I remember working for a medium-sized business a few years back and being mandated with the task to establish the HR Department and to put considerable effort into moving the organisational culture in a certain direction. With this shift there was, over time, a significant exodus of employees from the organisation. As I kept a pulse on the culture there was a meme that emerged in the consciousness of the employees who stayed behind that expressed itself as,

"I don't know what is up with this company? There are so many people leaving! I think there is something wrong with this place, but I'm not quite sure what it is?"

It was amazing at how this meme propagated itself in the organisation ... akin to ripples in water after being disturbed by a stone. Although not a irregular occurrence in organisations, the reverberation that this meme sent through the culture was tangible. It resulted in insecurity, defensiveness and a plethora of other not-so-nice effects.

Isn't it amazing how quickly reverberations can be sent through an organsation's culture? Most often the reverberations I refer to are as a result of some significant statement on the company's financials, the resignation of a senior person, the effects of strike-action.

Come to think of it, reverberations like these have cost me business. In the recent past a colleague and I had a contracted culture project pulled after the company received some bad press after strike-action. It was apparently not apt to run a narrative cultural diagnostic at the time (read: we don't want to give our employees a platform to moan about us). And then, just recently the recent resignation of a respected CE and a statement on poor quarterly results, similar reverberations have run through a well-respected mining company who we have been similar work with.

It only takes the stamping of a butterfly's wings to shift a culture.