Understand your culture by working on a real problem
Ask most organisations to “work on culture” and you’ll get a values workshop, an engagement survey and a fresh set of posters. Edgar Schein, who spent a career studying organisational culture, thought this was the wrong place to start. Culture is hard to see when you look at it directly, he argued, and much easier to understand when you are trying to get something real done.
Culture shows up when there is a problem to solve
Schein defined culture as the pattern of shared assumptions a group has learned while solving its problems of external adaptation and internal integration. In other words, culture is accumulated learning about what works around here. It lives at three levels: the visible artefacts (forms, processes, titles, rituals), the espoused values (what leaders say matters) and the underlying assumptions (what people quietly believe and act on). A survey mostly samples the first two. The assumptions are where the action is, and they tend to reveal themselves when something is difficult, in crisis even, when stated values and real behaviour pull in different directions (Schein & Schein, 2017).
That is why Schein advised starting with a genuine problem rather than with a “culture survey” as such. Choose something the organisation cares about, work on it with the people involved, and watch what helps and what gets in the way (Schein, 2009). Culture stops being an abstraction and becomes the thing that explains why a sensible solution keeps stalling.
Why workers’ compensation is a good problem
Workers’ compensation and injury management is a strong candidate, for four reasons.
It matters. Injured people, their families, their managers and the bottom line are all affected, so motivation is rarely the issue. SIRA’s Return to Work Roadmap 2026–28 reports that the share of injured NSW workers back at work within 13 weeks has slipped from 88% to 79%, and that psychological injuries make up around 10% of claims but 26% of costs, with only about 40% back at work within 13 weeks.
It happens in ordinary working life. A manager hears about an injury. There is a conversation, or there isn’t. There is a form, a certificate, a decision about suitable duties, a call from an insurer. Every one of those moments is cultural evidence.
It exposes the gap between what we say and what we assume. Almost every organisation says its people are its greatest asset, or words to that effect. Then someone is injured, and you find out what is really believed. Is the injured worker someone to support, or someone to manage and monitor? Does the supervisor feel safe to pick up the phone, or are they worried about blame, premiums and paperwork? Do HR, safety and the frontline each hold a different story about whose job this is? Those answers are the underlying assumptions, and they predict outcomes far better than the values statement on the wall.
Doing it better is worthwhile. Early, human contact after an injury, clear roles and a genuine focus on what the person can do all tend to help recovery. None of this means cutting corners. Legal obligations are the floor, and good practice works within them.
It is also a wicked problem
Here is the catch. Injury management is a wicked problem. The term comes from Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, who in 1973 distinguished tame problems, which can be defined and solved, from wicked ones, which cannot (Rittel & Webber, 1973). Wicked problems resist a clear definition, because how you frame them shapes what you try. They have no natural stopping point; there is no moment when you can declare that the work is done. Solutions are not simply right or wrong, only better or worse, and they are contested by people with different interests. Every case is different enough that a template only goes so far. And what you do changes the situation you are trying to fix.
Anyone who has handled a psychological injury claim will recognise this. The injury, the workplace, the treating team, the scheme and the person’s life all interact, and the “right” answer depends on whom you ask.
Tackled, not solved
Which brings us to the second idea: wicked problems are tackled rather than solved. This is not defeatism. It is a change of stance. If you believe a problem can be solved, you go looking for the perfect system, declare victory and move on. If you accept it is wicked, you treat every step as a tentative commitment, watch what happens and adjust. The Australian Public Service Commission’s guide to the topic is titled Tackling Wicked Problems for a reason (APSC, 2007), and Keith Grint (2008) argues that such problems call for leadership that asks the right questions and draws in the people affected, rather than command-and-control answers.
This is where Schein’s other idea, humble inquiry, earns its place. Humble inquiry is the discipline of asking, with genuine curiosity, questions you do not already know the answer to. What happened from your side? What would help? What is getting in the way? What have we assumed here that we have never checked? In injury management those questions can be put to the injured worker, the supervisor, the treating practitioner and the claims team, and the answers expose the assumptions that hold a culture in place (Schein & Schein, 2021).
In practice, tackling the problem might mean choosing one stage, such as the first four weeks after an injury, and learning your way into it. Map what actually happens. Ask the people involved. Try one small change, like a supervisor call within 48 hours that opens with a question rather than a form. See what changed, and what it showed about how your organisation really works. Then do it again.
The payoff
The reward is double. You improve something that matters to real people, and you learn about your culture in the only way that sticks: by watching it respond to a genuine challenge. The learning is the lasting benefit. An organisation that has learned to tackle one wicked problem openly is better placed for the next, whether that is psychosocial hazards, major change or something nobody has named yet.
So if you want to understand your culture, skip the survey and start with an injury. Humbly ask what actually happens when someone gets hurt at work, and go searching for the underlying assumptions.
References
Australian Public Service Commission (2007). Tackling Wicked Problems: A Public Policy Perspective. Canberra: APSC.
Grint, K. (2008). Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: the role of leadership. Clinical Leader, 1(2), 54–68.
Rittel, H.W.J. & Webber, M.M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169.
Schein, E.H. (2009). The Corporate Culture Survival Guide (new and revised ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Schein, E.H. & Schein, P.A. (2017). Organizational Culture and Leadership (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Schein, E.H. & Schein, P.A. (2021). Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
State Insurance Regulatory Authority (2026). Return to Work Roadmap 2026–28. Sydney: SIRA.
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