Organizational Cultures IT 2013

8/12/2019 Organizational Cultures IT 2013

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Organisational Cultures - A Language for Change© Ioan Tenner 1 1991, 1993, 1998, 2001, 2013

It is not enough to decide and plan Change with precision and to do things well.

In an old First World War joke, an Italian lieutenant shouted while jumping out of the trench toorder attack: “Avanti!” Behind, the troop responded with enthusiasm: “Che bella voce! What a

beautiful voice!” Leaders driving innovation have to communicate it in a way that moves people.

You can only move people from where they are , from what they believe and understand.Organisations do have different cultures. Therefore, when it comes to newness - inmanagement, technology, in business operations or in the customer orientation, altering theorganisational culture proves to be the very substance of impact. The style and the sequence ofmessages and of actions must make sense in different words, in different ways, to fit and movedifferent Cultures.

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This outline p r esents models and concepts needed to understand how dissimilar organisationalcultures work 2 and what makes sense, what appears as obvious truth to their people. The aim isto give you practical tools to succeed in communicating newness and achieving cultural Changewithin your own Organisation across layers of management and departmental boundaries, orexternally with your Customers.

I try to outline here, in a few practical models 3, the essence of many management theory books.I found helpful to do this because most of the academic efforts don’t appear to care at all foraction, beyond research results and scholarly dispute. In the following lines I will refer to themodels of Roger Harrison and Charles Handy, a metaphor modified after Scorzoni and thetheories of Carl-Gustav Jung.

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Let me claim first that beyond most of the organisational theories and discourses aboutorganisations hide radical alternatives, choices of ways to see the world; two mental pictures,

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Ioan Tenner, 38 ch du Pré de la Croix, 1222 Vésenaz, Geneva Switzerland, E-mail: [email protected] , tel./fax:(+4122) 7720292, mobile [+41] (0) 78 7111 14082 “Culture” means much more than what is presented here. Cf. Britannica 1997: “ Culture, [is] the integrated

pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour. Culture, thus defined, consists of language, ideas, beliefs,customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and other relatedcomponents. The development of culture depends upon humans' capacity to learn and to transmit knowledge tosucceeding generations.” Organisational culture, a subset of Human Culture is all of this - what I would call “thechromosomes of society” and in our case the chromosomes of the Corporation – what keeps it being itself in t imeand across employee turnover. My presentation is drastically simplified to keep what is useful for the purpose athand.

3 One last methodological warning: the models proposed here are metaphoric and should be compared with“fishing nets”. The “truth” of the fishing net, a device invented and manufactured by man, is to catch fish and

nothing else; if you get fish, the net is true if it comes out repeatedly empty it’s wrong. In years of practice I hadconfirmation that the Harrison/Handy, Scorzoni and Jung metaphors do work and so do my own modifications.They help people to make sense and act with impact within and across the complexity of Organisations.

mailto:[email protected]






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Systemic strategy Tools and tasksInformationand Decisions

OrganisationStructure

Measurementsand Rewards

People Skillsand Attitude

both true but very different and blind to each other. My belief is that the two views arecomplementary. Most people find difficult to accommodate them. Understanding them allows

one to see the root of“culture” problems ina way that goes

beyond academicexplanation, tostrategic action.

A Structu ral model(“The BottleOpener” )

A first way to look atorganisations is theStructural approach.We could represent itas a “bottle opener

model”. Whatever you move, everything else is linked and moves with it. This is themainstream paradigm of Science and of Technology today: There is nothing in the world butsystems: objective, complex structures, given. You must analyse them, understand their dataand laws of causality, forecast based on regularities and act accordingly. You run change byclear analysis and careful planning. The reality of resources, factors, and events in theenvironment, determines the tools needed, and the priority tasks to tackle. Information and

decisions concerning the work processes follow with logic, to carry out the task and resolvedeviation. That calls, naturally, for an adequate organisational structure. Your system requires aspecific set of people with skills and attitudes to match the work. All these parts must fit. Youget what you measure.

This is a view of Culture dominated by matter of fact, by the given and the planned.

The Structural view builds vision from reality. It uses a model first defining the present state,then a desired future stateand the way in between,to drive from past tofuture.



