How Understanding Organisational History Can Help Shape Culture

“The further back you can look the further ahead you can see” 

History is not just about learning about the past; it is also about better understanding the present so we can shape the future. 

In our work with clients, we often see organisations starting from a position of “Can’t we just get on with the strategy work, and worry less about the culture, or having dialogue circles to understand perspectives. Let’s just deal with what is in front of us!” 

What we have consistently found, in both our own personal development and in our culture work, is that our current ways of being have been inevitably shaped by our life’s experiences. 

Some client experiences: 
In organisations, history has a way of showing up at the least convenient times. A client was going through a major integration of two businesses. People from the acquiring business would talk in hushed tones about their “near death experience” from a decade earlier, when they went through an unsuccessful acquisition. This previous experience was burned into the organisational DNA and any thoughts of “going back to that dark place” significantly raised anxiety and defence mechanisms.  

The assumptions and worldviews we form in difficult times can have a significant impact on how we bring ourselves into the present. This is a central theme in Robert Kegan’s Immunity to Change work. We can also bring pre-existing worldviews and beliefs into new circumstances and new contexts, and without being aware of this people may project their past experiences onto their current context with dire consequences. 

A senior executive we worked with had felt they had been bullied and intimidated in a previous organisation and vowed that it would never happen again. Upon beginning a role in a new organisation, they were so determined that this wouldn’t happen to them again that they saw even the lightest and most supportive pieces of feedback as bullying and harassment and “examples of a dysfunctional culture”. They also became so forthright and assertive, that many people experienced them as a bully – Oh, that moment when we become the very thing we despise! 

Another client had gone though many significant amalgamations of different teams over a twenty year period. Little or no attention had been paid to culture and only lip service had been paid to concerns raised about equitable treatment and allocation of organisational resources. The result was that many teams felt they had been treated unfairly, and that HR and senior leaders were not to be trusted. Some teams continued to have unresolved conflict with other teams and in some instances teams had “gone rogue”, focusing solely on the work immediately in front of them rather than what the organisation or their colleagues in other teams needed from them. 

A financial services client had experienced explosive growth over two decades, increasing in size from 20 people to 1000 people over that time. The initial culture was deeply intimate, and work was often done through relationships. As there were originally only a small number of people, much of the knowledge about process and product resided in people’s heads. New people that came into the organisation who didn’t have the same intimate relationships or awareness of processes or product, often felt isolated and found it extremely difficult to be effective. This caused an “us and them” culture dynamic, with the new team members and the old team members often blaming each other for the challenges that emerged as the organisation endeavoured to scale up. 

Do any of these examples sound familiar? Do you have a sense of how your current organisational culture has been shaped by its past, and by the past of its teams and individuals? What lessons might you learn from your organisation’s history? 

A way forward: 
We have found from our personal history that we can have much greater compassion for others when we feel a personal association or connection. Finding out that an ancestor died from silicosis as a miner gives a whole new appreciation to the plight of others and our place in the world. So it is when we explore our cultural histories. 

How can we apply learnings about our organisational history to positively shape and progress our culture, rather than be held captive by the past? 

1. Deep sense making and dialogue to understand what individual and collective assumptions we are holding that we may not even be aware of. 
2. Enabling people to collectively name the most difficult or challenging narratives that are often not spoken about but shape people’s levels of fear or anxiety about participating and expressing themselves fully in organisation life. 
3. Exploring the positive attributes of culture that have been retained and enable the organisation to have a sense of pride about its work and its purpose. 
4. Developing rituals for letting go of the narratives and worldviews that no longer serve the organisation. 
5. Identifying what culture is necessary to bring forward the aspects of organisational history that still serve the organisation well AND move beyond the limiting narratives and assumptions that may have impeded the organisation. 
6. Creating artefacts that honour the past, the present, and the emerging future. 
7. Applying foresight methods such as Future Backwards to invite people into their agency in shaping future culture, thus reframing what shapes culture from “what has happened to us” to “the choices we make in the face of what has happened to us”. 

People that have been part of creating the organisational history, including routines or processes or ways of working that no longer serve the organisation, can feel isolated, blamed or singled out, unless there is a deep / genuine honouring of the past and of the value these once delivered. 

Acknowledging and honouring the past AND embracing the future ways of working that are necessary in the current context will enable everyone – old and new, past and present - to have a voice and share their perspectives so that together, they can positively shape the future. 

 If you would like to learn more about Adaptive Cultures’ approach contact us at [email protected]