Vision Core · Culture · Module
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.
The idea
How it works
Schein’s three levels are a way of keeping description honest. Artefacts are easy to see and hard to interpret: an open-plan office can mean openness or surveillance. Espoused beliefs are easy to collect and unreliable, because they are what people think ought to be true. The assumptions underneath are the level that predicts behaviour, and they have to be inferred from the other two.
The work here is to write all three down separately, in plain sentences, and to notice where they do not match. A culture that says it values candour, holds meetings where only the senior person speaks, and assumes disagreement is disloyal has already shown which level is in charge.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Describe before you judge
Record what is there without labelling it healthy or unhealthy. Judgement at this stage decides what gets noticed.
- 02
Write beliefs in the words people use
Not the official list. The reasons people give in passing for why things are done the way they are.
- 03
Infer assumptions from contradictions
Where an artefact and a stated belief disagree, ask what someone would have to take for granted for the artefact to make sense.
- 04
Test each assumption on a newcomer
An assumption a newcomer finds strange is probably real. One nobody inside recognises may be the analyst’s own.
One level in
The components of levels of culture
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Artefact inventory
What anyone could observe — routines, language and status markers — recorded before it is interpreted.
LearnEspoused beliefs record
The reasons people give for how things are done, in their own words, with a reference to the official values and no copy of them.
LearnAssumption map
The taken-for-granted beliefs inferred from the other two, each with its evidence and what it does to the strategy.
Learn
Where the artefacts and the stated beliefs disagree, the assumptions have already decided which one wins. Look at the artefacts.
The other modules in culture
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.
LearnHow 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.
LearnShaping 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