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The Leadership model.There is another view of Organisations, quite different from the structural one. Let me call it the“pharaonic” or “ leadership” model. The root belief is here that some things are given but otherthings you make 4. It is the approach that “makes your dreams come true”. In this approach, all

starts with a vision. You set bold objectives from it. You convince a whole crowd of people tosee life your way. The creative work of Change is to invent and procure the practical means toget what you want and to lead people towards a goal in spite of all blocks, limits and

oppositions.

A Company founder or a topexecutive has a dream. “Ihave a dream”, he says. “If itwas good enough forPharaoh, it will be goodenough for me!” “Yes, Sir!

reply the next lower layer ofmanagers. Site plans by nextweek, Certainly Oh GreatMaster, a feasibility study,not too expensive, suitable

blessings on available budget,we will do the best.”

The next lower level will execute the needed operations: “If it’s an order, then with pleasure”,“We will arrange”, and so on. You create or transform an organisational structure to bring to lifethe idea. You do all that is needed to adapt reality instead of adapting to the given.

This is how Pyramids were built, religions founded, world wars started, inventions made andfortunes built. Isn’t this the very storyof Civilisation? It is as business-like aview as the first one. “There isnothing more practical than a goodtheory” (K. Levin). This is also afavourite “winner’s way” of thinkingfor many top managers. As GeorgeBernard Shaw wrote: “You see thingsand ask why. But I dream of things

that never were and ask: Why not?”When you deal with such a Culture, itis vital to understand this way ofthinking. Otherwise you do not fit in.

The Leadership vision works from thefuture vision towards reality. It firstshapes freely, a desired future state and then looks at the present situation selectively, to findand pick that which can be used to make the vision feasible.

4 You may make them because so you desire or on the contrary because so you believe your duty to be, by virtue of principles or values atemporal.

Certainly Your Majesty,We will make it true!

Certainly Master, We’ll arrange:- Site plans by next

week - Feasibilit yStudies

- Blessings onavailable budget

ManagementObjectives:I have a dream!

Organisation Structure

Certainly Master, We’ll arrange:- Site plans by next

week - FeasibilityStudy

- Blessings onavailable budget

We’ll arrange:- If it’s anorder, withpleasure

- Careful with thebudget

- Here we cutthrough stone

We’ll arrange:

- Re-design,please

- More funds,please

- Training

We’ll arrange:- If it’s an

order, withpleasure

- Careful withthebudget

- Here we cutthroughstone

We’ll arrange:- If it’s an

order, withpleasure

- Careful withthebudget

- Here we cutthroughstone

We’ll arrange:

- Some extracalculations

- God help us- Here webuild onsand

We’ll arrange:- Some extracalculations - God help

us- Here webuild onsand

We’ll arrange:

- Some extracalculations

- God help us- Here webuild onsand

We’ll arrange:- Re-design,please - More

funds,please

- Training

We’ll arrange:

- Re-design,please

- More funds,please

- Training



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“Structural or Leadership? How do they see their world? And how do I, how do we see theworld?” Answering such questions helps you to make sense and speak sense when youcommunicate with a person, a group, a department or an Organisation. Not understanding thisdifference is the cause of many “dialogues of the deaf”.

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The “ Lily Pond” metaphor:I will now use another evergreen metaphor to describe three levels of Culture. The aim is thesame; help you understand why people see different things as obvious so that you may deal withthem accordingly, to obtain the change you want.

On the water, the lilies. These“lilies” are things you canobserve in an organization;

behaviours, events, decisionsmade public, tools, rules andmeasurements, communications,words used, the way the officesand working places look, all thatdefines a style and anenvironment, “the way we dothings around here”.

If you just look and listen, youwill be richly informed about this

layer of Culture. It is also themost changing aspect; when thewind of difficulty and external

change blows, the lilies and their pads move. Many managers believe that in order to change theorganisation it is necessary and sufficient to rethink the business, to plan with precision what

procedures, practices, rules, measurements, etc must change and to allocate the resourcesneeded. Then we would send the right messages to explain to everybody and we will determineeverybody to change their behaviour. It is somewhat as Blaise Pascal’s hope that if you prayevery day you will end up believing.

However, underwater, in the pond, there is another world, more stable, of the stems: these arethings you do not observe directly. People may explain them and you can find out, if you ask or

probe. It is the time to also ask who the people are, individually and as a group, from where theycome (education, other groups they belong to) and where they go (their individual, group andcorporate objectives). This is a rational or rationalised level of definitions, explanations,interests and motivations. You can and need to know the stem of behaviours and the things saidin order to foresee, cope and reason with an Organisation. If you want to change peoples’ mind,you need to know where their mind is.

