𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐂𝐚𝐧’𝐭 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭

I’ve written a lot over the past few weeks about ways AI can support Networks, CoPs, and Showing Your Work/Working Out Loud. It can do a lot of things to amplify our efforts, corral our messy work habits, and generate rivers of content.

But AI can’t:

♦create trust
♦generate reciprocity
♦produce psychological safety
♦substitute for shared experience

𝘊𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 is where those things happen, in organizations where people are allowed to talk with each other, given opportunities to get together, enabled to voice concerns and objections, and can admit problems or mistakes without fear of the sky falling. That's a culture that fosters trust, reciprocity, inclusion, and psychological safety, values shared experience, and provides “collision spaces” like break rooms and water-cooler corners, both literal and virtual. Culture is about transparency. Culture permits the existence and effective use of the things I’ve been talking about for the past 20 years: strong networks, communities, CoPs, and showing your work/working out loud.

One—ok, two-- of my lasting concerns with conversations regarding “culture” is that the word itself is devilishly hard to define, and often it feels like the onus for creating an effective/productive/supportive culture is on management alone. Workers may not create enterprise-wide culture, but we absolutely help shape local culture. I mean, every team and community and department has its own culture, right? Its own norms and ways of working? (They’re called micro-cultures, btw.)

What culture(s) are you a part of? What can you, as an individual, do to help shape it? As an L&D practitioner, what influence might you have over it?

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