How - Dov Seidman [115]
The closed-loop business approach to quality—based on quantifiable metrics, real-time information, and continual vigilance, which provide organizations a complete grasp on the people, processes, and information that impact manufacturing, sales, and other elements of their business—can be applied equally systematically to the HOWS of human conduct. To thrive in the world to come, we must approach the way interpersonal HOWS work in our organizations in the same way as we did quality. We need to find more ways of building strong synapses between people, getting everyone aligned on a common TRIP, create the environments in which more Waves can start, and develop approaches that transmit these values throughout our group endeavors. To do that, we need to understand systematically the way groups work. We need to understand culture.
There are almost as many different types of organizational cultures as there are groups of people working together; although many seem similar, each has its unique flavor. Anytime people come together to accomplish something larger than themselves, a culture grows. A corporate board has a culture, a business unit has a culture, and every team has its culture. Talking about culture, though—what it is made of, how it forms, how it influences group performance, and how it can be changed—has historically been another amorphous thing, and the province of the few who sit at the top of the organizational chart and worry about such things.
In a world of HOW, however, these issues are no longer hidden and no longer the province of the elite few. Everyone must learn to innovate in HOW; not the how of process, but HOW we do what we do. More and more of us work in teams, more and more of us get opportunities to lead and to start Waves, and more and more of us can influence the culture of the group every day. The powerful forces at loose in the networked world have made the understanding of these issues of critical importance to anyone who wants to thrive today. So in this part, we try to shed some light on what makes groups go. To truly succeed, everyone must open up the way we think about the people we work with to include questions of governance and culture.
CHAPTER 10
Doing Culture
I came to see, in my time at IBM,
that culture isn’t just one aspect
of the game; it is the game.
—Lou Gerstner, former Chairman of the Board and CEO, IBM
The General Electric Aircraft Engine Assembly plant in Durham, North Carolina, produces some of the most powerful and technically complex aircraft engines in the world. Seen from the outside, there is little remarkable about this plant. Two hangar-sized buildings dominate 500 unlandscaped acres of the rolling North Carolina countryside, each with more than three acres of floor space and multistory ceilings. Before GE moved here, it was a steam-generator plant, and the corrugated metal walls and concrete floors betray little about this twenty-first-century enterprise. There are no offices, no recreation centers, and no fancy lunchrooms. Every year, more than 400 of the largest engines in the world roll out the door. These engines power large commercial aircraft, like the Boeing 777 and the Airbus A320, including the engines that keep Air Force One aloft. Each engine GE/Durham makes weighs 8.5 tons or more and has more than 10,000 parts.1 Each part must be assembled