How We Cultivate Culture Through Seasons of Change

Culture is always being cultivated.

Culture isn't just something that we create when conditions are stable. It is also emerging unconsciously, when conditions are changing and when our systems are under strain. It is shaped both when organizations are intentionally investing in culture and when their attention is focused on "more important things."

It evolves through periods of growth, contraction, conflict, transition, and uncertainty. It is not just made in the types of foods we order for the staff lunch, or what the company equity plan looks like. People are continually learning what matters here, how we relate to one another, whose voices carry weight, and what happens when things get difficult.

Change doesn't interrupt culture.

How we respond to change becomes culture.

Culture is alive

We often talk about organizational culture as though it is something an organization has: a set of shared values, norms, behaviors, or beliefs that can be defined, measured, and if we're intentional enough, we can purposefully change it.

A living-systems perspective asks us to see something more dynamic.

Culture is continually emerging through relationships among people, leadership, structures, histories, power, organizational practices, surrounding communities, and the conditions in which all of these exist. Each part affects and is affected by the others in an interdependent relationship.

That means culture doesn't live in a strategic plan, a values statement, or a particular department. It is created and recreated through thousands of interactions: who gets invited into a decision, how disagreement is handled, what gets protected when resources become scarce, whose concerns are taken seriously, how leaders respond when they don't know the answer, and whether the values displayed on the wall are recognizable in people's everyday experience.

And because the conditions around organizations are always changing, healthy organizational cultures aren't static either.

They have to be alive enough to respond.

Change makes culture visible

Seasons of change have a way of revealing things that are easier to overlook when everything is going according to plan.

• When resources contract, what gets protected?

• When expectations conflict, whose needs take precedence?

• When people experience the organization differently, is that difference treated as a problem—or as information?

• When familiar strategies stop working, do we cling more tightly to them or become curious about what else might be possible?

• And when tension emerges, do we retreat into silos—or turn toward one another?

At Woven Grove, we've seen organizations answer these questions in very different ways.

In one organization, a growing racial divide among staff had begun affecting trust and relationships. There were plenty of reasons to avoid talking about it. The conversations would be uncomfortable. People held very different understandings of what was happening. And allowing the division to deepen carried very real relational and organizational risks.

Instead of waiting for the conflict to become a crisis, the Executive Director turned toward it. She invited the board into the conversation, and they approved an all-staff intervention.

Through a series of facilitated conversations facilitated by Woven Grove, staff were able to speak more honestly about their experiences, listen across difference, and begin understanding what was happening underneath the tension. The process didn't magically erase conflict. It created the conditions for people to work with it and eventually generate collaborative solutions that hadn't been visible from within their separate positions.

Another organization, centered on the experiences of women, recognized that it wanted to do better to include queer members of its community. That required more than changing a few words in its communications. People had to encounter assumptions about gender and belonging that were woven into familiar ways of thinking and working.

Some of those conversations were uncomfortable.

But discomfort became information rather than evidence that something had gone wrong.

By staying in conversation, examining unconscious biases, and normalizing rather than avoiding questions of gender inclusion, the organization was able to keep learning. Its strategy and communications evolved alongside that learning. Instead of rushing toward some final state of perfect inclusivity, the community grew organically toward a deeper and more responsive practice of it.

Neither organization cultivated change by knowing exactly where it would end before beginning.

They cultivated it through how they responded to what was emerging.

What are we cultivating around us?

That question feels particularly important in moments when external conditions are changing quickly.

Political priorities shift. Laws and policies change. Funding disappears or moves elsewhere.

Leadership turns over. Language evolves. Communities change. Strategies that once felt effective may no longer produce the same results.

We don't control all of those conditions.

But neither are we merely passive recipients of them.

We are continually participating in culture through what we choose to preserve, question, adapt, practice, and create.

So when the conditions change, we can ask:

• What have we learned that is worth carrying forward?

• What isn't working anymore or perhaps never worked as well as we hoped?

• What relationships need our attention?

• Where do our stated values and people's lived experiences still diverge?

• Where, within the constraints we actually face, is there room to experiment?

• What do we want to cultivate next?

  
  

For organizations committed to equity and belonging, these questions become especially important when the structures, strategies, or language surrounding that work are changing.

An initiative can end. A department can reorganize. Terminology can change...

... but culture keeps being made.

