At the end, we ask you to consider the beginning. In particular, to consider Andy Collins, who found himself in the midst of an organization quagmire, only to find that the way out was with the ladder of language—with a framework, actually, to help him understand what elements comprised his particular mess at Tys- tar Industries. He discovered they were behaviors that could be grouped under the headings of sociability and solidarity, which, when measured and plotted against one another to create the Double S Cube, gave him a way to identify, deeply understand, and ultimately change his organization's culture. That has been our purpose with this book: to give business practitioners at every level of every type of organization a method for assessing and evaluating the soundness of the social architecture in which they work.
We don't want to use this conclusion to repeat everything we've said in the past 200 pages; if you've reached this point, you've been there already. Instead, as a means of recapping, we'd like to do something more fun, which is to share with you "emblematic moments" from each of the four cultures (in their positive modes). These moments capture the essence of each cul-
ture for us. They are word pictures that tell a whole story about the central dynamics of each cultural form.
The first story comes from Unilever, which is networked in its most macro sense—that is, it has hundreds of businesses around the world, and relations between them are characterized by high degrees of sociability. Here's the moment: A Frenchman we'll call Stephan has been with the company for twelve years, running divisions in his native Paris, New York, and Buenos Aires. Recently, he was reassigned to run a new product group in Lahore, Pakistan. He didn't know a thing about the product, very little about the country, and nothing about the people he would be leading. At 8:00 a.m. on the day of his transfer, Stephan's plane touched down at the airport. He was greeted by a carload of five employees from the office—two managers and three members of the staff—who embraced him, welcomed him effusively, and drove him to the apartment they had selected for him, where fresh flowers were set on the foyer credenza and six bottled waters were chilling in the refrigerator. After helping him unload his suitcases, the group bustled Stephan back into the car and took him for a guided motor tour of the city, finished by a festive lunch at one of the city's open-air cafes. At 1:00 p.m., Stephan looked at his watch and thought to himself, "I have been in Lahore six hours, and I have five close friends." In fact, he did, and still does.
Our emblematic moment from a mercenary culture occurred in 1991, not long after the Swedish rock group ABBA released its
compilation called ABBA Gold. In a matter of weeks, the album sold one million copies. To mark the milestone of this enormous success, Polydor's marketing and sales division threw a huge party for itself, where people celebrated the organization's ability to fiercely pull together around one product and one goal. The highlight of the party, however, came when Polydor's chairman delivered his keynote speech. "One million copies is fine," he said, "but don't party too hard yet. The real work has just begun." The crowd received this stark message with enthusiasm. In the next year, due largely to the focused, unrelenting efforts of the people in that room, the album sold eight million more copies worldwide.
Fragmented cultures, with their low sociability and low solidarity, are hardly given over to "moments," let alone emblematic ones, given the fact that its members are not often in the same room. But our choice for this culture comes from one of the rare times when two members were. Two lawyers—one in real estate, the other in divorce—from a top-league firm were strongly urged by the managing partner to attend a recruiting dinner for Yale Law School, where many promising candidates attended. Neither lawyer wanted to go, but they were obeying the culture's rule of survival. Show up, occasionally. Five minutes before the party was to begin, both men pulled up in separate cabs at the entrance to the New Haven hotel where the party was being held. They both rushed through the door, and both asked the concierge where the law firm's event was taking place. When they realized they were both headed to the same banquet hall, the men couldn't help but look at each other, and then, under the mistaken assumption that the other was a Yale recruit, they stuck out their hands and introduced themselves. After names were exchanged, one man asked the other, "So, how's second
year wrapping up?" And the other replied, "Second year of what? I work for the firm."
You do? replied the first man. "I do too. Who are you again?"
Such a moment would be unheard of in a communal organization, with its intense friendships and strong sense of identification with the organization. Consider this story. At the offices of a major bank in Ireland, Trustee Savings Bank, there is a strong communal culture. When we first described this type to a senior executive, his reaction was immediate. "We're communal," he said. "How can you know so fast?" we asked. "That's easy," he said. "Since I've been with the company two people have been buried in their uniforms—at their request." On that mighty shred of evidence, we would say the senior executive got it just right.
Even hearing these moments—paradigmatic as they are—you probably are thinking that you yourself operate with many different cultures at work at once, and you are probably right. Your overall company may very well be fragmented, your division mercenary, and your team communal. This diversity of cultural experiences is common. Indeed, we would argue that one of the great mistakes of the business literature on culture is to assert that culture is uniform—that is, to claim that Sony has one type of culture, or that Disney or General Electric can be described with one cultural label. Within each one of these massive organizations, the eight cultures of the Double S Cube exist in various places and to varying degrees. Indeed, even smaller companies don't necessarily have uniform cultures. Distinctive business environments and technologies can make a difference. British Bor-
220 • THE CHARACTER OF A CORPORATION
neo's communal culture in its London office (focusing on North Sea deepwater operations), for example, was not immediately replicated in Houston when it first developed its Gulf of Mexico operations (focusing initially on shallow-water exploration).
If this simultaneous existence of cultures is true, then the interaction of different cultures becomes an important matter. In fact, we have seen that the challenge of managing the interface between cultures is endemic to business today. Few companies are monolithic, as we've said, and so cultures constantly must combine and combust. Think of all the mergers and acquisitions taking place in recent years. These are the most obvious examples of culture clashes, but they are everywhere—between the mercenary sales and marketing division of a pharmaceutical company and its communal R and D people, between the networked "artists and repertoire" section of a music company and its fragmented headquarters. These clashing cultures don't guarantee war, nor do they guarantee the inertia of a stalemate. But they do guarantee conflict, missed signals, and even missed opportunities if somebody is not aware of what is going on.
The implication is that good managers must become like good anthropologists, with well-honed skills in recognizing and comprehending the rules, norms, behaviors, and belief systems of different tribes. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. We would add: power to affect meaningful change and promote authentic understanding.
A good manager/anthropologist might know, for instance, that when the mercenary meets up with another "tribe," its first instinct is to crush it. The networked tribe tries to befriend strange new peoples. And what about communal cultures? Their first and foremost objective is to make converts to their
ways. Finally, the people of the fragmented nation are blissfully unaware that other tribes—that is, cultures—exist.
Most people, however, be they anthropologists or not, know that organizational culture surrounds us. It undergirds us; it supports us—like the infrastructure of a building. Once the building is erected, you cannot see its posts, beams, and steel ties, but the building would collapse without them. The same is true of organizations. We cannot "see" their cultures necessarily, but they may be the most important thing about them. After all, products can be copied, marketing strategies made similar, advertising mimicked, executives poached, manufacturing processes duplicated, but how people in an organization relate cannot be quickly or simply copied. These relationships are culture. The underlying social architecture is perhaps the only sustainable competitive advantage organizations have at their disposal today. Whether social architecture is nurtured or changed, as long as it is understood, it has enormous potential. For your corporate character can be your tightest constraint or greatest opportunity for success. The choice is yours.