4 The Cultural Web
Here is a way to explore your culture using the Cultural Web. It works well for HROs and similar organisations where the culture is crucial to the safety and well-being of members as much as it is to the delivery of the overall mission and purpose. It has been used in various police forces to understand the culture and also as a way to shift the culture to make it more open to new recruits and also to create diversity.
The Cultural Web helps us to understand the ‘why’ of these things about your place of work, whether you are in the office, in the field, or off location:
The Why of your Place of Work
- The way it ‘feels’ and ‘looks’ around here
- The way we do things around here
- The basic assumptions about how things work around here that most of the soldiers share
- What drives the perceptions, attitudes, feelings and behaviours of the workplace
- How we behave when nobody is looking.
(Johnson et al., 2017) (Horowitz)
The Cultural Web Components
The Cultural Web framework provides a tool that helps us understand the way we do things around here. When we use this tool to also think about the way we would ‘like’ to do things we can start to see the gaps and more clearly identify where to take action.
In relation to change, creativity and innovaton this is a very useful activity. Examining the cultural web of your team, barracks and the Army more generally may generate ideas for new initiatives. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the web may help you foresee and circumvent obstacles to implementation. Mapping your cultural web may even provide you with a way of measuring progress.
Here is a template for you to use. Make notes about each of the elements of your culture and write up your overall observations of the culture of your workplace:
If you want to explore the Cultural Web framework in more detail, the Mindtools website(opens in a new tab) provides an excellent summary of the 6 key components along with key questions needed to explore each component.
How we work!
Reflection
Consider your WPP opportunity. What insights do you have from thinking about culture? What elements of the culture can you leverage when you are figuring out how to develop and implement your WPP? What elements of the culture might be barriers?
Vignette
We often don’t see what others ‘see’ when they look at our workplaces and the work we do. Sometimes we develop stories about ourselves and our workplace that may or may not be true. An ‘outside in’ look, using an objective tool, can be very useful. At QUT we have engaged for many years with a well-known High-Reliability Organisation (HRO). One of the goals of our engagement was to help the organisation become more focused on gender equity and providing workplaces that were fit for all.
We asked team members to share stories about each of the elements of the Web. Stories about symbols and rituals and routines were especially insightful. In HROs there are many tangible things and behaviours. We then had teams collect images and also write up short stories.
Next, we organised role plays. We had people switch roles, genders and also act as ‘outsiders’ who ‘came in’ for a look. Some of the noteworthy and useful ‘ah-ha’ moments came from some of the most basic things. The way team members sat, made eye contact, held shoulders, and even jangled vehicle keys told stories about ‘how things are around here’.
By using props and making the exercise about ‘others’ rather than ourselves, sometimes it is easier to get the insights and understand the culture and what it means to everyone.
The point is that culture tells a story and it is a story that makes us.