What's Water? Asked the Fish

"Floundering" in Culture Constraints

The Critical Variable

My career has been spent with working managers, so my approach to culture is rooted in observations of its smothering (or facilitating) impact on performance and productivity. Studying culture up close and personal in executive offices, production plants, and out in the field with cops and geologists and open-pit miners, it's obvious that culture is more important than most managers realize.

Long ago, someone wrote, "Fish are the last to discover water." And so it is with most of us in discovering the power of the several cultural settings in which we live and work. Several? Of course. Aren't the rules and practices of your home different from those of your office? Or your sports club? Or your favorite pub or bar?

Culture is a collection of needs, norms, and nomenclature that shape the behavior of those who have been "acculturated" or indoctrinated. Look at the skin-heads, with their Mohawk haircuts, tattoos, sleeveless denim jackets, and oversized chains to link wallets to belts. As they talk among themselves, their gestures, speech patterns, and strut-and-swagger ways of walking and standing mark them as members of a gang, an in-group with some specific and disagreeable membership criteria. It's an attractive sub-culture to weak and alienated people, but repulsive to most of us. If the skin-heads represented a for-profit organization, would you want to work for or with them, even if they paid very well? Probably not, given their values.

One of the most obvious links between cultural values and organizational outcomes is provided by IBM. A strong, compliance-based culture represented by dark suits and white shirts is alleged to have been the reason the PC invented there was not recognized as the path to the future until Dell, Compaq, Apple, and Microsoft redefined the computer business and captured the market.

In other organizations in which I've worked—military, police, refineries, power plants, pharmaceutical companies, toy companies, heavy industries, banks, government agencies, school systems, hospitals, etc.—there's always a definable culture that supports (or limits) performance and effectiveness. If the culture constrains, executives seem unaware. If the culture facilitates, everyone's celebrating it, so maybe it's only the constraining cultures that remain invisible. Established ways of working and thinking and seeing may be too powerful to permit examination or even identification.

But they are visible if you want to see them.

Pay attention to the cues and clues in the reception area. Visit workers' toilets and lunch rooms. Observe employees as they walk and talk with each other. Listen to conversations between managers and workers. These are places where "diagnostic gold" is buried—and so near the surface!

Another diagnostic tool is the obvious question, "Why do you do it this way?" Whether you ask about lunch schedules, production processes, or administrative procedures, the answers always are revealing. Do they know why, or do they just shrug their shoulders? Are they defensive or suspicious? Do their comments suggest contempt for management? Or perhaps the answer is, "That's the way it's always been."

A work culture that's evolved over 10 or 30 years is full of subtleties that won't be revealed in a summary investigation. But usually, it doesn't take long to place the predominant values of an organization into one of three convenient categories:

Type 1. Fearful and compliant – a culture of authority and punishment:

This classic culture is shaped by managerial attitudes that employees are expendable, not very bright (regardless of their education or technical competence), and need to be controlled; and that compliance is best gained by threats of termination. Rewards go only to managers; employee recognition is limited to Christmas parties and the occasional birthday cake. Suggestions from employees are neither sought nor received with enthusiasm. Some key ideas are: Know your place and stay in it; and Don't volunteer anything—personal information or extra effort.

Type 2. Low energy, low involvement – a culture of bureaucracy and indifference:

Think about the post office, your bank, government agencies, continuing-process factories and plants (including schools, universities, and hospitals). Everything follows a routine. Employees are necessary to do things that can't be automated, and thus are tolerated rather than appreciated. (One healthcare administrator described the culture of his organization as "doctors, nurses, and Ethiopians.") The important values are to be on time, dress appropriately, and follow the routines. Goals are accepted and saluted, but limited rewards limit the amount of goal-striving behavior among employees. In this common social system, some key ideas are: Don't be noticed. Be polite. Be accurate, no matter what the cost.

Type 3. High energy, involved – a culture of challenge, achievement, and reward:

Think Apple and Dell, high-volume sales organizations (brokerages, restaurant chains, high-end food markets, etc.) in which customer service, sales volume, cost reduction, profit, and opportunities for reward and promotion are daily imperatives. Employees are knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and involved in making and executing plans. They work in environments full of feedback on performance for individuals and groups.

