Until this point, this book has been designed to help you discover the social architecture embedded within the culture of your organization, group, or team—and to understand the implications and consequences of that information. In this chapter, we turn to a related but different approach to the concepts of the Double S Cube: What do you do if you need or want to change those relationships? In other words, how do you adjust levels of sociability and solidarity, both upwards and down?
When we talk with businesspeople about transforming organizations, they typically fall into two camps. One group believes it can't be done—you can't change human nature, they assert, and they don't even want to bother hearing about the managerial levers available to them. The other group is more optimistic—just show me the tools, they say, and I'll go from there. Human behavior can be hammered, nailed, sawed, and planed into the most beautiful designs. All you need is a carpenter who has the right tools and knows what he's doing.
The truth about change falls somewhere between these approaches. Human nature probably can't be changed. Human behaviors probably can. To do so is neither painfully hard nor blissfully simple. It is complicated but doable. 1
It is doable—for sometimes it must be done. Companies can flail, or sometimes outright fail, because the inappropriate social architecture is in place. One critical way to prevent such an eventuality is to take on the challenge of changing the levels of sociability and solidarity. In other cases, a company is not facing disaster but simply would function more efficiently or productively if it had a more fitting culture. This situation is less urgent but has the same solution: movement across the Double S Cube.
It is important to note that a company might need to adjust its culture for external or internal reasons. By external, we mean that levels of sociability or solidarity may need to change because the competitive environment has changed. Consider the case of one of the biggest international executive placement firms, which had operated for several years with powerful offices—"baronies," they were called—in every major city in the world. Each one of those baronies had its own Rolodex of the best executives in their region, so that when a Dutch company needed a CEO, the Amsterdam office could quickly produce a list of the twenty best Dutch candidates for the job. This competence used to be enough to own the marketplace.
But as globalization took hold, corporate clients increasingly wanted this executive search firm to provide them with all possible candidates for an international job—be the candidates Brazilian, Indian, or Japanese. The baronies, however, wouldn't share that information with each other. Each one had its own culture, and some were even communal and networked. But the organization as a whole was fragmented. No one barony saw the purpose of communicating with another. It took losing several important clients for the company's executive team to realize it, but the organization's culture was impeding the future growth of the company. To survive in the global marketplace—more, to succeed—would require extensive and frequent information sharing. An effort to move toward the communal form began
two years ago and is progressing moderately well. However, as you would expect, lots of ingrained behaviors and organizational systems stand in the way For example, some people had been successful in the old regime and had been well rewarded for it. They resented the move toward a new reward system that made them share information and central systems that coordinated activities more tightly. Change is almost always harder than it first appears.
Consider also the case of a major international consumer goods company that had for years thrived as a networked organization. One reason the networked form worked well for this company was that its markets were all very local and very distinct. You sell soap quite differently in Zimbabwe than in Portugal. In other words, there was little need for high solidarity to coordinate marketing and distribution, or rivet the company on a common enemy. At the same time, the company's high sociability created an atmosphere of creativity, flexibility, and freedom. Country managers were allowed to tailor their businesses to local needs and move swiftly against local competitive threats. The system worked very nicely.
But then the European Union emerged, and markets that were once distinct became blurred. Much was to be gained by coordinating marketing and distribution, and much was to be lost if common competitors were not fought with marshaled resources. In the past, this company had run nine manufacturing plants in Europe. With the new rules of the union, millions of dollars could be saved and efficiency improved manifold if the nine plants were combined into three centralized locations.
If six plants must close in a networked organization, what do you predict will happen? The phones ring incessantly at headquarters with old friends making their cases to old friends. And then, when the senior team meets to make their decision on the plants, the real decisions have already been made. These decisions would have been subtly swayed by social obligations, long-term relationships, and favors owed. At the meeting, how-
ever, the "recommendations" will have been presented with a business rationale. In the final analysis, in networked organizations tough strategic decisions that must be made quickly often get watered down by the politics of sociability. That is, they get skewed by personal issues.
The fact is, executives needed to make the decision about the plants with the mind-set of a mercenary culture. And, in fact, it did. But that was mainly because the CEO was already deep into the process of transforming his senior team from a networked group to a more mercenary one. (He had seen the impact of the European Union coming.) Within thirty days, the team decided which plants to close—using a highly analytical framework that factored in productivity, costs, and logistics. Virtually no personal considerations—or politics—colored the process.
These examples describe companies that took actions to help them move into new cultural quadrants intentionally, prompted by external factors. But sometimes companies also may need to take action to prevent moving into the negative form of their quadrant. Below are descriptions of worrying symptoms and solutions to the problems they signify.
Symptom Solution
Extensive gossip, rumor and Control it by confronting
intrigue. rumor mongers, getting to the
"grapevine" first, making more information public.
