Archive for Values

Unwritten rules determine behavior

April 27, 2008 / / No comments

Executive coach Robert Hargrove (1995) asks, “Why do so few chief executives succeed at making their vision statements come alive, even when people agree with them intellectually and emotionally? Why are so many managers and employees frustrated, skeptical, and even cynical aobut their own ability to make something happen?” (107)

Hargrove interviewed Dr. Peter Scott-Morgan, an Arthur D. Little consultant, who offers a very straightforward explanation: everything people do makes sense if you understand the unwritten rules of the organization.  For example, in 1990, a team at Ford Motor Company took a new “learning” approach to building the next generation Lincoln Continental. Despite bringing the new product to market substantially faster and reducing defects in the new car by 20% and thereby saving $65 million dollars, the manager of the project was “passed over for promotion and given early retirement.” Why? Because his organization broke the unwritten rule at Ford of talking openly about problems, which was thought to reflect poorly on his organization. The project was a practical success and a political failure. (108)

Other examples are the CEO who talks about the importance of collaboration and team work, yet rewards members of his or her team based on the size of their organizations or bases their bonuses primarily on the accomplishment of individual objectives.  People in the organization sense the conflict, assess what, at the end of the day, is actually rewarded, and take action based on realities on the ground (109-110).  

Scott-Morgan suggests several strategies for discovering and leading change in light of these unwritten rules:

1. First, discover the rules: Talk with people about the disconnects between formal policy and unwitten rules, the logic behind the unwritten rules, and about business goals and how they do or don’t connect to what they do.

2. Uncover the operative reward system, which substantially shape these rules. This reward system can be understood in terms of: a) Motivators: what is important to this person or group; b) Enablers: who can give it to them or help them get it; and c) Triggers: under what conditions will the enabler “grant a reward or impose a penalty.”

It’s interesting to note that the operative reward system strongly overlaps with but is not necessarily identical to the formal reward system.

3. Consider how the unwritten rules shape the actual functioning of the organization.

4. “Change the rules or go with the flow”: If you are in charge, you have some power to reshape the unwritten rules to get the outcome you want. Otherwise, your options are to find a sponsor who can help bring the disconnect to people who have the power to change it or find a way to use these insights to develop a pragmatic plan to obtain the outcome you want  (111-116).

 I would add that if the CEO or other leader is observant, s/he may have these insights at an implicit level. Asking the questions: “What do I want to have happen (and what does that look like)?” and “What do I actually reward and punish?” can potentially yield some useful insights. 

And, because our assumptions and expectations shape our organizations, including how we actually reward and punish people, it might be very helpful to ask, “What do I really value, and why?”  

References

Hargrove, R. (1995) Masterful coaching: Extraordinary results by impacting people and the way they think and work together. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Scott-Morgan, P. (1994). The unwritten rules of the game. New York: McGraw Hill.

Category: All Posts, Culture, Leadership, Organization, Rewards, Values, Vision /

Leadership & the Machine

March 1, 2008 / / No comments

Theories of leadership are informed by our understanding of the world, including our understanding of others.  This post will consider the worldview out of which the bureaucratic organization arose, including its understanding of creativity and intelligence, and then examine the nature and role of leadership in light of that understanding.  This is valuable to us because it builds towards an understanding that organizational realities are substantially shaped by leadership perspectives — which is a key insight of transformative leadership and a potential source of power for us as we seek to overcome the challenges we are facing both within and without our organizations. 

The concept of the organization as machine evolved from a worldview in which the world itself was seen as an unintelligent mechanism.  In this worldview, the apparent intelligence (and indeed, according to some philosophers, causation itself) arose wholly from God. One prominant scientist later dropped “that hypothesis,” leaving us to imagine the world to be, for the most part, to be a “heap” of unintelligent atoms.  Intelligence (or the appearance thereof) was primarily attributed to human beings.

Further, in this worldview, the idea of intelligence came to be especially equated with rational thought. Some philosophers proposed that rational thought, sealed off from the “corrupting” influence of the body and emotions, participated, in a sense, in the divine.

According to philosopher Charlene Spretnak, “Plato intensified dualistic thought […] by perceiving not only a divine order […] but a sense that the order created by divine, or ideal, forms was radically other than the material world we inhabit.  He established a dualism of universal and particular, of noumenon and phenomenon, of mind and body, and of spirit and matter that shaped all subsequent philosophy and religion in the European tradition [italics added for emphasis] (Resurgence of the Real, 47).

Although, according to this view, the realm of divine order, truth and beauty existed in a realm outside the material universe, Plato held that it could be approached by man through his rational facilities: “[R]ational thought could be experienced only if sealed off from “corrupting” influences  of the body (sensations, emotions, desires) and properly isolated from “lowly” nature. Plato felt that we, that is, our minds, are imprisoned in the dumb matter of our bodies. Although he considered the cosmos to be sacred in its orderliness, he shared with his teacher Socrates, a belief that nature is irrelevant….” (45).

However, not all human beings were considered equally capable of such thought. The relationship between knowledge and power becomes clear in Aristotle’s rendering of gendered reality: “[M]ale rules over the female, or the man over the child; although the parts of the soul are present in all of them, they are present in different degrees.  For the slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority, and the child has, but it is immature (“Politics” 1260b; Code, What Can She Know?, 9 n. 5).

