The Westrum model has been shown to predict software delivery performance. It also helps us get a quantifiable handle on the intangible concept of culture.  With concrete focus points, it is a fantastic way to start improving your culture. This episode covers the Westrum Model. Sources https://cloud.google.com/solutions/devops/devops-culture-westrum-organizational-culture https://inthecloud.withgoogle.com/state-of-devops-18/dl-cd.html https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/13/suppl_2/ii22 https://www.amazon.com/Accelerate-Software-Performing-Technology-Organizations/dp/1942788339   Transcript Culture - We know it is the foundation upon which we build high performing teams. Yet, it is a difficult topic to address. We struggle to quantify culture, and what does good culture mean? How can we approach improving our culture without resorting to jamborees and dancing around the bonfires? Team building can feel very disconnected from our everyday lives. The Westrum Typology of Organizational cultures is a model that helps us quantify our culture with focus on information flow in the organization. It has even been shown to drive software delivery performance. The Westrum model gives us an actionable approach to good culture. I’m Johan Abildskov, join me in the dojo to learn. In any conversation about transformations, whether digital, agile or DevOps, you can be certain that before much time has passed, someone clever will state “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This quote is from Peter Drucker and implies that no matter how much effort we put into getting the strategy perfect, execution will fail if we do not also improve the culture. Culture is to organizations what personality is to people. We can make all the new years resolutions, fancy diets and exercise plans, but if we do not change our habits, our patterns, or personality, even the best-laid plans will fail. While a human lapse in strategy might involve eating an extra cupcake and result in weight gain we had not planned for, an organizational lapse in culture might be accidentally scolding someone for bringing bad news to light, which results in an organization where problems and challenges are hidden. So it is important that we focus on establishing a healthy culture on top of which we can execute our clever strategies. Our culture is the behaviour that defines how we react as an organization.   Ron Westrum is an American sociologist, that has done research on the influence of culture to for instance patient outcomes in the health sector. He has built a model of organizational culture based on information flow through the organization. Being in the good end of this scale has been shown by the DevOps Research and Assessment team to be predictive of software delivery performance and organizational performance.   There are three categories of organizations in the Westrum model, Pathological or power oriented. Bureacratic or rule oriented and generative or performance oriented.    In pathological organizations, information is wielded as a weapon, used to fortify ones position, or withheld as leverage to be injected at the right moment to sabotage others, or cover ones own mistakes. Cooperation is discouraged as that can bring instability into the power balance, and the only accountability that is present is scapegoating and the blame game. Obviously this is a toxic environment, and the least performing organization type.   In the bureaucratic organizations the overarching theme is that it doesn’t matter if we did something wrong or in a bad way, as long as we do it by the book. Responsibilities are accepted, but the priority is not sensemaking, the priority is that no one can claim we did something wrong. Bad news are typically ignored, by the logic that the process is right, and the process is working.    Generative organizations focus on outcome or performance. It doesn’t matter who gets credit as long as the organization wins. Failures are treated as learning