Here at Gallaher Edge, we exist to evolve humanity by applying the science of human behavior to organizations. Our work creates transformational change in organizations’ cultures through meaningful and impactful human experiences. As we help companies nationwide navigate changes and improve their organizational culture, we work deeply with the individuals within organizations to build trust, create cohesion and align teams.
We rally around the phrase “Culture is created from the Inside Out,” but what does that really mean? Today, we’ll take a minute to break down our “Inside Out” model of organizational culture.
Culture and organizations are complex.
Leading and developing organizations can be a daunting task because organizations are complex. There are so many different pieces and parts that are working together to produce the results. Sometimes the interactions between components are difficult to understand or even recognize. With so many different moving parts and complex interactions, how can you possibly lead a successful organization while growing it and developing it into an awesome workplace? Even if you aren’t leading an organization, just figuring out how to be happy and successful within one can be confusing.
Based on the work that we did at Kennedy Space Center, we have developed a simple framework that addresses many challenges like leadership, accountability, change, alignment, culture, and organization design. We wanted a simple way to communicate to our clients outside of NASA the foundation of our approach. This model is the key to transforming your organization. Its power lies in one simple truth – at its core, everything starts with the self.
Our Inside Out model starts with the self at its core, then moves to the team level, and then the organizational culture level, and it is bi-directional. These layers affect each other; the behavior of one individual can affect the organization, just as organizational factors can affect individual behavior.
Organizational culture from the inside out
We can best illustrate how the model works by walking through it backward. At the outer level, we have organizational culture, which is an emergent property and encompasses nearly everything about how the organization works. You can think about this level of the model through the acronym SET: Strategy, Execution, and Talent.
The first is Strategy. The relationship between strategy and culture goes both ways and is vitally important. Leaders will want to be clear about what their strategy is to accomplish their goals. Feeling clear about strategy positively impacts organizational culture because it creates a unified direction that enables greater success. And that success has a positive impact on how people feel and behave in the organization.
The second level of the model is Execution. Here we focus on designing the organization to promote a culture that supports the execution of the strategy. But when you really break that down, it all comes back to human behavior. How the organization is designed, including its structure, how decisions are made, processes, policies, and systems – affects how people feel and behave. For example, if a key strategy is agility and the ability to quickly respond to customer needs, then leaders will want to design the organization to ensure that people are empowered to make decisions at their level, or they will fail to execute the company’s strategy.
The last piece of the organizational culture level of the Inside Out model is Talent. This refers to aligning the talent management processes to support the culture and the strategy. This includes getting clear about the core values of the organization, the behavioral expectations of the people, and aligning everything from the talent acquisition processes (e.g., recruiting, hiring, and onboarding) to the talent management processes (e.g., rewarding, developing, promoting and firing) to the desired culture and strategy.
But it’s not enough to just lay out a process. People form beliefs based on their experiences in the organization. Based on those beliefs; they behave in a particular way that ultimately produces the culture and results of the organization. This means how processes are executed is defined as much by what people believe as by how the process is laid out. When processes are executed by multiple people or interface with other processes, these differences in beliefs and behaviors can lead to team dysfunction and poor performance. Gallaher Edge works with leaders to help them improve and better understand their inner selves. By working from the Inside Out, executives will increase self-awareness, improve team alignment and cultivate accountability. In future blogs, we’ll take a look at how teams can work in a way that is intentional and supports great culture.
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