My mother recently had cataract surgery.

As it is the most common surgery in South Korea (ranked 2nd among all surgeries for people in their 40s, 1st among all rapidly increasing surgeries for people in their 50s, 1st among all surgeries after the age of 60, 2020 major surgery statistics, National Health Insurance Service), despite visiting the hospital for 4 days in a row during the opening hours to check on her condition, there were always 11 to 18 people waiting.

The appointment time is essentially meaningless (it takes an average of 1 hour), and the hospital's operating method reveals the 'tension'that flows among the patients in the waiting room.

Then, one nurse shouts to the waiting room.

In the center of the waiting room, there were four rows of long chairs that could seat about 30 people, facing two examination rooms in the front, with a small pillar between them. The small, somewhat uncomfortable white folding chairs placed between the pillar and the examination rooms, were the 'chairs in front'that the nurse had indicated.

One elderly person who moved to the chairs in front following the nurse's call, kept fidgeting with the metal watch on his wrist, perhaps due to the continued waiting time, and eventually got up from his seat and walked directly to the front of the transparent examination room, which was now closer.

The doctor inside the examination room briefly looked away from the equipment and glanced at the patient peeking at the door. The moment he turned back to focus on the patient in front of him, the nurse who saw this shouted.

The patient, embarrassed by the nurse's reprimand, turns around and goes back to the chair. What would he be thinking at that moment?

'Is it me who is the problem here?'

More importantly, wouldn't others in the waiting room feel his embarrassment besides me?

What if this hospital's value philosophy and organizational culture slogan was 'Patient First'? If this idealistic and unified expression is continuously exposed to potential customers on a large scale through the hospital's website and SNS channels, how would patients who actually visit the hospital perceive similar experiences?

'The chairs in front', a symbol revealing the reality of organizational culture

'The chairs in front' are a symbol of the value proposition structure devised by the group of nurses to reduce the tension experienced by patients in the waiting room.It serves to reassure patients in the waiting room that they will be seen next, as they can see that they are now sixth in line to be seen after over an hour of waiting. This also serves to reassure those who have moved to the chairs in front that the same relaxed criteria will be applied to them soon.

However, patients who are physically closer to the examination room after 'being called by the nurse' are less concerned about the gazes of other patients in the waiting room, and it can be understood as a natural human behavior to approach the examination room because they have already waited long enough and feel impatient.

However, the most important value proposition to the doctors in the examination room is their focus on the patient in front of them.Diagnosis and treatment of 'eyes', a sensitive part of the body, require extreme precision. Moreover, they must be fully focused on the patient being treated, as this is the best way to minimize the discomfort of patients in the waiting room. Therefore, shadows moving and peering through the examination room glass wall, although understandable, are experienced as an element that disrupts the value proposition prepared by the doctors.

It is clear that both groups of medical professionals, nurses and doctors, prioritized the value they provided to patients from their own perspectives. However, it is important to note that this clash of different value systems is happening in the actual workplace. In other words, we need to acknowledge that the reality of organizational culture is a sum of various conflicting subcultures that are difficult to define with idealistic expressions.

Bad culture mindset VS. Good culture mindset

'Culture is the tacit social order of an organization: it shapes attitudes and behaviors in wide-ranging and durable ways.'

Based on the above definition of 'culture' from an article found in the Harvard Business Review, I would like to divide the perspective of looking at organizational culture into two major categories:

Bad Culture Mindset:

• A fixed form of,
• mission or value-oriented,
• idealistic single expression; 'Our culture is...'

In many cases, when defining corporate culture, we see a phenomenon where we stop at 'how we want to be perceived externally'. A typical corporate response in this regard is indifference to the reality of organizational culture experienced by employees in the actual workplace, and a denial of the gap between the culture in the workplace and the ideal expression.

"Organizational culture is the shared way of doing things with passion."

• Brian Chesky, co-founder of AirBnB

This example seems to depict an image of a utopian culture. The word 'passion' mentioned in particular is a cool expression that is linked to creativity and energy. However, since organizations are fundamentally structured based on goals and achievements, this expression does not contain the core content to guide the behaviors and attitudes of members of each department within the organization.

Furthermore, in the attempts of organizational leaders to define culture as above, the fundamental misunderstanding about culture that we must check is the idea that 'it can be defined'. In fact, culture is 'something that already exists'.

After the US-originated financial crisis of 2008 swept the globe, in October 2014, William Dudley, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, gave a speech in which he used the word 'culture' 45 times, arguing that"it is essential to improve the culture of the current financial services industry."He said.

“(It) exists within every firm, whether it is recognized or ignored, whether it is nurtured or neglected, and whether it is embraced or disavowed.” "(Culture) exists within every firm, whether it is recognized or ignored, whether it is nurtured or neglected, and whether it is embraced or disavowed."

He said that the 'Edginess culture'of the hectic and anxious situation that bankers were immersed in, and the deep-rooted cultural clues of a 'win at all costs' attitude in the financial sectorwere the seeds of the massive financial crisis that could not be resolved by government regulations or organizational restructuring, and a change in corporate culture on a scale corresponding to the change in corporate structure is the key to continuous change.

Good Culture Mindset = Holistic mindset as an observer

• Complex and messy; an endlessly ongoing stream of change
• Conflicts arise and can be irrational; as people communicate and respond to each other,
• Unconscious and organically connected; causing us to consider who we are and what values we seek together

It becomes possible to interpret and understand culture by looking at the existing culture as it is. 'The chairs in front' in the waiting room mentioned earlier is an excellent example of a symbol that allows us to see how organizational culture is structured and interacts in reality from a holistic perspective.

Please check the following content at the link below due to the character limit.

https://durumis.com/ko/@ryan-reason/environment-culture-of-transition-romance-2-the-power-of-observation-um9h7vk9