Harnessing culture through humanity

Defining your organization’s culture is critical for not only for employee morale and productivity, but also for engaging customers, brand trust and adding value to your overall mission.

But actually defining what culture is can be a little trickier, said Marcus Collins, clinical assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan during Ragan’s Employee Communications and Culture Conference.

“We all talk about culture, but ask five people to define culture (and) get 55 different answers, and that’s a problem,” he said. “Because if we can’t define a thing concretely, how do we ever fully harness it? How do we ever operationalize it in the work that we do? So what is culture? What is this thing? Culture is one of the hardest words to define, because it’s omnipresent. It’s in everything.”

No longer should an organization put employees or its customers squarely into boxes based on their demographics, he said. To create a culture that appeals to real people, organizations have to stop thinking of them in stereotypes or acting to establish culture based on those pigeonholes.

Instead, humans need to be thought of as humans – with complexities, differences and layers, Collins said.