Goals, objectives, targets—everyone knows what they are and why they're necessary. Many participate in stock ownership or other incentive programs, and employees know they're critical elements in corporate profitability. In this kind of energetic environment, some key ideas are: Be very good at what you do. Help others succeed. Express pride in working for our company.

Naturally, most executives like to imagine they're leading a Type 3 organization, but really, such cultures are rare. Further, a Type 2 work culture is not an okay, half-way environment—low energy is too close to no energy! Type 3 organizations result only from intentional efforts of managers throughout the organization, acting from and reinforcing specific positive values.

Essentially, that means organizations can be viewed on either side of a cultural divide, and that employees can be grouped into those whose work circumstances dictate a focus on surviving or permit a focus on contribution.

Research and personal experience say that most people who must work want to do so as contributors, and probably not many would choose a survivor setting, even among those who self-select part-time or seasonal work. It follows, then, that most of the people who go to work find themselves constrained in survivor-oriented work places constrained from making the kinds of contributions of which the majority are not only capable, but would wish to make.

One hundred years of 'scientific management' has proven this repeatedly, but many managers still don't get it! Yes, giving orders is simple, and involving several or many in making decisions can be time-consuming, at least initially. But suppose participation does not, in fact, result in work getting done any faster. Is it still worth the effort?

Consider the second- and third-order consequences. Authoritarian management shuts people down. Participation, over time, frees people to make contributions. When contributions are rewarded, the contributing behavior will be repeated, often leading to discovery of better, faster, cheaper ways to get results. In a for-profit organization, that's like free money going directly to the bottom line!

Changes in effectiveness are always a cultural phenomenon. Work and workers always must be seen in a cultural context, and managers have to lead the way in changing the culture before individuals within it are free to change their ways of responding to the manager and the organization. While worker productivity may be the target of change efforts, it's necessary to reach beyond the workers into the host culture. There, in the matrix of past practice, experience, beliefs, and sanctions, is where real change must take place.

How does a manager reach into the culture of the work group to establish more effective ways of working together? Three words: Persistence, patience, and payoff! Culture change does not happen overnight. There will be setbacks and frustration. Persistence—keeping on keeping on—is necessary. Patience is required to take the long view rather than expecting the quick fix. Then, the payoff will follow with its abundant reward of unexpected second- and third-order consequences that will distinguish the group and its manager as outstanding performers.

About the Author:

Woody Sears

Woody Sears has been training managers and leaders since 1967. Tested in more than 200 organizations and presented in more than 100 public seminars, his techniques for resolving organizational conflicts have helped thousands of managers just like you to solve problems, develop employees, and enhance their personal effectiveness.

Early in his career, Woody was lucky to have been accepted as a resource person by Leadership Resources, Inc., one of the early behaviorally oriented consulting firms. That provided opportunities to work with and learn from many of the scholars and consultants who were developing the framework for what subsequently became Human Resource Development. Chief among those mentors was Leonard Nadler, Woody's major professor in the doctoral program at The George Washington University. Professor Nadler coined the term HRD and is the creator of that academic and professional discipline. Those experiences followed a Master's program in change management at N.C. State, and a tour as a Marine officer.

Beyond consulting and presenting public seminars (mostly on project management), Woody has designed customized project management systems for a number of companies and government agencies. Throughout his career, he has worked to simplify essential management information so it's accessible to everyone.

One of the keys to simplification is to generalize, to demonstrate that payoff behavior at work pays off at home, too; that workers and siblings and your own kids look to you for something, and when you can deliver it, your life becomes simpler and more successful.

What's the "it" others want from you? They want you to lead them to their success, their satisfaction, their security, and to acknowledge their contributions; to confirm them as individuals worthy of self-esteem!

That's all there is to it. There are some tools and techniques that will help you, all of them rooted in management theory, scientifically proven and validated.

That's why this material is important, and why the "2007 Front Line Guide" series will be valuable to you. It provides the framework for no-nonsense, adult-to-adult ways to make short-interval training work and to give managers the tools to become conflict-resolving, in-house consultants. If you'd like Woody to share his ideas and experiences directly with your staff, he's just a travel day away.

Contact Information:

Contact him at woodysears@gmail.com or at 370 6 99 26734 in Vilnius.

Dr. Sears', "The Front Line Guide to Thinking Clearly," is available from HRD Press. Contact http://www.hrdpress.com or 800-822-2801.