On the occasion of this third The Dots Connect, The Dots brought together female leaders and HR leaders to explore a subject as common as it is delicate: subcultures.
When organizations grow, internationalize, or transform through external growth, differences in practices, professions, and sensitivities become visible. Should they be contained, harmonized… or on the contrary, encouraged?
To debate this, three committed voices shared their experiences:
Stéphanie Fraise, HR Director at OpenClassrooms
Mathilde Le Coz, HR Director at Forvis Mazars
Antoine Denoix, CEO of AXA Climate
Their discussions converge on a strong idea: subcultures are inevitable. The question is not if they exist, but how to make them compatible with the mission and the collective.
Understanding subcultures: a structural reality, not a dysfunction
Before judging subcultures, one must first understand what they cover. The discussions remind us that corporate culture is not limited to displayed values: it encompasses implicit rules, inherited beliefs, decision-making modes, and daily behaviors. In this context, subcultures are not anomalies, but natural extensions of this common foundation.
The cultural iceberg: the implicit as the seedbed of subcultures
A large part of the culture lives below the surface. It is rarely formalized, often inherited from the company's history and its founders. Newcomers, international teams, or highly specialized professions deal with this implicit... and develop their own codes.
Subcultures thus emerge where interactions, constraints, and contexts differ: geography, professions, seniority, hierarchical level.
Subculture or counterculture: a key distinction
The speakers emphasize a fundamental point: a subculture is not a counterculture.
A subculture remains connected to a shared foundation and offers a local interpretation of it. A counterculture, however, comes into direct opposition with common principles. It is this often implicit line that determines whether diversity becomes an asset... or a source of tension.
To remember: internal cultural diversity is not a problem in itself. It only becomes a risk when the common foundation is neither clear nor shared.
When subcultures become a lever for performance and creativity
At a more strategic level, discussions show that subcultures can play a decisive role in an organization's ability to innovate and adapt. In an unstable world, seeking absolute homogeneity often impoverishes the collective.
Diversity as a condition for a living organization
Some organizations deliberately choose to cultivate strong subcultures, especially when their activities are very different. At AXA Climate, the coexistence of tech, data, consulting, or advocacy teams is no accident: it is conceived as a condition for creativity.
Each subculture offers a different way of understanding reality and responding to the global mission. The key lies in the ability to facilitate dialogue between these worlds, rather than normalizing them.
Mergers-acquisitions and hypergrowth: the test of truth
External growth operations brutally reveal cultural gaps. The testimonials converge: most integration failures originate from a underestimation of cultural factors.
When the reason for an acquisition is human (talents, expertise), ignoring cultural differences amounts to destroying the purchased value. Conversely, anticipating these gaps, explaining what unites, and supporting teams over time can turn subcultures into a driver of engagement.
To remember: subcultures become a competitive advantage when they are recognized, understood, and explicitly linked to the mission.
Preserving the common foundation: the key role of leadership and managers
If subcultures are inevitable, their coexistence relies on a non-negotiable condition: the clarity of the common foundation. Without shared benchmarks, diversity turns into fragmentation.
Making the implicit explicit
A strong message permeates the discussions: as long as values remain abstract, everyone interprets them in their own way. Organizations must therefore translate their principles into concrete behaviors, understandable to all.
This work of explication permeates all practices: recruitment, management, internal communication, performance evaluation. It allows teams to know what is acceptable, debatable, or non-negotiable.
Managers: guardians of the framework, transmitters of culture
Managers occupy a pivotal position. They embody the link between global culture and local realities. Their role is not to eliminate subcultures but to ensure they remain aligned with the common framework.
Co-construction of managerial practices, regular feedback, team rituals, tools for measuring cultural perception: these are all levers to maintain this balance without falling into excessive control.
When a subculture becomes threatening
The discussions finally highlight a subtle point: a subculture becomes problematic less because of its existence than because of the collective silence that surrounds it. When employees no longer dare to say what bothers them, the differences crystallize.
Conversely, spaces for dialogue, cross-feedback, and shared responsibility often allow the collective to self-regulate.
To remember: culture is not just the responsibility of HR. It lives or erodes in daily decisions, carried by managers and teams.
In conclusion
Subcultures are neither anomalies to be corrected nor risks to be eliminated. They are the reflection of living organizations, traversed by different professions, histories, and contexts.
When a common foundation is clear, embodied, and shared, these subcultures become spaces for expression, innovation, and engagement. Conversely, without this framework, they can weaken the collective mission.
The real challenge is not uniformity, but the dynamic alignment between the diversity of practices and common meaning.