Take an organization where people are curious, brave, and full of ideas. In meetings, questions are asked that no one has thought of before. Employees experiment, help each other, and sometimes dare to fail because everyone knows that learning is more important than prestige. There is an energy in the room that makes people go to work with the feeling that they can actually influence the future. New ideas are met with curiosity instead of suspicion, and anyone who sees a problem is also expected to try to contribute to a solution. The culture did not arise through a single workshop or an inspiring vision. It has grown over a long period of time through thousands of small actions where people discover time and time again that it is safe to think out loud, question established ways of working, and try something that is not yet finished.
Then a new manager is hired. Perhaps because the organization is growing.
During the first meeting, the manager interrupts an employee in the middle of an idea and says that the proposal is unrealistic. The following week, someone is publicly questioned for a mistake. Shortly thereafter, more and more decisions begin to be scrutinized in detail. Employees are asked to justify why they chose a certain solution instead of another, and more and more decisions need to be approved before they can be implemented. The arguments are about quality, control, and efficiency, and none of this sounds unreasonable in itself. The organization’s values do not change. The vision of innovation is still on the walls and no one is saying that creativity is no longer important. Yet something is starting to change.
After a few months, the change is clearly noticeable. The meetings become quieter. Fewer ideas are brought forward. People start choosing safe solutions over new ones. No one forbids creativity, but fewer and fewer behave creatively. As innovation gradually decreases, the pressure on other parts of the organization increases, making it harder to deliver. What has changed is not the organization’s official message, but people’s perception of which behaviors are actually safe to repeat. Therefore, the culture changes long before anyone discovers that they have done so.
Culture is the behavior that is okay to repeat
When discussing organizational culture, the conversation often revolves around values, visions, and policy documents. These may be important, but they do not always describe the actual culture that exists. Rather, they describe the organization’s ambitions. Culture becomes much easier to understand if we instead define it as the behavior that is okay to repeat in the organization, over and over again. With such a definition, the focus shifts from what the organization says to what people actually do every day.
If it is okay to help a colleague without being questioned, helpfulness will gradually become part of the culture. If it is okay to ask uncomfortable questions, curiosity will become a natural part of how the organization works. If people dare to share half-baked ideas because they are met with interest instead of criticism, experimentation will also become a natural part of everyday life.
But exactly the same mechanism also applies in the other direction. If it is okay to mock people who make mistakes, this also becomes part of the culture. If power behaviors are accepted, power behaviors will spread. If micromanagement and competitive behavior are considered normal, control and concealment of information will also become a natural part of everyday life. If people discover that the safest strategy is to keep quiet, avoid risks and not stand out, caution will eventually become the organization’s real culture, even if every strategy document talks about courage, innovation and new thinking.
Culture is therefore not a collection of ideals or ambitions. It is the sum of the behaviors that continue to exist because the organization accepts them.
Creativity is also a behavior
It is easy to talk about creativity as if it were a personal trait that some people are born with and others lack. But in practice, creativity is always expressed through concrete actions. Asking an unexpected question is a behavior. Challenging a familiar way of working is a behavior. Sharing an idea before it is finished is a behavior. Saying that the group should perhaps try a completely different approach is also a behavior.
For these actions to become a natural part of the organization’s everyday life, people must feel that they are actually allowed. Not on a single occasion and not just when the results are successful, but consistently over time. It is therefore not enough for management to say that new ideas are welcome if the first person to question a decision is met with irritation. It is not enough to talk about innovation if brainstorming is always prioritized when the calendar becomes full. It is not enough to encourage experimentation if every deviation from the original plan leads to extensive scrutiny or lengthy explanations.
People listen less to what the organization says than to what the organization rewards, accepts, and tolerates. They quickly learn which behaviors are working in practice and adapts accordingly.
The crucial word is “again”
There is one word in the definition of culture that is often overlooked but which is perhaps the most important of all. That word is again.
Culture is not about what is okay to do once. It is about what is okay to do over and over again. This means that the organization must dare to ask itself much harder questions than many do today. Is it really okay to fail three times with different experiments if the person also learns something new each time? Is it okay to continue to question established ways of working even when the questions become uncomfortable? Is it okay to continue to test new ideas even though the first attempts did not give the desired result? Or does the permission only apply until someone actually uses it?
It is only when people know that the same behavior will still be accepted next week, next month and next year that courage begins to grow in earnest. Creativity does not only require freedom. It also requires predictability in freedom. People need to know that the rules of the game don’t change as soon as something goes wrong.
