Conversations on culture: perspectives and insights
"Culture is the oil that smoothens the engine." - Peace Nganwa, Senior Portfolio Manager, Maliasili.
“Culture is the glue that binds teams together - it’s jointly agreed and made.” - Njenga Kahiro, Chief Operations Officer, Maliasili.
When considering organizational culture, Peter Drucker's famous quote often comes to mind: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." Basically, a healthy culture is far more important to the success of an organization than the best strategy ever could be.
Organizational culture shapes how people behave, collaborate, and ultimately function as a team. It's the key to keeping teams engaged and productive, and attracting top talent to the organization.
Moreover, culture is a reflection of an organization's values. A thriving organizational culture unites people and keeps them aligned. When the culture is clear, it allows diverse perspectives to come together with a shared purpose. However, a lack of clarity or an unhealthy culture can significantly impact team performance and the delivery of work.
Key members of our portfolio team - Gathoni Mwai, Naiya Raja, and Peace Nganwa - work with our partners across East Africa, helping to enhance their organizational effectiveness so they can be stronger and more impactful organizations. And as portfolio managers, they have witnessed firsthand the pivotal role that culture can play in either breaking or building organizations. Recently, they gathered over a virtual cup of tea to reflect on this critical aspect of organizational dynamics. Their conversation was so good that we’ve decided to create a two-part Reader series on culture.
This is the first part of the series, which explores the understanding of culture, including traits across teams and organizations.
Gathoni: When we say organizational culture, what do you understand it to mean?
Culture is what binds diverse groups of people together →
Peace: Culture to me is like ‘the referee in a match’ between people with wildly diverse backgrounds, skills, work styles and more. It is what prevents people from resorting to office warfare. Whether you're stuck in the solitude of a cubicle, sitting in an open-plan office, or drowning in a sea of endless virtual meetings while working remotely, culture swoops in to save the day, making teamwork not just bearable, but maybe even a little fun. It binds people together.
It's not just one thing; rather, it's many layers interwoven together →
Naiya: Culture is difficult to see, define, or package into a box. It’s nuanced, fluid, and unique for every organization. Culture scientist Geetr Hofstede likens it to an onion with many layers. On the surface of the onion are things you can often see about an organization, for example, branding, logos, products, etc. The mid-layers of the onion may not always be visible, which could include behaviors, rituals, and practices that become everyday norms across a team. Finally, you get to the core rings of the onion - the deep layers. These could be things like the values, assumptions, and beliefs that are deeply rooted in the organization.
Gathoni: Is there such a thing as an ‘ideal’ culture?
There is no single model that fits every organization, and each team needs to define its own culture →
Peace: Culture is culture - I don’t think there’s an ideal. Even bad culture is still culture. Good or bad culture is defined and determined by values, vulnerability, psychological safety, systems and processes, interactions, and leadership. Culture is held internally, not externally, and cannot be prescribed unless you understand an organization's internal workings and social dynamics.
A healthy culture needs to be adaptable and responsive to the team’s needs →
Naiya:One mistake we often see is when organizations confine or make their culture extremely rigid. A healthy culture adapts to the organization’s journey and is responsive to the team's needs.
Peace: Sadly, usually, many things go wrong before an organization realizes there is a need for a cultural shift or re-invention. When an organization gets to a point where many things are not going well - minimum effort in delivery, absenteeism, high staff turnover, disengagement, low productivity, poor time management, toxic positivity etc, these are usually symptoms of underlying issues, the root cause of which is often a failing culture.
Naiya: If we think of culture as the behaviors, beliefs, and norms guiding an organization, what are some important characteristics of it?
Trust is a crucial trait of a healthy culture. It enables openness, collaboration, and mutual respect among team members →
Gathoni: I believe the biggest trait of a healthy culture is trust. Imagine a scenario where a key team member has to leave suddenly due to a crisis. Despite the chaos, that team member must have faith in their colleagues to handle their tasks and keep things running smoothly in their absence. Trust in each other's abilities forms a crucial pillar of a healthy organizational culture. When there's trust and a readiness to rely on one another, individuals feel supported. Trust truly lies at the heart of effective teamwork.
Peace: On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are organizations where trust is exceedingly scarce and has been broken many times. Repairing broken trust, we’ve found, is one of the hardest things to do. In some cases, the organization's leader assumes complete control over every aspect, from major decisions to trivial ones like selecting the brand and color of hand-washing soap. Even senior management is deprived of the responsibility for programmatic decisions. Such a top-down approach, fueled by a culture of distrust, not only demotivates but also disempowers the team members.
Psychological safety is another important ingredient to building and sustaining a positive organizational culture →
Naiya: How do we treat the people we work with? In a healthy scenario, team members feel safe to share their ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. They believe they can take risks without facing shame from others. A great example of promoting this is seen with partners who have established grievance or anonymous feedback channels. In these channels, senior staff members do not feel threatened when junior members share ideas on possible areas of improvement, fostering an environment where the team is free to express their thoughts and opinions.
Peace: Absolutely! In the opposite scenario, staff face disrespect, public reprimands, and having their voices silenced by authority figures. "Divide and rule" tactics, scare tactics, and gaslighting worsen psychological safety among teams, making the work environment extremely difficult.
Effective communication is vital as it promotes a culture of transparency, clarity, and understanding within the organization →
Gathoni: We’ve seen this among the partners that communicate really well with each other - it's what keeps everyone on the same page, building trust and teamwork. When people can freely share ideas and concerns, it fosters a sense of belonging and inclusivity. Plus, open communication helps align everyone towards common goals and values. It also builds trust between leaders and team members, making everyone feel valued. We’ve also seen that good and timely communication is essential for preventing and resolving conflicts, and helping individuals adapt to new ideas or changes within their teams.
Culture should be underpinned by your mission and purpose →
Naiya: Another trait we see with our partners is how their culture is determined by their values and purpose. A purpose-driven team focuses on building a team with the same vision and mission. For example, at Maliasili, our team is built to accelerate community-based conservation through local organizations. In a purpose-driven culture, you are more likely to have motivated and engaged teams. Despite individual differences, everyone is working towards the same end goal. We are also a values-driven team, and we aim to co-create our culture based on the organizational values that are important to us and how we achieve our work. One of our core values is to ‘Put people first’. Putting people at the heart of what we do - shapes how we function internally and with our partners, determining our choices. These sets of unwritten rules help shape our internal/external working culture and give us a clear sense of organizational ‘self’.
Peace: At the same time, without a clear purpose or direction, organizations may face internal challenges. For instance, when organizations evolve in a reactive manner to fulfill various needs in the places where they work, rather than staying focused on their mission, they can become disjointed and uncertain. This lack of clarity leads to breakdowns in internal communication, siloed work, internal competition, and reduced motivation.
Leadership has the most important role in shaping culture, and must ‘breathe life’ into the values and purpose →
Naiya: Values need to be actioned. Some organizations have values on paper, which are often not implemented and team members barely remember them. Culture needs to be led, followed, and most importantly, co-created. Leadership has a responsibility to determine an organization's culture, and leaders need to be aware of their power to breathe life into the organizational values, set examples for their teams, and ‘walk the talk’. Although leaders have a key role to play in shaping the culture and setting the pace, each individual on a team still has a role to play in reinforcing or reshaping the values that create the culture.
If an organization lacks a sense of purpose or its values are not authentic - this will manifest in its culture. This is why knowing your identity as an organization is important: Who are you, what makes you different, and what do you want to achieve? These building blocks form the foundation of your culture.
A moment of pause
Reflect on your own organization:
What are the three words that define your culture right now?
Two years from now, what would you like those words to be?