For years I believed culture was the answer.
Like many people, I saw culture as the foundation upon which organisations succeed or fail.
But something never quite fitted.
Culture explained what I could observe.
It didn’t explain why it emerged.
Eventually I found myself asking a different question.
What creates culture?
Not the values on a wall.
Not the strategy document.
Not the organisational chart.
People do.
More accurately…
People making thousands of choices every single day.
Whether to speak.
Whether to stay silent.
Whether to take responsibility.
Whether to avoid difficult conversations.
Whether to help.
Whether to trust.
Those choices gradually become habits.
Habits become behaviours.
Behaviours become culture.
That’s when I realised I had been looking at the consequence instead of the cause.
Culture matters enormously.
But beneath culture sits something more fundamental.
The capacity people have to make intentional choices.
Their Human Agency.
Perhaps improving culture isn’t the starting point.
Perhaps strengthening Human Agency is.
Culture may simply be its collective expression.
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