Psychological safety is built slowly but can be destroyed very quickly
Research on psychological safety, including that by Amy Edmondson, shows that people are significantly more likely to share ideas, admit mistakes and ask for help when they feel that the group is safe. However, this safety does not arise from an inspiring lecture or an individual training. It is built slowly through hundreds of small experiences where people discover time and time again that it is actually safe to be open, curious and vulnerable.
Trust therefore works somewhat like an account where each positive experience becomes a small deposit. Over time, the balance grows and people dare to take increasingly greater creative risks because they know that the organization stands behind them even when the outcome is not perfect.
But here there is also the great asymmetry of culture. What has taken several years to build can begin to be destroyed in a few days. Controlling leadership, recurring power behaviors or public reprimands work as large withdrawals from the same account. Suddenly, people start to reevaluate what is actually safe to do. They start to protect themselves instead of contributing to the development of the organization. That is why creative cultures are much more vulnerable than they first seem.
One rotten egg can change the entire system
The old expression that one rotten egg can ruin the whole basket describes organizational culture surprisingly well. Through their role, a manager has significantly more influence over which behaviors are perceived as accepted than most others in the organization. Every comment, every decision and every reaction become signals about which rules actually apply.
If a new manager starts to control in detail, use their formal power to win discussions or publicly criticize people, a message is sent that extends far beyond the individual situation. Employees quickly begin to adapt their behavior. Fewer dare to experiment. Fewer question. Fewer share unfinished ideas. Fewer take their own initiatives.
This means that the organization does not just take a step back. Culturally, it can lose several years of development because the trust that has been built up over a long period of time needs to be recreated. Therefore, recruiting managers is not just a question of competence. It is just as much a question of which behaviors the leader will normalize through his own way of acting.
Creative cultures require leaders who protect behaviors, not just results
Many leaders measure success by results. However, anyone who wants to build a creative culture needs to protect the behaviors that will ultimately lead to results. This means paying attention to people who dare to ask questions before the answers are available. This means creating space for brainstorming even when the business is pressed for time and deliveries. This means letting people experiment without every attempt immediately having to be financially motivated and clearly distinguishing between an intelligent experiment and a careless mistake.
Leadership is therefore less about controlling ideas and much more about protecting the behaviors that make ideas possible. When people know that curiosity, playfulness, creative uncertainty and courage will be met with respect next time, these behaviors gradually become a natural part of the culture.
Changing a culture takes longer than changing a way of working
Many change projects underestimate the inertia of culture. New processes can be introduced in a few months and new digital systems can be implemented in a few weeks. Culture works differently because it only changes when people experience over a long period of time that the new behaviors really continue to be accepted.
A long-term change towards a more creative culture therefore does not start with brainstorming or innovation training. It starts with the organization honestly identifying which behaviors are actually rewarded today and which are actually punished. Leaders then need to consistently reinforce the behaviors that build creativity over time while clearly discouraging behaviors that create fear, control, power plays, and silence.
Over time, people begin to discover that it is indeed safe to think out loud, to collaborate across organizational boundaries, to experiment, and to sometimes fail because learning is valued more than short-term performance. When these experiences are repeated over and over again, norms gradually change. What initially felt unfamiliar eventually becomes the obvious way to work. Only then can you really say that the culture has changed.
Creative culture is a system, not a project
It is tempting to think that creative culture can be created through an inspiring conference, a new innovation program, or a few well-formulated value statements. But culture does not work that way. It is a living system where each behavior affects the next. A courageous act makes it easier for someone else to be courageous too. An open question makes it easier for the next person to question. A respectful approach to failure makes it more likely that more people will dare to experiment. These behaviors reinforce each other and gradually create a system where creativity becomes a natural part of everyday life.
However, the same self-reinforcing mechanisms also apply to the opposite. A power behavior creates caution. Micromanagement creates passivity. Ridicule creates silence. These behaviors spread through the organization because people adapt to the reality they experience, not to the words written in the business plan.
That is why creative culture can never be reduced to a project with an end date. It is the result of thousands of small decisions about which behavior should be possible to repeat tomorrow, next week and next year. Perhaps this is also why the most important question an organization can ask itself is not whether it says creativity is important. The truly crucial question is much simpler but at the same time much harder to answer.
Which behaviors are actually safe to repeat here, over and over again?
The answer to that question is the organization’s true culture. And that’s also where the innovation capability of the future either begins to grow or slowly dies out.
