Culture Drift: The Governance Risk Nobody Sees Coming

Culture drift is one of the most dangerous things that can happen in an organisation.

📖 This week, a profession with one of the most rigorous ethical codes in any industry found itself on the front pages again.
Integrity. Objectivity. Confidentiality. Professionalism.
Core foundations of a profession that serves to uphold confidence in the capital markets.

⛓️‍💥 The code did not hold. At least not for some.
I feel deep empathy for those who upheld the code, those who did the right thing. Their stories will not be making the front page of the news.

🌿 Culture drift does not require bad people, it just requires the right conditions.
It may look like unchecked positional power, culture that bends around some but not others, silence from those who do not speak up, frameworks that foster and reinforce the behaviours. A gradual normalisation of the shifts until they become acceptable.

🏊‍♀️ My friend is an ocean swimmer. She sights as she swims in the open ocean, regularly lifting her eyes to a fixed point on the horizon, just to check if she has drifted off course. Recalibrating. Then pushing forward with her strokes.

💫 Purpose, values and ethics serve the same function in an organisation. They are the fixed point. The thing you look back to and ask honestly: are we still where we said we would be?

Some questions that are surfacing as I write this:
❓ What are the fixed points that tell us we are still on course, and what are the agreed indicators that signal we have drifted?
❓ What mechanisms have we built for people to speak up safely, and do people actually use them?
❓ Are we fostering a speak up culture built on genuine listening, trust and the bravery to act on what we hear?
❓ When important decisions are being made, whose voices are in the room, and whose are deliberately sought out?
❓ When did we last read the full voice of our people from the employee engagement survey - not the summarised, not the simplified, but the unfiltered words of those who took the time to tell us what they see and feel?

Culture drift is rarely visible from inside. That is what makes it dangerous.

(Photo credit: Ocean Swims)