A few months ago I had the incredible fortune of becoming a father for the first time, at 54 years of age and with two for the price of one, it’s exhausting and rewarding at the same time. But what will my little girls be like, who will they be when they are older?
What I have seen already is that they already have their own distinctive personalities, and yet I know that my wife and I will have an immense impact on how they see the world, what they will take to for granted and what they believe to be important. In other words we will have a huge influence on the culture that they live.
Now if we were a normal family a lot of this would come pre-programmed, as we would take on the culture of the country we have always lived in and mindlessly pass that on to our children. But we are not a normal family, I am Australian, my wife is French, we live in Spain and spend a lot of our time in Italy, where I lived for many years. This hopscotch of experience certainly makes our life more complicated but it also makes it richer and above all, it gives us choice.

Consciousness

When you leave your country you become aware of the culture you grew up in, when you live in other countries you become aware of theirs. In my case there are things in my original Australian culture that I still like, the way of handling problems, a certain optimism that I still see as positive. However the passion the French put into making certain things, the Italian’s love of aesthetics, their attitude to eating, the importance of relationships at work in Spain are also things that I value. The point is, having lived them, I am conscious of them and being conscious of them I can choose between them. So with our two little girls, I can give them many choices so that they can mould the culture that will best equip them for the life they are going to lead.

Companies can choose too, only they don’t know it

In my work I see the importance of organizational culture again and again, I see how it sometimes helps to execute their strategy and I see how sometimes it works directly against it. This does not seem extraordinary to me, what does seem incredible is that the majority of companies are not even aware that they have a company culture, let alone how it effects the quality of life of the people within or how it effects their business success. So the first thing that a company has to do is get to know itself, what are their values, what are their assumptions.

A company culture comes into being as a response to a certain environment at a certain point in time. In the beginning it is conscious but with the passing of the years it slides into the sub-conscious. The problem is that the environment changes but the culture stays the same, so the people still act on assumptions that are in fact now not valid.

Freedom to choose

It doesn’t have to be this way, certain companies work on their culture, make it conscious and question it, ideally with respect and even with a certain affection, but also with the determination to transform the elements of their culture that no longer help tem and take on new elements that help them to better execute their strategy and thus survive.

Just as me with my little girls, we are freer than we think.