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Understanding Unwritten Ground Rules with Steve Simpson
Manage episode 514938322 series 3664288
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My conversation with Steve Simpson, a veteran expert in workplace culture, challenged everything I thought I understood about organisational dynamics. Steve's concept of Unwritten Ground Rules (UGRs) cuts through the polished rhetoric of values statements and glossy brochures to reveal what actually happens within organisations.
UGRs capture the naturally occurring behaviours and perceptions that truly shape workplace culture. It’s the real-time dynamics that newcomers absorb when colleagues say, "What really happens around here is..." In professional services, these UGRs are particularly vivid and often problematic: poor behaviour tolerated if you're a high revenue generator, voices that matter only after climbing several rungs on the corporate ladder, hierarchies and tolerances that directly contradict stated values. Steve suggests that these unspoken rules can be more powerful than leadership itself. Leaders come and go but deeply entrenched UGRs persist, shaping behaviour regardless of who's nominally in charge.
The intersection of safety protocols and UGRs proved particularly compelling in our discussion. Steve's work in the aviation sector revealed how strong safety culture rhetoric often masks UGRs like "Around here, safety is a tick-box exercise." This disconnect between aspiration and reality exists across industries and functions, from safety compliance to diversity initiatives to client service standards. The path to realignment requires honest awareness of existing UGRs, which often differ drastically from stated values. Steve's methodology involves crafting clear "lead-in sentences" that open authentic dialogue which enables organisations to measure cultural health effectively rather than relying on sanitised engagement surveys.
What defines great culture, according to Steve, is remarkably simple: alignment between aspirational culture and actual UGRs. Transformative change occurs when there's minimal discrepancy between what organisations profess and what they do. Having witnessed firsthand how compelling this focus on UGRs can be, I'm convinced this methodology should be central to any serious cultural assessment and realignment effort. For leaders in professional services and beyond, Steve's work offers a framework for confronting uncomfortable truths about organisational culture, an essential first step toward genuine transformation.
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