This is the level where Organisational Change will be best supported by overt “culture building”through consulting, negotiation and education. You can hardly change reason by changing

behaviour, it is the reverse. Reason is influenced by being informed, by logic and by persuasion.Ultimately, common sense reason can be transformed by consulting activities helping theorganisation to elaborate and agree new shared meaning to the key notions implied in theeveryday practice of the culture. We can change this level of culture by “rectification of the

TheEnvironment

What youcanobserve:

Whatpeoplecanexplain:

Theaxioms:

Events Behaviour Decisions Measurements

RulesStyle

Symbols RitualsCommunications

ReasonsObjectives

IdealsInterests

ValuesKnowledge

Deep belief “Obvious” assumptions

Unquestionabletruth



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words”. By this I mean examining what old words mean for the people, questioning thatmeaning and agreeing together new meaning, to solve some impossibilities and limits and tocreate new ones.

There is another level, deeper yet. “Down in the mud”, unseen, are the roots of the lilies. Nobody talks about them, as fishes would not consider an alternative to existing in water. Welearned them so well that they became part of us, they are us and therefore we forgot them. Wedo not use to observe things that are too close to us, like the spectacles on the nose. We lookthrough them not to them. This is a domain of axioms. So “obvious” and “natural” that theyappear as unquestionable common sense. They are part of our own intellectual makeup. Butsuch axioms can be surprisingly different among individuals and groups.

The deepest beliefs in people, organisations and nations are basic normative assumptions andrules that give meaning and determine how or in what terms the world is seen and interpreted;what is truth, beauty, goodness, justice, usefulness, seriousness, what exists and what doesn’t,what is or isn’t business, what is value, why one works, what is money.

Discussing basic beliefs is felt as a threat 5; people do not want to question “the stuff their mindis made of”: why truth is truth, why beauty is beauty and goodness - goodness. This is why

people who know that God exists cannot communicate with atheists who know there is no godand entrepreneurs can hardly dialogue with bureaucrats. To revisit my previous example, this isthe hidden field where the Structural view differs from the Leadership one. This is why BoardMembers practising different value disciplines like Product leadership versus Operationalexcellence, versus Customer intimacy, have difficulty to develop shared understanding.

Awareness and sensing of deep differences 6 at this level gives us freedom from our own blindspots and power to communicate and manage change. You can only change yourself if youunderstand your own basic beliefs and find where your blind spots are. You can only changeother peoples’ minds and organisations if you understand and speak the language they think andlead them to test the limits of what they know and conceive as possible.We can intervene at this deep level with awareness events like the one documented by thisoutline, or by learning practices to discover, rebuild andreproduce common, shared meaning and values.

Adapt ing and usi ng Handy and Harr ison’s li stof Cultures and Structures:

People’s interpretation key and their response to the

communication of Change, to your planning and action,are based on the characteristic axioms of their culturalenvironment. This is usefully visualised by Handy’s metaphoric classification of OrganisationalCultures. Each Culture appears to Handy as a typical structure of communication and power.

Harrison and Handy describe four types of organisational culture:

5 This level of culture is an object of faith. As it is known faith tends to be tenacious in spite of evidence to thecontrary (such evidence is often avoided or regarded with suspicion), or they are a result of voluntary choice of

beliefs in absence of evidence. However, most of our faith is simply confidence and expectation based onexperience, acceptance of trusted authority or self-evident intuition.6

What is often called “cultural relativism”, a detached understanding that comes from travelling and seeing manycultures as consultants do or even more, a comprehension that is developed by experience with trying to changecultures.

Cultures Structures

Power (ProfitCentre)

Web

Role(Traditional)

Temple

Task(Consensus)

Net

Ato mis tic(Futuristic) Cluster D D D D D D



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The “Power” (Profit Centre) appears like a centralised web. The “Role” (Traditional) looks likea stable temple of bureaucracy. “Task” (Consensus) is represented by a matrix of intersecting

decentralised lines of power and task competence.“Atomistic” or “People” (Futuristic) is a cluster, anaggregation of independent personalities.

Let me shortly interpret the dimensions thatdifferentiate Harrison’s types. On the horizontal, we gofrom high to low centralisation . On the vertical,

formalisation is high or low.

In the Power (Profit Centre) culture there is high centralisation of power, located in one centre

but the formalisation is low. Who needs rules when the important decisions are all taken by the boss?

