Culture is about the life of an organization in all its forms, variations and systems of meanings. Some say, quite simply, that the culture is how to do things in an organization. All too easily the concept of culture becomes all too encompassing and therefore unmanageable. Culture can be defined in various ways, including:

• A grid through which we perceive reality
• A collective programming of our beliefs, attitudes and behaviour that distinguishes one community from another
• Shared values based on events and experiences

Culture is something that a group of people share, and it represents a common orientation, something that shapes and guides thoughts, feelings and actions. Culture can be perceived and studied at different levels. These fundamental and often deeply-rooted structures need to be brought to a more conscious level – the more radical a change is, the more important this becomes, as radical change requires changes in behaviour and attitudes.

Often when speaking of “culture” in the workplace, we actually mean “climate”, i.e. that which is easy to perceive in everyday actions, and this is often what is measured by employee surveys. Culture lies at deeper levels and much of it is hidden in less conscious parts of our mind, but is still reachable with our new method.

If you want to find causes and development methods then the answer lies in culture 

The state of health is a result of the operative reality and the underlying culture. The culture is most often not directly visible. It operates like a filter which everything passes through. We experience the “filtered” parts as the past. We are often completely unaware of what we have “chosen” to experience. The content of culture are created by all the experiences which one have collected since the beginning of time, in the form of: conclusions, values, norms and rules. It is visible in our approach to different situations. Behaviour is the mirror of culture.

Culture is a navigator in the strategic orientation

It is important to distinguish between changes in the sense of creating a new structure and in the sense of mental shift. The creation of a structure is something that occurs externally, while the mental conversion occurs internally, within us, and often takes a longer period of time. If no such shift is achieved, there will be no real change. It is not sufficient to focus on what we will benefit from the change, nor what ultimate goal we have, change must also entail a transitional process that works. In a change project, it is necessary to understand and deal with structure and content, but also with the culture’s characteristics, the learning processes, and the mental shift.

The purpose with a cultural analysis is to highlight the characteristics of the human urges. Different factors, for and against the process of change are made visible. Therefore the strategic orientation and the process of change can be navigated to give a more lasting result. In this operation it is important to involve both the co-workers and the customers/clients.

A new, innovative method for cultural analysis

To be able to capture cultural features it takes a special working method which can reflect both the emotional and the mental structures on a deeper level. When these are made visible they are also made affectable. It is on this basís which we analyse and try to influence cultures which supports the strategic orientation of the agency. Our cultural analysis relies on a new and innovative method which we have been inspired by in our international collaborations.