“Why do you actually do it this way?”
It seems like a fairly harmless question. And yet, in companies, it surprisingly often leads to that brief moment when everyone has to stop and think. People look at each other, someone raises an eyebrow, and eventually someone gives an answer we’ve probably all heard before:
“That’s how we’ve always done it.”
We’ll admit it: whenever we hear that sentence, we get curious. Not because “always” automatically means bad. And certainly not because our favourite thing to do at allaboutHRLaw is walk into a company and immediately start changing everything. Quite the opposite. If something has been working well for years and people are happy with it, we’re more than happy for it to stay.
But sometimes, “That’s how we’ve always done it” isn’t rooted in tradition, experience or a conscious decision. Sometimes, no one actually remembers why.
And that’s when things get interesting. Because from our perspective, company culture isn’t only reflected in corporate values, mission statements or what’s written on the careers page. It also shows up in all those little things everyone takes for granted and hardly anyone thinks about anymore.
How do we make decisions? Who is allowed to disagree with whom? How do meetings work? How do we respond to mistakes? What happens when someone questions a rule? And is a new employee in her second week actually allowed to ask, “Why do you do it this way?”
We certainly hope so.
Company culture is also shaped by things no one ever planned
When people think about company culture, they often think first of values such as trust, openness, responsibility or appreciation. All valid. All important. But culture doesn’t come into existence simply because those four words once appeared together on a flip chart during a workshop.
Company culture develops in everyday working life – and often precisely in those moments for which there is no slide, no policy and no predefined process.
For us, company culture is the sum of the small decisions, habits and behaviours that determine how people actually interact with one another in their day-to-day work.
For example, when someone makes a mistake and wonders whether to address it immediately or first try to fix it quietly on their own. When an employee has a different opinion from her manager. When someone receives an email from senior management at 6:47 p.m. Or when a new colleague asks a question that no one internally has asked in years.
Many of these things were never officially decided. They simply developed over time. Someone started running a particular meeting in a particular way. A decision was approved by three people for the first time. At some point, an expectation developed that messages should be answered particularly quickly.
And over time, it simply became:
“That’s how we do things here.”
That can be wonderful. But it can also be exactly the moment when it’s worth asking a question or two.
New employees sometimes ask the best questions
We like questions. That probably isn’t much of a secret by now. And we find questions from people who haven’t been with a company for very long particularly interesting.
That’s because new employees don’t yet know all the internal things everyone else takes for granted. They don’t know which Excel spreadsheet is sacred, which meeting always lasts exactly 60 minutes, or which process is better left unquestioned despite somehow having seven separate steps.
So they ask.
And suddenly, someone has to explain something that has never needed explaining before.
Sometimes there’s a very good answer: “Because we have several locations, and this is what works best for us.” Perfect. Or: “We tried a different solution before and realised that this particular step was missing.” Also perfect.
And sometimes the answer is simply: “Hmm. No idea.”
We don’t think that’s a bad answer at all. Quite the opposite: perhaps that’s exactly the moment when a fresh perspective makes something visible that has long since become invisible to everyone else.
Sometimes you only realise it while you’re explaining it.
“So first, you send it to Lisa. Lisa enters it into the spreadsheet. Then she sends it to Max. Max approves it. After that, it goes back to Lisa and then…”
Brief pause.
“Okay, now that I’m saying it out loud, it does sound a little complicated.”
We like moments like these. Not because we enjoy complicated processes, but because something that has become completely normal in everyday working life suddenly becomes visible again.
That doesn’t mean the new person is automatically right or that everything now has to change. But it might be worth taking the question seriously. Situations like these can tell you a great deal about company culture: Are questions welcome? Are people allowed to challenge established ways of doing things? Or do they quickly learn that certain things simply “are the way they are”?
Not everything old is bad. And, by the way, new doesn’t automatically mean better either.
We’re big fans of questioning things. What we’re not big fans of is changing things just because they can be questioned.
That happens surprisingly quickly in HR, too. A new tool comes onto the market, a new way of working is celebrated on LinkedIn, or a company announces that it has abolished meetings altogether. And suddenly, half the business world starts wondering whether meetings in general might be a sign of organisational failure.
Maybe.
Or maybe you simply need a good meeting.
Not every old habit is bad, and not every new idea automatically represents progress. The same applies to company culture. There may be a tradition that looks a little strange from the outside but is incredibly important internally. A team may have developed a way of communicating that wouldn’t be recommended in any management book and yet works brilliantly.
In that case, we would never say, “This needs to be more modern.”
Why would we?
For us, the much more interesting question is:
Would you consciously choose to do it this way again today?
If the answer is yes, then everything is fine. If the question is followed by a rather long silence, things start to get interesting.
“This is part of who we are” is different from “It was already here”
There are habits we would never want to get rid of: breakfast together on Fridays, the slightly silly inside joke during onboarding, the colleague who has remembered everyone’s birthday for years, or a particular way of celebrating successes together.
