For much of my career, I was fascinated by structure.
Organisational design.
Governance.
Processes.
Reporting lines.
Like many leaders, I believed that if we could just build the right structure, performance would follow.
Sometimes it did.
Often it didn’t.
What puzzled me was that organisations with similar structures could produce very different results.
The more I observed, the more I realised that the structure wasn’t creating the outcome.
People were.
The same process could encourage ownership in one organisation and compliance in another.
The same governance could create learning in one place and silence in another.
The difference wasn’t the framework.
It was how people experienced it.
Looking back, I think that’s why culture is so difficult to define.
It’s not something we install.
It’s something people feel.
And what people feel influences the choices they make every day.
The most effective organisations I’ve worked with weren’t necessarily the ones with the best structures.
They were the ones where people believed their contribution mattered.
Where responsibility was encouraged.
Where judgement was trusted.
Where ownership was expected.
The structure provided the framework.
The people brought it to life.
It took me a long time to understand that.
But once I did, I started looking at organisations very differently.
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People Rarely React To What Is Happening — They React To What It Means To Them.
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