I really enjoyed this blog from Stephen Foreshew-Cain (Executive Director at the Government Digital Service). In it, he describes how the working culture at GDS is created, maintained, improved. It all sounds great, and it's well known that GDS has embedded behaviours and attitudes that are the envy of most digital teams working in large organisations.

Foreshew-Cain's overriding message is that culture 'evolves from the bottom', but I'm interested in the extent to which employees of an organisation can successfully drive culture changes without support from above. As Foreshew-Cain admits, this was easier at GDS because they were starting from more or less a blank piece of paper:

“At GDS, we’re fortunate because we’re a relatively new organisation. We were able to build our own culture from scratch.

Much of what GDS has become began in its very early days, when a small team of people were building the GOV.UK alpha. But since then it has iterated, evolved, and changed, just like the products and services we make.”

And it's not just that they were starting from scratch. Culture may come from below, but it requires the leaders of your organisation to create the environment where those at the bottom feel empowered to drive cultural change.

Foreshew-Cain again:

“You can’t impose culture upon your team. You can’t tell them how to act.

Your job as a leader is to provide the right environment in which culture can emerge and evolve all by itself. That means trusting your people, and ensuring they feel safe; safe to ask questions, safe to make mistakes, safe to do what they think is right.”

I completely agree with Foreshew-Cain here, but it does show the 'culture evolves from the bottom' statement to be slightly disingenuous. Yes, those at the bottom of the pile are best placed to define and drive an organisation's culture, because they are most closely impacted by it. And, equally, cultural initiatives will never take root if they're handed down from the executive level. But you need first for the managers and senior leaders to want their employees to shape the organisation's culture, and that requires a culture at the senior level of its own. How do you create that?