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Exclusive cliques. |
Move people around— change their jobs, move their location. |
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Long meetings without commitment to action. |
Introduce more structure to meetings; limit time, conclude with action points and clear accountabilities. |
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Cynicism about the products. |
Celebrate quality, invite employees to use products and make constructive suggestions for improvement. |
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Four things to watch out for to prevent a mercenary organization from slipping into the negative form |
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Symptom / |
Solution |
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Factions fighting (unit A vs. unit B, business against corporate, etc.) |
Repeat collective purpose and common enemies (through company videos, newsletters, speeches, etc.); create opportunities to link activities; publicly reward common purpose goals. |
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No time to think—always diving straight into action. |
Initiate strategic review— focused on the future; use "away days" to help people step back and gain perspective. |
Important things don't get done because they are not measured.
Ego clashes and people seeking revenge.
Refocus measurement systems; include some items that require cooperation.
Train people in conflict- resolution skills.
Symptom Solution
Good people leaving.
Lying about outputs or exaggerating their significance.
Immediately savaging all ideas that are not your own.
Failure to see
interdependencies where they exist.
Tie in your stars; rewards must be highly competitive and relate to their desires for self-fulfillment.
Repeated market testing—to check that you have stars. Use search consultants to find out who wants your people. Collect objective data about the reputations of your "stars" from clients and respected authorities.
Create contexts that reduce risk—brainstorming, train in feedback skills, recognize good work.
Light-touch leadership that makes connections between people.
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Four things to watch out for to prevent a communal organization from slipping into the negative form |
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Symptom |
Solution |
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Complacency—undervaluing the competition. |
Regularly benchmark; compare yourself to radically different kinds of organizations. |
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Believing your own dispropaganda. |
Build opportunities to discuss and critique credo. |
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Talking the values but not practicing them. |
Ensure values and associated behaviors are built into appraisals and reward systems. |
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Not learning from other organizations. |
Expose to others (alliances; consultants bring in new people). |
Movement between quadrants is also patterned. There are several common cultural migrations that happen with less conscious management guidance. The first of these is what we call the "Reverse Zed Form," because organizations move across the Double S Cube in the shape of a backward letter Z.
Networked Communal
In this migration, organizations—whether new or established—start in the communal. Over time, however, the commu-
nal can quite easily migrate into the networked; the behaviors of sociability tend to undermine the relations of solidarity. Another reason is that as communal companies do well, they can get somewhat lazy They lose their focus on the external enemy— Goliath has been slain—which was been the source of their solidarity Time passes, and eventually management comes to realize that the now networked company has lost the energizing and productive competitive spirit it once had in its more communal form. They begin, often quite fervently, to encourage and compensate behaviors that move the organization toward the mercenary, such as explicit targets and financial objectives. They may be trying to move back to the communal, but their zealousness about solidaristic behaviors undermines the effort. In the process, social ties have come undone. Feelings get hurt. Distrust often develops. The initiatives toward solidaristic behaviors fail to take hold, and bit by bit, the culture slips into the fragmented. 2
Case in point is what has happened recently at the BBC, the London-based international broadcasting network. For decades, the BBC had been communal, bolstered by its proud sense of purpose—"Nation shall speak unto nation"—and its close-knit social atmosphere. (The organization comprised legions of highly educated young men and women from elite British universities.) By the late 1970s, however, the organization had developed more networked characteristics. It never lost its sense of mission, but it did lose some of its fire, a factor reinforced by its lack of competition. The BBC was king of quality broadcasting, went the thinking, and shouldn't fix what wasn't broken. Some felt the organization had become complacent, but few people, at that point, doubted the BBC's stature in the world of broadcasting, although Margaret Thatcher's conservative government had begun to raise questions about the organization's efficiency and long-term capacity to compete. They appointed a new director-general, John Birt, in 1993. Birt wanted the BBC to become a
"global media player"—in fact, he argued it had to in order to survive in the twenty-first century The wolves were at the door cable TV, satellite TV, SKY TV, independent channels, even the big telephone companies. There was a danger the organization might even lose its government support because of growing dissatisfaction with the BBC's performance. Birt brought in consultants, finance experts, and strategists and exhorted reporters and producers in the field—the crown jewels of the BBC franchise—to pay attention to costs. Some programs with low ratings—highly respected by critics and considered British institutions—were threatened. The reward system was overhauled, linking performance and pay. And parts of the BBC production process, especially in the technical area, were subcontracted out. Although some felt quality was sacrificed, significant savings were claimed. Some characteristics of the mercenary form had taken hold.
It didn't take long for the sociability of the gentleman's club to fray under Birt's rule. Several of the BBC's most famous stars departed, newspapers published vehement public debates about what was happening to the BBC's mission, and people inside the organization began to question it too. In effect, the organization began to display several features of the fragmented culture. 3
So what can be done in the light of this cautionary tale? If you recognize something of this story in your company, here's some advice. As you will see we have broken this down across the three critical stages of this change path.
• Resist the temptation to let friendship get in the way of business decisions.
• Make sure your appraisal system focuses on objective mea¬
sures.
• Fight complacency by reminding everyone of the power of existing and potential competition.
• Make the mission live. Don't let it become a tablet of stone that can't be revisited.