How - Dov Seidman [118]
Mastering culture is no longer a job for just those at the top of the organizational chart. An organization’s culture represents the collective action of all the individuals that comprise it, so on the journey to make the most of the new conditions of today, it is incumbent upon everyone who wants to do well to understand the intricacies of how culture works. Making HOW work for you every day requires the ability not only to change the interpersonal synapses between you and your direct associates, but to affect the synapses between everyone on your team. When the press is on to make the quarterly numbers, achieve a great product launch, or put together that great sales presentation, you want to be working in a stadium—whether filled with a half dozen people or a thousand—that can easily make a Wave. Moreover, the new conditions of the hyperconnected world put that ability in almost every worker, not just the top brass. You can approach it in a deliberate way and learn to see it as a system of HOWS that you can shape and influence, each element reinforcing the others in a powerful Wave of achievement. You, too, can master culture.
What? Master culture? Doesn’t culture just sort of happen?
Well, culture is organic, but it does not grow willy-nilly. To see how all its parts work together in mutually reinforcing ways, let’s first examine its components—the moving parts, if you will, that make the thing go. Let’s begin by discussing the types of culture most common in business today. This discussion might seem a bit like homework to you, but if you can see the framework it describes, then the chapters that follow will give you a deep sense of how it applies to thriving on the journey ahead.
THE SPECTRUM OF CULTURE
Myriad details shape, influence, and direct the formation of group cultures. Some are intrinsic to the enterprise and cannot be altered. A warehouse operation in which everyone communicates face-to-face or via walkie-talkie and shouting will foment a different culture than a cubicle-filled office where most people communicate at meetings and via e-mail. Both of these will differ from a culture that grows out of the interaction of remote workers or teams working out of their homes or small satellite offices. The substance of the business—what it makes, sells, or serves—also bears a direct relation to culture. A company making transmission gears will grow a culture different from a business statistics and research group. A young, hungry company in a new industry will develop differently from a long-established market leader. Factors like people’s age, what they wear, their attitude toward nepotism, or inclusion or exclusion of family in company functions all exert profound influence on the type of culture that grows there. These circumstantial factors are tokens of culture, and all influence the basic questions that culture seeks to answer: How are decisions made? How is power wielded? How does information flow? How do Waves happen?
Cultures in general tend to fall into four basic types. These types lie along a spectrum that, not coincidentally, also mirrors the historical development of organizational complexity and societal maturity, from the most simple and direct to the most complex and rational. I first spoke about this Spectrum of Culture in my testimony before the U.S. Federal Sentencing Commission in 2004.4 These states are abstract, but as we discuss them, you will begin to see elements of them in almost every group culture in which you participate.
To get a sense of the broad strokes, let us pretend, for