Healthy change comes from being stretched … from choosing how to balance competing objectives, from deciding how to move from where you are to where you want to be.

Teams succeed when they are aligned on how to make those choices.

Teams falter if there’s no common vision of where they are headed. Or if some people are pulling toward the future while others are holding on to the past. Or if — explicitly or implicitly — they're following a different set of cultural “rules” to answer questions like what tradeoffs are ok to make, how much risk is acceptable, or what to do when the group disagrees.

Culture in Action’s three core practices provide a structure to identify your most important tensions, have meaningful conversations about them, and agree on how to move forward.

At any moment in time, your organization is full of TENSIONS. They can be uncomfortable … but they are healthy and necessary.

The practice of TENSIONS involves naming the gaps between the present state and the desired future state.

Naming TENSIONS requires honesty and creativity. There are legitimate reasons you are where you are. Properly framed TENSIONS acknowledge that. They then draw upon your creativity to see the future, isolate the muscle that connect the future to the present, and acknowledge the spectrum of possibilities that sit between those two endpoints.

The trick with TENSIONS is to avoid negative, self-fulfilling descriptions of the current state, simplistic descriptions of the desired future state, or self-defeating views of the challenges involved in getting from here to there.

Having named the TENSION you want to work on, the next step is to explore it.

The practice of CONVERSATION involves confronting the TENSION with open-mindedness and creativity, working collaboratively to explore the possibilities in a way that moves you forward.

Good CONVERSATION requires discipline, to stay focused on the specific TENSION you’re working on. It requires continued creativity, to identify fully the opportunities and alternatives available to you It requires open-mindedness, to integrate different perspectives. And it requires attention, to acknowledge the dynamics within the group and draw out the contributions of all team members.

Every CONVERSATION needs to end with agreed upon actions. 

ACTIONS create clarity and define a shared path forward. They build trust, as people make and then deliver on meaningful commitments.

ACTIONS don’t need to resolve the TENSION. Sometimes, in fact, maintaining the TENSION is healthy and can lead to more creativity or better solutions.  For example, there is no permanent rule that will tell you how to balance growth against managing risk, or how to make tradeoffs between near-term results and long-term objectives. Healthy organizations embrace the pull between these kinds of competing objectives and use the resulting TENSIONS as a source of continual innovation and renewal.

Without psychological safety, the dysfunctional parts of your culture will stay dysfunctional. Nobody will name the elephant in the room. Nobody will tell you what you need to know. Nobody will have the confidence to take risks in order to forge a better path forward.

Without psychological safety, you can confront tensions, have conversations, and agree on actions. But you’ll continue to be hamstrung and blindsided but the things nobody had the courage to say out loud.

That’s why the remaining four practices focus on creating psychological safety.

PRESENCE is as simple as a mother’s advice and as complex as Buddhist theology. 

PRESENCE focuses on the simple truth that in order to fully participate in and give your best to any CONVERSATION, you need first to create the space to be calm, open, and aware. 

The practice of PRESENCE involves choosing to be where you are, not in the past or in the future.

Stop for a moment. Let go of whatever just happened. Stop worrying about what’s coming. Silence your phone.  

PRESENCE is a foundational practice, since all of the other practices build upon and benefit from your strength of PRESENCE.

FOCUS uses the space you’ve created by being PRESENT to pay attention – to what’s going on inside you, what’s going on with others in the group, and what’s going on for the group as a whole.

The practice of FOCUS inovolves surveying what you’re paying attention to, naming it, and intentionally directing your attention to what is important at this particular time.

The practice starts with silence, during which members of the team focus individually on what is happening for them. It then turns to the group, with each member of the group briefly checking in. And it ends with the group pausing for a moment to assimilate what they’ve heard in order to create a sense of what is happening for the group as a whole.

Ever bought a new car and, suddenly, you see that car all over the place?  Our brains are continually bombarded with information – most of which we ignore. The practice of STORIES focuses on the basic truth that when something is top of mind, we notice it. 

STORIES involves telling and hearing quick, one or two sentence examples that highlight the best of the team’s culture in action, in order to make the cultural practices you want clear, explicit, and visible. 

Short, simple STORIES affirm your team’s strengths and values, highlight specific actions that demonstrate those strengths and values, and place positive actions front and center so they are more likely to be noticed and repeated.

APPRECIATION is designed to explicitly reinforce the team’s commitment to honesty and continual improvement.

During APPRECIATION, participants name a specific action or contribution that somebody made during the session that they valued.

As with STORIES, these are quick, one or two sentence offerings about specific things people said or did. While brief, APPRECIATION is essential to focus the group on what went well so that it can do more of the things that are working, and change anything that isn’t.