Culture is Built Where the Rules End

Some of the moments that define a workplace will never appear in a policy.

They're the moments when a colleague notices someone struggling and checks in, even though nobody asked them to. When a supervisor gives someone ten minutes they hadn't planned to give. When someone sees something that doesn't look right and, rather than assuming it's somebody else's problem, finds the person who can help.

Policies, rules, roles and responsibilities all matter. They tell us who is accountable, what we're expected to do and where important boundaries exist. But they can never anticipate every human moment. There will always be spaces where nobody is officially responsible, nobody is assigned to notice and nobody is required to care.

What fills those spaces is us.

I've become increasingly interested in those moments because I think they reveal far more about a workplace, organization or community than many of the things we formally measure. None of them is particularly dramatic. They probably won't appear in an annual report or get mentioned in a performance review. Most will happen quietly and be forgotten.

But remove enough of those choices and something changes. People become very good at defining what isn't their responsibility. Someone notices a problem but assumes another person will deal with it. Someone could help but decides they don't want the inconvenience. Nobody has necessarily done anything wrong, but repeat those individually reasonable choices often enough and indifference slowly becomes part of the culture.

The opposite can happen just as quietly. Enough people notice when something seems off. Enough people ask the extra question, give a few minutes they hadn't planned to give or accept a little inconvenience because another human being matters. Over time, those choices become part of the culture too.

We absolutely need policies, boundaries and clearly assigned responsibilities. But no organization can write a rule for every moment when one human being has the opportunity to make another person's day, situation or life a little better.

There will always be a space between what we're required to do and what we choose to do.

I think that's where much of our culture is actually built.

— Jason Alderson