Culture Clash

Culture. The very word makes my neurons dance and synapses explode like the Shanghai night sky during Spring Festival.

Thank you, Soc 211, for introducing college me to the field of Sociology. Thank you, Northwest Airlines, for carrying young me to exciting destinations. Thank you, Margaret Mead, for inspiring me to follow in your footsteps and become a famous, outspoken, norm challenging cultural anthropologist.

Ok, not-so-young me isn’t exactly the famous cultural anthropologist I thought I’d be, but I might be known to challenge a norm or two.

Before I do, remember, big fan of culture—customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group. Huge fan. At the cellular level.

So was Margaret. Which is precisely why she didn’t traverse Papua New Guinea gathering a few tribal leaders with starkly different norms to hash out a few cultural values that sounded nice for the travel brochure.

Yet isn’t this precisely what’s done in an organization? Starkly different tribes—executives, sales, HR, project management, IT—who are often geographically dispersed, are told that to fit in here, one must be:

Oh, and come as your authentic whole self while you’re at it.

The reality is cultural norms vary from department to team to leader. And no matter what it says in the brochure, the real culture is often “Be unlike the rest of us and you’ll be kicked out of the tribe.” Ouch.

So what’s an organization to do?

Be like Margaret. Observe and appreciate the cultural differences amongst teams and the role each individual plays in the overall strategy. If an organizational value is diversity, embrace it in all its forms. Isn’t success the ultimate goal?

“An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift.”

Margaret Mead

Shannon Vasko is a natural-born planner with a passion for strategy and integrated communications. © MI Compass Services.