What is Cultural Evolution?

Every experience we encounter and gain exposure to that alters our perspective and hence, our own realities which sees us evolve as a person. When you consider this in organisational sense every experience, interaction, team expansions we are exposed to as a business evolves the culture and environment. The notion of Cultural Evolution explores how culture (like everything on earth) is essentially a living organism as it changes, responds, grows, or shrinks in response to continuous stimuli.

Cultures typically start with a person or collective of people who come together with ideas and something they want to achieve. They have a shared understanding of their purpose, a unique set of skills and how these will be applied to achieve their goals. As they interact with one another to move towards achievement and gain new experiences and skills they evolve as people, and hence, shift and evolve the culture, whether intentional or otherwise.

Through our work at Mirrored Horizons, we have seen the stark difference between leaders and business owners who recognize and appreciate that their culture is a living organism which requires continuous care and attention versus those who leave the organism to shape, shift and evolve as it pleases with no guidance or care.

As Alignment Consultants we specialise in the design of cultures by implanting the structures that assist in the evolution with the objective to align the evolution of the culture with the business strategy. To guide, mould and nuture your culture is not something you can “set and forget” or “tick and flick”. It is not something that can be lead from the top down especially in large organisations. Rather, it is something that takes expertise to curate meaningful buy-in and continuous development business wide.

We often see disconnect or silo’d workplaces be a symptom of when leaders and business owners don’t spend the time required to build genuine connections with those within the business. When there is a lack of connection within the workplace, often unwritten rules of engagement and structures are in place that drive the culture and make it difficult to infiltrate.

To develop a holistic strategy that works to support the business’ ideal culture, clearly identifies the business’s priorities and direction developing connection with those responsible for its success (everyone) is paramount. To do so, it is important to build a sound picture of the business through involving everyone to capture the required qualitative and quantitative data that will be used to underpin decisions that are being made that will have the highest value add and impact on the people within the business.

Don’t get us wrong we are numbers people and believe you can draw invaluable information by establishing strong quantitative metrics. To ensure you our nurturing cultural evolution, these numbers need to be balanced with qualitative data and interactions with the people and their experiences that bring this to life.

To drive any kind of change people have to be inspired to want to change. People will not change just because they are told they need to change.

Examples of where cultural evolution change has come undone is when leaders are completely disconnected from the actual implementation of the actions they are critiquing and saying must change. They have not engaged with the person, taken the time to speak with them and understand their specific circumstance, instead they have made a decision relative to the paradigms that they understand and exist purely in their own context. To encourage people to come on board you have to let them explore their own challenges, thoughts and feelings and relate the change to their discipline and how it works.

If managers, directors, and business leaders take one key message away from these musings is that culture requires the investment of time, and no amount of consultant’s work can be done to “fix” your culture unless you yourself are willing to invest the time to understanding your people.

Cultural Evolution doesn’t happen overnight, it takes consistent commitment and belief. Thankfully for managers, directors and leaders, Mirrored Horizons has the expertise to guide you and your business through this process.

Book a free 15-minute discovery call with us today to find out more.