83 - Social Architecture

The silent variable

One thing Griff and I are being very deliberate about with Mayday is our social architecture. I love Warren Bennis’ definition of social architecture as “the silent variable that translates the booming, buzzing confusion of organisational life into meaning”. It is synonymous with culture; entailing norms, values and behaviours. I much prefer the term social architecture to culture. It implies tangibility and consequent malleability; that you can deliberately act to build and alter it. Whereas culture implies an organic intangibility and consequent rigidity. To illustrate that point. Imagine someone comes to you and says “Company X has some issues with their social architecture”. Whereas someone else says “Company Y has some issues with their culture”. The latter feels much more deep seated and less tractable. Vocabulary matters.

Over the coming posts I will cover:

• Why social architecture is so important;

• The components of social architecture

  • Mission

  • Vision

  • Values

  • Behaviours

• Social architecting - the actions to instil and enhance