To understand organizational culture, consider this analogy from the late author and novelist David Foster Wallace. Here’s how it goes: A big fish meets a little fish and asks “how’s the water?” In response, the little fish say’s “what’s water?” The water is like organizational culture, which is slightly different than how we talk about culture in a broader sense.  So in the fish and water analogy, organizational culture is the water we swim in. If we apply this to the workplace, it's common that we don’t truly appreciate or understand our organizational cultures until we leave them and enter a new job with an entirely different workplace environment with unfamiliar work styles, values, and systems. 

Quite simply, workplace cultures matter greatly for organizations that want a competitive advantage. We’ve come to understand that 360-degree perspective provided by people from different backgrounds and walks of life stoke innovation. When organizations are homogenous, the perspectives tend to be homogenous as well.

We invite you to listen to this episode of Becoming Inclusive with special guests DEI experts Gradiola Kapaj and Trisha Carter now. You can also subscribe to the podcast, which airs weekly, and offers a wide array of diverse voices and perspectives offered by leading-edge DEI subject matter experts. To join the conversation, leave a comment and share the link with colleagues who might also enjoy learning more about this and other timely topics. 

The Kaleidoscope Group is a full service Diversity, Equity & Inclusion firm in Chicago serving clients world-wide. We can help you develop organizational change that actively engages everybody in your organization, turning resistance into energy and motivation for change. Let’s talk about where you’d like to go and how to get there. Visit us at https://kgdiversity.com