Culture · Reading it · Component
Observation log
Dated episodes from ordinary work, each recorded as it happened and tagged with the pattern it suggests and who saw it.
The deliverable
What it is
Culture shows in what happens when nobody is presenting it. The log collects episodes from routine meetings, handovers, customer calls and escalations — short, dated, factual — so that a reading of the culture rests on accumulated evidence and not on one striking anecdote.
It differs from the artefact inventory in purpose. The inventory describes standing features; the log records events, which is where a culture shows what it does under pressure, when something goes wrong, or when two norms collide.
One level in
What it is made of
Each element is a constituent part of the component. Follow one to see the attributes it carries.
Observed episode
What happened, when and where, written as a short factual account that another observer could check.
3 attributes: Account · Occurred on · Setting
LearnObserver position
Whether the observer was a newcomer, a long-standing insider, a leaver or an outsider, since each sees different things.
2 attributes: Position · Time in organisation
LearnPattern tag
The recurring pattern an episode seems to belong to, applied loosely at first and revised as episodes accumulate.
2 attributes: Pattern · Episodes tagged
Learn
Record what went wrong and how it was handled. One well-described bad week says more about a culture than a year of good ones.
The other components in reading it
Reward trace
Who was promoted, praised or protected, and for what — the behaviour the organisation actually pays for, read from its own decisions.
LearnCompeting values profile
Current and preferred profiles across the four culture types of the Competing Values Framework, used as a comparison lens with its limits in view.
LearnSubculture map
The units whose cultures differ from the whole, on which assumptions they differ, and the interfaces where those differences meet.
Learn