I don’t know if Dave Barry was thinking about organizational culture when he wrote the following, but I believe it’s metaphorical. He writes, “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on underwater, you realize that you’ve been missing the whole point of the ocean. . .” So, what’s the metaphor? You can’t judge an organization’s culture by simply looking at its visible components (e.g., its policies, procedures, management systems and/or values). It’s not until you get at the things you can’t see — the group norms and the assumptions — that you truly understand what’s going on.