides shape the behavior the culture rewards.
This transforms how individuals see themselves and how they act within a given context. If your culture rewards shutting up and not asking questions, people will shut up and not ask questions. If a culture punishes honesty, lies (or silence) proliferate.
Changing culture is difficult. You can’t regulate it into existence like a new process. It’s easy to make a team use a new tool when you’re a manager. But culture doesn’t change because you start saying those are your cultural ideals. At best, people change for a short time, but go back to what the culture taught them when you stop looking.
Culture changes when you unearth the feedback loops driving the behaviors and attitudes you want to quell (or encourage). This is painful: It requires questioning the core assumptions you’ve built your company on and looking at the scope of the problem without flinching.
When you can do that, you can change the assumptions culture is built on and the behaviors it rewards.