Therefore, some men (who per chance :-/ happened already to be in power and serve as the gatekeepers of knowledge…), were, by virtue of their asserted superiority of mind, considered to be closer to the divine order of things and thus “better suited” for leadership. (There is a historical parallel in the claim that wealth is a sign of divine favor). 

So, coming back to the topic of leadership and “the machine,” in the industrial-age organization, relatively well-educated managers sought to maximize economic outputs (roles requiring some intelligence and creativity), and “workers” were considered interchangeable “cogs in the machine.” Work was routine and boring, and working conditions were often unsafe.

Metaphorically, leaders were the operator of the machine; the workers were part of the machine itself.

 The leadership style associated with this philosophy and approach to organization has been called, “Theory X,” or what Robert Hargrove calls the “command, control, and coercion model” (Masterful Coaching p.7) and Riane Eisler calls the “dominator model.” 

In such a model, vision, communications and control flow from the top down; management ensures the efficiency and predictability of the machine, through planning, organizing and controlling.

Such highly structured and controlled organizations allow control by a centralized group and support a high degree of efficiency and predictabiliy. The flip side of that coin is that they are also exceptionally good at suppressing creativity and resisting innovation … 

In this post, we might begin to notice how leadership assumptions and values substantially shape organizational realities.  In upcoming posts, we will consider this core insight of transformative leadership in much greater depth, to demonstrate how and why this is so, and how we can use this insight to overcome some of our most previously intractable problems…  

Category: All Posts, Communication, Creativity, Innovation, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Philosophy, Values, Vision /

Origins of the Modern Bureaucratic Organization

February 16, 2008 / / No comments

If you were to choose the organizational form that maximizes the number of people and functions that can be controlled by a single leader, what style would you choose? (The correct answer can be found at the bottom of this post).

  1. Flat organization
  2. Bureaucratic organization
  3. Leader-full team
  4. Matrix organization

Since thousands of years before the dawn of the industrial revolution, “strong men,” wanting to maximize their control of people and resources have employed a pyramid-shaped, hierarchal form of organization: small societies based on “strong-man rule” evolved into kingships with their own militaries, which evolved into nation states …

Hierarchal societies are based on a hierarchal flow of power from the top down. Anthropologically, they tend to be male dominated (in that men dominate women). Human order is frequently understood to reflect divine order, and since early times, rulers have often claimed a special relationship to divinity, which justifies and endorses their power. They were sometimes understood to be incarnations or partners of the gods (as in Sumeria), or, more recently in Western cultures, to be chosen or annointed by God.  For example, in the late 19th century Germany, childrearing manuals emphasized disciplining the child in such a way as to exact unquestioning obedience to the father. This practice was thought to prepare the child to submit to governmental authority and thereby live a godly life (Alice Miller, For Your Own Good).

The values and ethics of a culture cannot be entirely separated from the power structure in that those in power shape the rules that define “goodness.” “Rules favor the rule makers and when they don’t, the rules are changed.” Therefore, “good citizens” conform to power; those who both are not powerful and do not conform are “bad citizens” and risk punishment. The culture of these organizations tends to be paternalistic. Loyalty is rewarded (for example, with position and lands — a share of the power) and disloyalty is punished.

More subtly, the worldview of the rulers, in which light the rules seem right and appropriate, is the correct view. Therefore, loyalty includes endorsing the worldview of those in power. Challenging this perspective, in a sense, also challenges the legitimacy and power of the ruler. For this reason, challenging this worldview entails some risk and is best done with diplomacy, in privacy behind closed doors. Diplomacy avoids the sense of direct challenge, and privacy allows the leader an opportunity to adapt the perspective as his or her own. The same conversation in public would be the equivalent of a frontal challenge to power. 

In this way, there will always be a link between power, knowledge and values, in any given culture: Power is about making rules that reflect and benefit a particular perspective, and propagating that perspective, and such knowledge and rules help shape the values and ethics of the culture.  

In an upcoming entry, we will talk about the emergence of the modern bureaucratic organization, including how it drew on the military/feudal model, and how it both fit and shaped the industrial age of the 20th century…

(The correct answer is 2. Bureaucratic Organization)

Category: All Posts, Culture, Ethics, Leadership, Organization, Philosophy, Values /

Values as Attractors

January 2, 2008 / / No comments

I just found this excellent post that fits in wonderfully with our conversation on Partnership culture and how it can enable more flexible, collaborative and innovative organizations…  Two points that I think are especially helpful are:

  1. Values predict behavior (obviously very important to the discussion of culture and organizational change)
  2. Organizational values function as attractors, giving rise to a kind of dynamic order in “chaotic” organizational systems.  The implication is that given shared values, order can emerge in the absence of unilateral power (or control).  Leadership, rather than management, becomes the essential ingredient.  You must see this graphic!

http://blog.vortexdna.com/scholars-everywhere-reinforce-vortexdnas-message/

Category: All Posts, Leadership, Organization, Partnership, Teams, Values /
  Recent Entries »
Wordpress Theme by ThemeZee