The Role (Traditional) culture is both highly centralised and formalised. In the Greek temple,everything is done by rule and reported hierarchically, through formal channels.

Power (Profit Centre)

Role(Traditional)

Task(Consensus)

Ato mis tic(Futuristic)

LowCentralisation

HighCentralisation

High Formalisation

Low Formalisation

D D D D

D D

Handy’s Four Culture Types

• Person in centre - vital; succession iss ues• Works on pr ecedent• Anti cipat ing top wishes• Few rules/procedures• Control throug h selection of key individu als• Political organisation• Balance of influence

Power CultureHighCentralisation

Power Rings

WebFormalisation

Move quickly , react well. Right direction?Risk takingFaith in ind ividuals, not in comm itteesTolerant of meansCompetitive atmosphereSize is a problem

Power CultureHighCentralisation

Power Rings

WebFormalisation

Role Culture

• Reason, logic, ration ality

• Specialisation of departments• Procedures for roles, communication and

dispute settling• Individuals interchangeable for a given job• Positional power; experts’ power t olerated• Fit for stable environment

HighCentralisation

Bureaucracy

Greek templeHighFormalisation

Role Culture

Security for individ ualGet expertise without riskReward the satisfactoryFrustration for results oriented peopleEconomies of scaleSlow, inflexible

HighCentralisation

Bureaucracy

Greek templeHighFormalisation



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The Task (Consensus) culture, dominant in some large hight-tech organisations of the1980s, isalso very fond of formal principles and regulations needed to glue its diversity together, but lowon centralisation, since resources and power of diverse engineering groups are distributed bytask competence. The way of co-ordinating the task teams is endless negotiation and “buy-in”,sharing of Vision, Strategy and Scenarios. No way to manage by central authority or by

bureaucracy, those things make no sense to them.

Task Culture

Mutual respect based on capacity

Sensitivity to market?Fewer economies of scale; less depth of expertiseCreate initiativeDifficult to controlWhen scarce resources; teams competeIndividual objective surface

HighFormalisation

Net

MatrixLowCentralisation

The Person (Futuristic) or “Stars” culture is low on both centralisation and formalisation. This istypically an R & D laboratory, lawyers’ or medical doctors’ venture, an entrepreneur’s smallcompany, or some pioneering, skunk-working, IT lab. The driving forces are creative vision,

personal competence, charisma and practical achievement.

.

Person, Atomistic, Star Culture

Charismatic power Each one does own thingsHigh expertise/creativityShared influencePhsychological contractControl or hierarchy impossibleUnstable conglomerate

LowFormalisation Constellation

of independentsLow

Formalisation

D D

D D D

D

Task Culture

Getting job done; rewards for resultsGetting together resources; right people at rightlevelExpert power - dispersed influenceTeam concerns and issuesIndividuals identify with organisation objectives

Adaptable; quick reactionHigh degree of self-control over work

HighFormalisation

Net

MatrixLowCentralisation



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Applyi ng Jung’s Theory - What makes sense for each Cul tu re:

Let me unearth some deeper meaning and practical applicability from behind the Harrison-Handy classification. We can go further to understand the essence of what makes sense andwhat is “good value” in a Culture but may be alien in another. To explain this I found that wecan superpose on the “four cultures grid” Carl Gustav Jung’s classical typology of humanthinking styles (unfortunately deformed and debased by many pop-psychologists).

Jung proposed two dimensions: The first (horizontal) dimension is the way people obtain theinformation they use to consider it valid; (1) Perception and measurement or (2) Intuition andimagination.

The second (vertical) dimension is how individuals (or whole Cultures) use to process theinformation;

(1) Logical, rational thinking or (2) Active practice (thinking by doing).

Intuition

C.-G. Jung’s dimensions:How people obtain their “food for thinking”

Perception



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Logical Thinking

Practice

C.-G. Jung’s dimensions: How people process their information.

When we combine the two grids, Harrison's and Jung's, we find valuable insight in whatdifferentiates the "mind" of the four organisational cultures.

Intuition

Logical Thinking

Practice

C.-G. Jung’s dimensions and the four cultures:

Perception

D D

D D D

D

All this may sound academic but is readily applicable. To apply Jung’s findings I propose a gridof five communication and leadership styles to fit the four cultures. Each style is the preferredone, credible in a given type of culture. I believe that we must either adapt to what makes sensein an organisation or consciously negotiate a radical change of the culture.



