The Security Culture Playbook

Chapter 7Interviews with Organizational Culture Experts and Academics

The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

Sir William Bragg

As we were discussing the format of this book, one thing we really wanted to do was include the voices of several culture thought leaders. Notice we didn't say security culture thought leaders. We wanted to hear from academics, consultants, and practitioners who approach the topic of culture broadly. Our hypothesis is that, as you read our interviews with these experts, you'll actually learn quite a bit about security culture, because (after all) security culture is just another form of culture.

The format of this chapter is simple: We sent a list of seven questions to several thought leaders and asked each of them to (as their time allowed) complete at least four of the questions. This allowed each expert to focus on the questions they were most passionate about.

We asked the following questions:

• Why is culture important?
• Why do you find culture interesting?
• Is there a specific definition of culture that you find useful?
• How do you use metrics to improve culture / measure the effectiveness of cultural change?
• What actions can be taken to direct cultural change?
• Is there a success or horror story you'd like to share related to culture change? (Alternative question: What is your most interesting experience with culture?)
• How does a culture evolve (or how often?)

We hope ...