Vision Core · Culture · Module

How it is passed on

The mechanisms through which newcomers learn what is actually expected — the first weeks, the stories told internally and the rituals that repeat — most of which run without anyone designing them.

The idea

How it works

Every culture is taught, whether or not anyone intends to teach it. A newcomer learns within weeks which rules are real, whom to copy, and what happens to people who speak up — from the stories colleagues tell, from what is celebrated, and from watching the people who seem to be doing well.

Van Maanen and Schein showed that the way newcomers are brought in shapes what they become. A structured, sequential introduction with an assigned guide tends to reproduce the existing culture closely; a loose, individual one leaves more room for variation. Neither is correct in general, and the choice is worth making knowingly. Hiring itself, including any culture-fit criterion, sits in HR; this module begins on the first day.

Working with it

In practice

  1. 01

    Ask newcomers what they have learned

    At thirty and ninety days: what surprised you, what you stopped doing, whom you watch. The answers show the curriculum that is actually running.

  2. 02

    Collect the stories that get retold

    Especially the ones about someone who broke a rule, or was rewarded for doing so. Their moral is the norm.

  3. 03

    Look at what the rituals celebrate

    Award evenings, all-hands, launch parties. Whatever gets applause is being taught, whatever the speeches say.

  4. 04

    Choose the guides deliberately

    The person a newcomer shadows passes on their own habits. That assignment is a cultural decision.

One level in

The components of how it is passed on

A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.

  1. Socialisation path

    The newcomer’s first weeks as a designed sequence: the tactics used, the assigned guide, and what the newcomer reports having learned.

    Learn

  2. Story canon

    The internal stories that circulate about how people behave here, each with the norm it teaches and whether it is still told.

    Learn

  3. Ritual calendar

    The recurring occasions — ceremonies, reviews, gatherings — with what each one signals and whether it has drifted from its intent.

    Learn

Ask what a newcomer stopped doing in their first month. That is the lesson the culture taught.

The other modules in culture

Levels of culture

The culture described at three levels — what can be seen, what people say justifies it, and the assumptions underneath that decide behaviour when the two disagree.

Learn

Reading it

Diagnosing the culture from evidence rather than from what people hope is true: what is observed, what is rewarded, where subcultures differ, and one structured lens for comparison.

Learn

Shaping it

What leaders can change in a culture and what they cannot: assumptions move through repeated behaviour and the systems that reward it, slowly, and hardly at all through slogans.

Learn
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