What Is Culture?

Words cannot define what can only be experienced, which is why culture is so hard for so many of us to master. Culture is a living thing. It’s what happens when a group of people come together united under a common purpose, as in a business or an organization.

We cannot pin culture down into a mere definition or categorization—we can only feel it, because culture is a moving essence. What we know is that culture is important. In fact it’s the single most important thing that enables and empowers us to move an organization in an intended direction.

Shaping Culture

The truth is that we’re shaping culture all the time—we just tend to do it unconsciously. Creating and shaping culture in an intended direction for an intended purpose, like building a business or creating a movement or effecting positive change is what enables us to create legacy.

There are systems, techniques and communication styles that help us move the needle on culture, but ultimately we must feel its essence in current form, and sense the essence of the culture we wish to create so that we may guide it in an intended direction.

Feeling and sensing the intrinsic nature of an organization’s culture, then grasping the feeling of how we wish a culture to feel, and then guiding it there is the true work of organizational culture. But these are just words that we use to paint a picture in an attempt to define the indefinable. What we really do is help leaders change their paradigm by strengthening their trust, authenticity, and patience.