Disruption

Before quarantine, my work life didn’t have much routine. I might have gone to a client site one day or down to my consulting office; I could have bounced in and out of many office and work cultures without thinking too much about it. I made my own daily plans, and therefore day-to-day I was mostly focused on how I was completing tasks.

Quarantine has completely changed my day-to-day by introducing routine. Now, I spend every second in the same physical space; I’m normally in meetings with the same people, in the same environment (Teams); there is much more opportunity for cultures and micro-cultures to become apparent.

It’s also given me opportunities to disrupt my new routines. For example, why haven’t I tried running in the morning before? Why do I crave free time after work?

Schein has written that culture is: “A pattern of shared basic assumptions…that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems (Schein 1992, p. 12).

I think we can create our OWN internal culture in the way we act in our daily routines. Our internal personality can be influenced by external factors—schedules, people, location—and therefore we can disrupt our own personal culture and make changes.

As a coach, I want to make it my mission to help people see the ways routine is created and sometimes perpetuated by external factors; and that personal change can be facilitated by assessing pressures and assumptions we’ve built into routine.

Schein, E. H. (1992). Defining organizational culture. In Organizational culture and leadership (2nd ed., pp. 3-15). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.