Culture is a system, not a slogan
Values on a wall change nothing. What changes behaviour is the set of decisions, structures and habits that make living those values the easiest path. That is what we build.
What goes wrong
Almost every company we work with has values. Almost none can point to where those values showed up in a decision.
Values written once, never used
They are agreed at an offsite, printed, and never referenced again in a hiring call, a promotion, or a strategy choice.
Strategy that never reaches the work
The plan is sound, and the quarter's tasks have nothing to do with it, because nothing connects the two.
Structure that fights the strategy
A company organized for what it used to do, trying to execute what it has decided to become.
How we think about it
Start with what the company actually is
Not what it aspires to. The stated culture and the lived one are usually different, and that gap is the work.
Make the connections explicit
An objective should trace to an ambition. A role should trace to the strategy that needs it. Once the links are written down, drift becomes visible instead of gradual.
Put decisions where they belong
Most alignment problems are decision-rights problems wearing a costume. Naming who decides resolves more than another all-hands will.
Measure the lived version
Ask people anonymously and regularly what the culture is actually like, then compare it with what leadership believes it is.
What this means in practice
One source of truth
Identity, strategy, structure and results in the same place, so a change in one is visible in the others.
Human decisions, assisted
Software should make a good decision easier to reach. It should not make the decision.
Written down beats remembered
A decision with a recorded rationale survives the person who made it, and the argument does not return.
Built for more than one language
An organization that works in Arabic and English should not have to pick one to be understood by its own tools.
Questions
- What is organizational development?
- The practice of improving how a company works as a system: its structure, its decision-making, its culture and its capability, rather than any single team's performance. It treats the organization itself as the thing being designed.
- Is Green Apple consulting or software?
- Both, deliberately. The software carries the method, so the method does not leave when the consultant does.
- Where do you start with a company?
- With what it stands for, because everything downstream depends on it. A strategy argument is usually an unresolved values argument that nobody named.
Put the method to work
Start with the plan that fits your size, or read how the pieces of Green Organization work together.