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Let me propose a grid of five communication and leadership styles to fit the four cultures. Eachstyle is the preferred one in a given type of culture. Not adapting the communication to theculture or not educating and negotiating the management style transition, will make theinnovation very difficult.

Jung’s Theory

Intuition andHypothesis

Perception andMeasurment

Logical Thinking

Active DoingPractice

Concepts and Policy

Hands On

Try it out

ReflectiveScenarios,What if?

ConcreteFacts

D D D D

D D

Educator Pragmatist

Scientist Advocate

Strategist

Five Communication Roles:



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Take the Power Culture. What will make sense here is that you present concrete facts and createa chance to try out solutions, hands on. The communication style fit to this culture is what I call“pragmatic”. The meaning of the word here is having a “bias for action”, for application and forresult. The convincing arguments are local proofs, credentials, demonstrations, successful pilot

projects, and winning cases. Not grand theories, nor enthusiastic scenarios, but “show-what”

and “show-how”. “If it works, it is true!”

In the Role Culture, facts are also important but correct logic, methodology and fitting theexisting concepts and policies, the values and traditions of the firm are vital. Stability is of highvalue. The corresponding communication style, readily understood in the “bureaucratic”environment (I do not say that bureaucracy is always bad) is “scientific”. Being objective andrational is one “must” in the Role culture. Being reasonable within the bounds of principle andtradition is another. We could synthesise this as “show-what” and “show-why”.

In the Task Culture, concepts, policy and logic still reign but fact and measurement are often

overpowered by the need for unifying vision and proactive planning. The style ofcommunication people are used to listen to in a democratic matrix organisation is “rhetoric”.Here you will make sense as an achiever, based on your personal credibility and recognisedcompetence, by means of detecting and addressing shared motivations, by attractive choices,concerning values, and visibly actionable, mind-size scenarios. Could we call it “show-why”and “point-towards”?

In the Personality Culture, the same visionary scenarios work best when combined with handson demonstration. The typical contribution is compelling, “Socratic” leadership by education.The individual accepts newness in the form of challenge, original thinking and personal

discovery. In such a group you also have to speak to each person and demonstrate value addedto everyone.

Practice

Push Strategic

Scientific Rhetor ic

SocraticPragmatic

Bureaucratic

Power People

FunctionalLogic

Reality & DataPullPeople &Scenarios

Five Communication Styles

D D D D

D D



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A word of warning: There is of course no such thing as a pure and unmoving corporate culture.It is always a mixture, a local flavour, a trend of transition from one to another.

The useful questions to ask are: “Which is the dominant culture of this group, department,organisation now, in this circumstance? Which cultures meet here? How do we bridge betweendifferent cultures? How to fit or change the given culture with my message and work? Towardswhich culture do we move? How to negotiate or educate the different style needed? Once a firstassumption is formed, we will still have to probe and check that it is correct. We may need torefine the assumption.

A good way to end th is outl ine is to ask what next? What to do wi th th islearning?In my own experience, the next step will be to create and to formulate your Communication

Strategy for the Change Management project. The strategy will unfold in activities to supportOrganisational Change. You will also have to spend time to find effective tactics, ever changingto fit surprises, to succeed each step of change. That can not be summarised in this note becausetactics are always situational and creative.

Designing a change project, a communication strategy, a communication plan, formulatingcommunication and practices to fit or to alter a given culture is the meaning of “speaking alanguage of Change”. This requires specific management work in addition to the businesschange projects. There is too often inconsistency between the intention and the way it is

perceived throughout the Organisation - and as the Chinese say, “You will not trust the manwhose belly doesn’t move when he laughs”. The strongest message of management is not what

it says but what it does.

ReferencesCLEGG, S. R., Hardy, C., Nord, W. A., “Handbook of Organization Studies”, Sage, London,1996

HANDY, Charles, B., “Understanding Organizations”, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1986.

HANDY, Charles, “Gods of Management”, London, Souvenir Press, 1986.

HARRISON, R., “Organization Culture and Quality of Service.”, A.M.E.D., London, 1987

JUNG, C.-G., “Types Psychologiques”, Librairie de l’Université Georg et Cie S. A., Genève1983MORGAN, G., “Images of Organization”, Sage, Beverly Hills, 1986.

SCORZONI, J., “Understanding Digital Equipment Corporation’s Organizational Culture”,

Organization and Employee Planning and Development. 6/1982.15

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