Maybe even a meeting that everyone genuinely looks forward to. Yes, we’ve heard those apparently exist. 😉
These things aren’t valuable because they’re particularly efficient. They’re valuable because people have given them meaning.
That’s an important distinction. Company culture doesn’t need to be optimised everywhere. It’s allowed to simply be human.
For us, “This is part of who we are” is therefore something completely different from “It was already here.” In the first case, people have given a habit value and meaning. In the second, something may simply be continuing because no one has ever had a reason to question it.
And that’s exactly why our goal isn’t to track down as many old habits as possible and get rid of them. The much more interesting question is which of them a company consciously wants to keep.
Because sometimes, the best decision really is:
We’re keeping this exactly as it is.
The little rules that aren’t written down anywhere
Almost every company has them: those rules that no one has ever officially written down, yet a surprising number of people seem to know.
Who is allowed to interrupt whom in a meeting? How quickly are you expected to respond to a message? Is it really okay to decline an invitation from senior management? What happens if someone finishes work at 4 p.m.? And does “You can give feedback at any time” really mean at any time?
These unwritten rules are particularly interesting because they often have a stronger influence than what is officially communicated.
A website can say that personal responsibility is part of the company culture. But if employees experience that even small decisions need to be approved multiple times, eventually they will stop taking their cues from the company value and start taking them from their own experience.
The same applies to mistakes. A company can speak very convincingly about how mistakes are allowed. But things only become truly interesting when a project actually goes wrong. Do we look for a solution first, or for someone to blame? Can someone say, “That was my decision, and it was the wrong one,” without it immediately turning into a drama?
Conflict is part of it, too. Wherever people work together, there will be different opinions, expectations and interests. From our perspective, a good culture doesn’t mean that everyone always agrees. What’s much more interesting is whether disagreement is possible and how people treat one another when things become uncomfortable.
For us, situations like these often reveal more about company culture than ten pages of corporate values ever could.
And that’s exactly why it’s worth taking a look at everyday working life from time to time. Not under a microscope, and not with the intention of analysing every little quirk. Just with one fairly simple question:
Is this actually how we want to work together – or is it simply how things developed over time?
We’re happy to bring an outside perspective
When you work in a company every day, many things eventually become second nature. That’s completely normal. After all, we have our own things that we take for granted, too.
That’s why we find an outside perspective so valuable. Not in the sense of walking in and explaining to you how companies are supposed to work.
That would be rather presumptuous.
We want to understand why your company works the way it does. What matters to you? What do you definitely want to keep? Where are the sticking points? Which things suit you perfectly, and which might only still exist because no one has ever asked why?
Sometimes, we ask fairly simple questions: “Why?”, “Who is this important to?” or “What would happen if you did it differently?”
And, quite often:
“Do you actually need this?”
That’s probably a pretty good description of how we work at allaboutHRLaw. We don’t want to produce as much HR as possible, nor do we want to impose our own idea of how a company should operate.
We want to understand what’s needed.
That’s why not every question we ask leads to a change. Nor should it. Sometimes we realise together: This is exactly right as it is. And sometimes people look at each other and think, “Interesting. We’ve genuinely never thought about that before.”
Both are good outcomes.
Company culture can’t simply be installed
You can’t install company culture like a piece of software. There’s no button for “more trust”, no template for genuine openness and, unfortunately, no automated workflow that makes people enjoy working together.
A shame, really. It would be convenient.
Of course, HR can create the right framework. We can question structures, clarify responsibilities, facilitate conversations and work together to determine what suits a company. But ultimately, culture develops between people – in countless small situations, every single day.
That’s why we don’t want to impose a particular culture on companies either. We’re much more interested in what’s already there, what works well and what should consciously continue to be part of the company.
Because startups and SMEs don’t all have to work in the same way.
Thankfully.
A good company culture doesn’t have to look like that of another successful company. It needs to suit the people who work there and the company they are building together.
Perhaps that’s exactly why we like asking questions before giving answers.
Would we choose to do it exactly the same way today?
Maybe, in the end, “That’s how we’ve always done it” isn’t actually the sentence that bothers us.
Maybe it’s simply missing the second half.
“That’s how we’ve always done it because it works for us.”
“That’s how we’ve always done it because it’s part of who we are.”
“That’s how we’ve always done it because we made a conscious decision to do it this way.”
We can live with that pretty well.
Because, for us, that’s exactly the difference between a habit and a consciously lived company culture.
So we wouldn’t want to ban “That’s how we’ve always done it” from companies altogether. We’d simply like to add one small question:
“And would we choose to do it exactly the same way today?”
If the answer is immediately yes: wonderful.
If everyone has to think about it for a moment: also wonderful. There might be something worth discussing.
And if the answer eventually is, “No idea. But good question,” then we’re usually already in the middle of a pretty interesting conversation.
We like conversations like that.