While the COVID-19 virus will always be with us, it appears that we are beginning to leave many of the health consequences of the pandemic behind. But its impact on business continues to unfold—everything from high inflation and the need to restructure supply chains to the “great resignation” of 2022.

But we are only now beginning to recognize one of the most important implications of the pandemic for business: It has left the organizational culture of many firms in tatters.

Traditionally, the values, norms, and practices that make up an organization’s culture were identified and reinforced by employees sharing stories with each other. These stories were about business leaders in a firm doing things that exemplified the firm’s culture, stories about what happened to someone in the firm who violated these cultural norms, or stories about employees deep within a firm acting as “culture heroes”—going well beyond formal policies to do the  culturally “right thing.” These stories—and many others—were shared during coffee breaks, at lunch, and in countless other chance encounters at the office. Sooner or later, these stories would show up in emails—which would lead to still more conversations and sharing of these stories and what they meant for understanding a firm’s culture.

But, when our offices closed, and more people started working from home, two things happened.

First, there were fewer opportunities to build new culture-affirming stories.  Creating and maintaining organizational culture is a “team sport.” Most often, culture-reaffirming stories are built when employees interact with each other, usually around a difficult problem that challenges the veracity of a firm’s cultural commitments. It is very difficult to build these kinds of stories sitting at home, by yourself, staring at a computer screen.

Second, it became more difficult to share any culture-affirming stories that were built. Yes, we were all on interminable Zoom calls. And these calls did facilitate a form of communication. But, computer screens are an example of what media philosopher Marshall McLuhan called “cool media”—they are not rich in sensory data or emotional content.[1] Think of a typical team meeting on a Zoom call—you see a series of headshots, no more than two inches square, no visible body language, people interrupting each other because they can’t read social clues about when to add a comment, people dropping off the call for technical reasons, and so forth. For most firms, it is simply more difficult to share culture-reaffirming stories via Zoom than it is face to face.[2]

What was the result of fewer culture-reaffirming stories being built and shared? Organizational cultures began to deteriorate. For many firms, their culture is in tatters. It is not surprising that more and more firms are calling their employees back to work to, among other things, resurrect their rapidly disappearing cultures.

But, the fact that your organizational culture is probably weaker now than it has ever been may actually be as much of an opportunity as it is a problem.  Now may be a great time to think about the culture your organization needs to have and an even better time to do the things you need to do to build a new culture.

This process starts by examining your organization’s strategy—are you strategically positioned for post-pandemic success? Just because your strategy worked pre-pandemic does not mean it will be equally successful now. Certainly, in some areas—including supply chain management—a deep rethink may be necessary.

Once you identify your strategy going forward, then ask yourself this question: Do we have the right culture to implement our strategy?  If the answer to this question is “no,” then now—while your culture is in tatters—may be the time to change your culture

So, clearly, the pandemic has created cultural problems. But those problems have also created an unprecedented opportunity to change or upgrade your culture, to increase your ability to implement your traditional or new strategies.

Of course, culture change is not easy. But, using the tools in the book The Secret of Culture Change, you may be able to take advantage of the unique culture-change opportunity created by the pandemic—in short, to turn a “culture problem” into a “culture-change opportunity.”

REFERENCES
[1] See Marshall McLuhan (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Chapter One.
[2] There are some exceptions to this.  See, for example, the description of the online culture at GitLab in Sid Sijbrandij’s “GitLab’s CEO on Building One of the World’s Largest All-Remote Companies,” Harvard Business Review, March-April, 2023.  However, in the GitLab case, this company’s culture was always built online.  It did not go from a “face-to-face” to an “online” culture.  Nevertheless, it is interesting to note how GitLab’s CEO has had to create online versions of the serendipitous interactions that build and diffuse culture in face-to-face settings.

Author: Jay Barney is one of the top three most cited scholars in the field of strategic management, who has published over 125 articles and book chapters, along with seven books. He is a full-time professor at Eccles School of Management at the University of Utah. Connect with Jay at JayBarney.org