Vision Core · Culture · Module
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.
The idea
How it works
Asking people to describe their culture produces the espoused version. The evidence that reaches further down is behavioural: what happens in meetings, who gets promoted and for what, which breaches are quietly tolerated, what leaders ask about first. Engagement and satisfaction surveys belong to HR, and they measure what people report about their work, which is related and different.
Cameron and Quinn’s Competing Values Framework is useful as one lens. It places a culture on two axes — flexibility against control, internal against external focus — giving four orientations: clan, adhocracy, market and hierarchy. It is quick and comparable across units, and it describes orientation, not the specific assumptions this organisation holds. Martin’s point belongs beside it: organisations are seldom one culture, and a single profile averages away the differences that matter.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Observe ordinary days
Sit in routine meetings, not offsites. Culture shows where nobody is performing it.
- 02
Follow the rewards
List recent promotions and what each was for, then the behaviours that were visibly tolerated. Together the two lists describe the operating culture.
- 03
Use outsiders while they can still see
Newcomers, leavers and long-standing partners. Their read is time-limited and worth collecting deliberately.
- 04
Read by unit, then compare
A sales floor and an engineering team seldom share one culture. Diagnose each before deciding whether there is a whole.
One level in
The components of reading it
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Observation log
Dated episodes seen in ordinary work, each tagged with the pattern it suggests and the position of whoever observed it.
LearnReward trace
Who was promoted, praised or protected, and for what — the behaviour the organisation actually pays for.
LearnCompeting values profile
Current and preferred profiles across the four culture types, used as a comparison lens and read with its limits in view.
LearnSubculture map
The units whose cultures differ, on which assumptions, and the interfaces where those differences meet.
Learn
A culture survey shows what people are willing to say about the culture. The reward trace comes closer to what it is.
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.
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