People will continue experiencing belonging or exclusion. Power will continue operating. Decisions will continue distribute opportunities and resources. Organizations will continue affecting the communities of which they are a part.

The question isn't whether we are shaping culture.

It's how.

How are we cultivating our capacity to respond?

There is another part of culture change that can be easier to overlook: the people doing the cultivating are part of the system, too.

Changing conditions don't simply affect our organizations. They affect us.

When everything feels urgent, urgency can begin making our decisions for us.

When we're uncertain, we may reach for greater control.

When we're exhausted, our field of possibility narrows.

When we're afraid of making the wrong choice, familiar ways of doing things can feel safer, even when we know they aren't getting us where we want to go.

And when we're continually reacting to what is immediately in front of us, we can lose contact with the relationships, values, and imagination that make thoughtful leadership possible in the first place.

This is why leadership development and culture change aren't entirely separate projects.

How we lead through changing conditions becomes part of the culture we're creating. And the cultures we're part of shape what becomes possible for us as leaders.

Cultivating culture therefore asks us to attend both to the systems we're participating in and to how we're participating in them.

Can we create enough space to notice what is actually happening before reacting?

Can we stay in relationship when difference or conflict makes withdrawal easier?

Can we remain connected to our values without becoming rigid about the strategies through which we've expressed them?

Can we distinguish between what we cannot control and where we still have meaningful agency?

Can we imagine possibilities that aren't visible from inside the ways we've always done things?

These aren't soft questions alongside the “real” work of organizational change.

They shape our capacity to do it.

Agency is not the same as control

Living-systems thinking can easily become romantic if we aren't careful.

Not every condition can be transformed through creativity, relationship, or a better facilitation process.

Budgets really do disappear.

Laws really do constrain choices.

People lose authority.

Organizations make harmful decisions.

Communities experience consequences that cannot be reframed into opportunities for growth.

Recognizing our agency doesn't require pretending otherwise, because...

...agency is not the same as control.

It is our capacity to discern what is possible within the conditions we actually inhabit.

Sometimes that means protecting something essential.

Sometimes it means adapting a strategy while preserving the value underneath it.

Sometimes it means repairing a relationship.

Sometimes it means naming a conflict that everyone has learned to navigate around.

Sometimes it means letting go of something that has been constraining our collective growth.

And sometimes it means experimenting with a possibility whose outcome we cannot yet know.

The work isn't to predict every season correctly.

It is to become more capable of meeting changing seasons with enough awareness, connection, integrity, and imagination to respond intentionally.

Culture change is a practice of cultivation

Perhaps the goal of culture change isn't to build a culture that reaches a final pinnacle of perfection.

Living things don't flourish by staying the same regardless of their conditions.

They respond. They reorganize. They form relationships. They conserve resources. They grow in unexpected directions. And sometimes they shed what can no longer be sustained so something else can emerge.

Organizations are not forests, and people are not plants... But living systems remind us that adapting to changing conditions and maintaining a measure of continuity don't have to be opposite initiatives.

We can remain deeply rooted in what matters while changing how we embody it.

And perhaps that's one of the central practices of cultivating organizational culture: learning to discern what needs to be rooted more deeply, what needs to adapt, and what new possibilities changing conditions are asking us to grow.

Every season will ask something different of us.

The question is what we will cultivate within it.

Continue the conversation this fall

These questions are at the heart of Woven Grove's Autumn Learning Series, three opportunities for purpose-driven and equity-centered leaders and practitioners to explore culture change from both the organizational and human sides of the work.

🍂 October 7 — What's Next for Equity & Belonging?

Making Sense & Cultivating Possibility in a Season of Change

In-person | Portland, OR

We'll make sense of changing conditions around equity, belonging, and organizational culture; learn how practitioners across sectors are adapting; and explore what we want to carry forward and cultivate next.

🌳 October 14 — Rooted Through the Storm

Lead without Losing Yourself in Complexity and Change

In-person | Portland, OR

We'll turn toward our own capacity to lead within those conditions, practicing ways to remain grounded, relational, values-aligned, and capable of intentional action when the path forward isn't obvious.

🌾 October 21 — Learning Harvest: Community of Practice

Online | Open to All

We'll gather online to reflect on what we're trying, share what we're learning, and harvest collective wisdom for the work ahead.

Attend one workshop or join us across the series. In-person registration includes the Learning Harvest. Bring-a-Collague and community-access pricing is available.

Explore the Series