Dude.

I was in a good conversation last night with one of our pastors Bob Bickford.  Often I refer to our organization in the same likeness as a family system.  There are generations of leaders, systems of thought, patterns of behavior, etc.  In this frame of looking at our leaders and our organization, I’ve regularly used the terms “Culture Maintainers” and “Culture Shifters.”  As Bob and I spoke about someone we knew who was a culture shifter, Bob expanded the idea, “That dude doesn’t just shift culture.  He builds it.”  

Ah!  He was right.  I’ve used the idea of shifting culture synonymously with building culture.  But that’s incomplete.  Shifting culture implies that you’re already in it.  It’s a living organism.  It’s like water in a mountain river and when a tree or boulder falls in it, the water shifts around the object yet keeps flowing.  But sometimes to shift culture, the only option is to create an entirely new one.  I call the person who does this the “Cultural Architect.”

In the movie Inception, the dream sequences were created by an architect.  What did they do?  They created the rules of the world the dreamers would live in.  They designed the streets, the buildings, the layers, and every detail.  Architects of culture work similarly.  They see the addition of all the small things and how they contribute to a larger context.  Then they find ways to communicate both the small things and the context in a way that’s attractive.  

In Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind, he explains how right-brainers create meaningful experiences out of mundane practices.  In a nutshell, he said they use story, design, empathy, play, meaning, and symphony as the tools to create a better world.  For the culture-architects I know, these are their implied strategies.  

Let me back up:  Who are the culture-maintainers and the culture-shifters?  How do they relate to the architect?  Let’s use the idea from Pink’s book about symphony.   We could think of it like this: the musicians, the conductor and the composer.

Cultural maintenance is key.  These are the musicians in the symphony.  You can’t do it without them.  Together they can create absolute symphonic harmony or the worst dissonance.  But having the right players, the ones who know the music, know its intent, and know how to take what’s on the page and make it translate, is the key to maintaining the vision of the piece.  It happens from the note on the page to the hearers ear.  

Cultural shifting is important too.  The conductor does this.  When dissonance, pace, or the swells of strengths and weaknesses fall out of line, it’s the conductor’s hands that put everyone back together.  She’s visible.  She understands the composer’s heart, intent and content.  She can help the players when they’re confused.  She can make sure she has the right players for the right spot.  She shifts things before, during and after performance to create symphonic harmony.  She has an intuitive sense for where things are moving, and a concrete sense of how things should be.  Having the wrong conductor can mean a train wreck.

But none of this is possible without the composer.  He doesn’t just write in the notes—hundreds of thousands of notes.  He dreams and listens, and from his mind dictates not just the pitch but the variation, tone, and mood of how each note is played.  This composer knows what to say and how to say it.  He is the architect of an entire experience that evolves all the way from the initial inspiration to the execution of the final note.  Each instrument knows its part.  In here, but not there.  Loud here.  Soft here.  Gently.  All together.  The result is a power that transcends the pencil lead that scribbled the note on the page.  The composer has reached into the minds and hearts of everyone involved—musicians, conductors, and audience—and framed their participation in his world.  

The application for those of us in leadership is to understand the power and importance of each role and position people where they fit.  I didn’t mention the Culture-Resistors.  They exist too.  They are the ones who neither support or change the world they’re in.  They consistently resist it.  You may need to remove them, or coach them up so they can eventually become the right kind of resistance and help shift culture when needed.  It may be helpful to look at your teams and leaders and think about who fits where.  Do you have the composers in your organization?  What about conductors and players?  Are they in the right spot?  What can you do in your organization to create symphony?

jd