The Generative Culture Series
Essays from the making of a book on generative culture: Ron Westrum's typology of organizational cultures, what generative culture actually asks of leaders, and how failure, messengers, and truth get handled where you work. Each essay stands alone; together they build toward the book.
About the frame
The essays below share one frame: Ron Westrum's 2004 typology of organizational cultures, which sorts organizations by how information moves through them. Each essay names the frame briefly and then goes to work on one specific behavior. The fuller treatment of the typology, its evidence, and its limits is its own essay, the first one below.
- The frame
Pathological, Bureaucratic, Generative: The Culture Underneath the Work
Where Westrum's three-cultures model came from, how it reached software, what the evidence honestly supports, and the permission it grants: to change your culture, accept it, or finally have it confirmed.
Read the essay → - Part 1
Low, Modest, High: How Your Culture Shapes Cooperation
Cooperation runs low, modest, or high depending on the culture around it. Why organizations that say they want cooperation still restrict it, what the warm silo costs, and when swarming teamwork backfires.
Read the essay → - Part 2
Shot, Neglected, Trained: What Happens to Messengers
Whether an organization shoots, neglects, or trains the person who brings it bad news reveals which of Ron Westrum's three cultures it actually runs, and what everyone else learns about speaking up next time.
Read the essay → - Part 4
Discouraged, Tolerated, Encouraged: How Your Culture Handles Bridging
Every organization handles cross-team help somewhere between discouraged, tolerated, and encouraged. How to tell which one you run, and how to make the favor economy visible without punishing the people who keep it working.
Read the essay → - Part 5
Scapegoat, Justice, Inquiry: How Your Culture Deals With Failure
When something breaks, whether an organization hunts for someone to blame, follows the rulebook, or asks what let the failure happen reveals which of Ron Westrum's three cultures it actually runs, and what accountability really means there.
Read the essay →