Is culture overrated?

What does the shuttle Columbia, Heineken, and General Motors have in common?

“The destruction of space shuttle Columbia and the death of its seven astronauts
were caused by a NASA culture driven by schedule, starved for funds, and
burdened with an eroded, insufficient safety program."   Aug 26, 2003

“To over come these challenges, Ruys (CEO) is pushing Heineken to break out of
its play-it-safe corporate culture."     Sept 8, 2003

“CEO Henderson understands he needs to take a wrecking ball to the
automaker’s rigid culture”    June 29,2009

All share the issue of culture as a constraint to success. For this reason, culture receives quite a bit of attention as the reason people do what they do. Culture becomes the main focus of how diversity challenges harmony in communities and organizations. Culture becomes the rationale for someone's worldview, which is the source of perspective behind behavioral choices.

While culture has significant influence on behavior, its possible that it is not the primary factor we should consider. Culture basically is comprised of two factors shared by members of the culture: values and norms. Values are "what is important" and norms are "what is expected." These do vary from culture to culture affecting what people eat, how they view time, how formal communication is, and so forth. I contend that these are more styles of behavior associated with context and not the core characteristics of behavior, such as being selfish or greedy, or getting angry, or using power to subject others to your will.

People across organizations and demographics are actually more alike than different. The similarities are found in their core assumptions. People everywhere are obsessed with justice and reward/punishment systems. People everywhere desire to make inferences from observable data than from faith in something they cannot prove. People everywhere wish truth to be relative. not absolute, and generally bias their view of information to confirm what they already believe to be true. People everywhere wish to determine truth by the rationale of their inferences about an object rather than knowing the originator of the object. These core tendencies are part of human nature and make the major contribution to how people think, feel and act.

While its helpful to understand culture when trying to communicate with each other more effectively, it is not best to see culture as the main determinant of people's perspectives and behavior. More time spent on core assumptions that flow not only from the individual's social identity, but also their personal and natural identity, will provide a more abundant and virtuous life.

BUT, more importantly, when our carnal or human identity is transformed and our core assumptions flow from our spiritual identity, we have access to all of the privileges and provision of THE KINGDOM.

If you don't ponder this regularly, your should .....