There are many facets to the idea of taking things for granted. One of them being, that the culture we live in is given, especially the aspects we like.

When the culture we work in, is one of generosity and care, then the assumption often is, that it’s normal, that it’s how it should be.

It’s easy for problems which appear to earn all the focus, to be “the thing” which is being discussed. It receives attention. It becomes “the thing” to be solved, to be changed. Most of the time this is an error.

People are wired to see problems in the realm of cause and effect relationships. It’s how they describe them. What’s underestimated is the presence of complexity whenever a group of people is involved. Addressing complexity means to deal with so many cause-and-effect relationships that we fail to describe the problem with them. Instead, we need to search for the leverage the problem has on the system. In that case, system means culture.

The problem can’t be solved by addressing the problem. It needs to be seen through its impact on the culture.

Depending on the foreseen impact our task becomes to think about the culture, the one we have and the one we want to keep.

If we take culture for granted, we can’t see that taking care of it is the solution.