Singing Performance: Learning the Culture Takes Time

Imagine you are lost in the Australian outback. The sun tells you the direction, but that does not help much. You do not recognize landscape markers, and you are not sure where you have come from or where you are going, and you are feeling confused, lonely, and totally unsure how to proceed. 

Suddenly a man appears, singing a song, striding confidently along, heading purposefully toward somewhere in a landscape that seems devoid of anything other than shrubs, a few hills, and a couple of rocks. He motions you to follow, and you gratefully do so, even though you are not sure where you are going. Getting somewhere is better than being stuck nowhere.

Now think about when you started a new job. Did you feel a bit like you were lost in the outback? You had some formal markers—your job, your workspace, some policies and procedures, and even an employee handbook. The stuff you got at orientation. You had the knowledge and skills to do your job. But somehow, you did not yet fit into the team or the organization, no matter how nice and helpful your colleagues were. You felt surrounded by landscape in all directions, but still lost, with no road to follow. 

Many new employees feel this way. And as long as they do, they cannot achieve their full performance potential. Perhaps the power lies in songlines. What does that mean? Get new employees singing their way into the organization? Well, in a way, yes.

Songlines are a concept embedded in traditional—indeed ancient—Australian Aboriginal cultures (Norris & Harney, 2014). They are the paths along which a creator ancestor moved when dreaming the land into existence, and are often referred to as “dreaming tracks.” The term “songlines” was what travel writer Bruce Chatwin called them in English (Chatwin, 1988) in his best-selling book of the same name and my introduction to songlines. As Norris and Harney wrote, “Songlines are epic creation songs passed to present generations by a line of singers continuous since the dreamtime” (p. 2), basically, oral landscape maps that help people navigate through vast landscapes. 

Organizational cultures are like that, with many songlines embedded in them. Songlines tell you what the written and formal information does not—how we do things around here, the enacted values versus espoused values, norms that are acceptable, and where the lines to unacceptable are. As an employee learns the songlines, the more he or she can understand and navigate the culture. Without that, the employee can never be fully productive and never achieve performance potential. There is plenty of research showing that lack of organizational fit, or cultural fit, is a critical, if not the critical, factor in engagement, performance, retention, and so on. 

How can we help our people—or our client’s people, help new employees learn the songlines, and ensure the songlines are passed on from one generation of employees to another? It is no good just telling them the songs; that is just superficial information. Recently I watched a BBC documentary about Dark Ages Britain. The presenter was following a copy of a medieval map and suddenly pointed to a mark on the map and then at a small mound on the ground among the trees.  

“That’s this tumulus,” he said, “so we’re on the right track.” Now, I know what a tumulus is (a mound of earth and stones covering a grave) but can basically only spell the word. I would never have noticed the mound, or even if I had, would not have had a clue what it was, its meaning, or significance. It was someone who knew who could point it out to me, explain it, help me recognize and understand it, and help me navigate.

It is this kind of guide that new employees need. Orientation is not enough— it needs a solid and powerful onboarding program, one that helps and guides employees in their first year (not just the first few weeks), including buddy systems, HR interaction with employees, managers as coaches, and more. Learning the culture takes time. Learning the songlines can ease that time. As performance professionals, we can help our people and clients to build effective onboarding programs.

References

Chatwin, B. (1988). The Songlines. New York, NY: Penguin Group USA.

Norris, R. P., & Harney, B. Y. (2014). Songlines and Navigation in Wardaman and other Australian Aboriginal Cultures. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 17(2).