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By Root 1577 0

represent the four basic types of group culture, but almost no company, team, or group is wholly one or another; they often contain bits of each in different measures. When that top salesperson decides that expense limits do not apply to him and orders the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu at his dinner meeting, he in a sense indulges anarchic impulses. “Rules are not for me,” he seems to say. “I’ll get it done my way.” (Although such mavericks have a special place in the history of business, when most people organize to achieve something bigger than themselves they tend to embrace some sort of regulating system, so we will not focus much on anarchy and lawlessness for the purposes of this discussion.) When the boss writes that “Get it to me by 4:00 P.M.” e-mail, she is relying on the autocratic authority and the threat of punitive reprisal characteristic of blind obedience cultures to coerce results.

There are no hard walls between these four basic cultures; most groups organize themselves in a progressive and evolutionary state embracing elements of all four. They require some of the coercion of blind obedience (fireable offenses, for instance); some rules and acquiescence to them (but not the stupid ones); maybe a skosh of anarchy now and again to stir the pot; and some measure of self-governance. Larger groups may have a number of different, related, cultures operating separately within a single organization. A corporate board might have a culture distinct from the management team, which in turn oversees smaller teams with unique characteristics. GE/Durham represents a distinct unit within the large panoply that is GE, as different from its parent as MTV Networks is from other units of Viacom.

Culture can seem an ephemeral thing, one of those soft things that are so difficult to get a grasp on sometimes. Now that we have an overview of the essential types of culture that dominate business, let’s try to break it down further to understand the various dimensions of culture, the HOWS at work whenever a group forms for a common purpose. Let us explore ways to make something “soft” into something “hard” that we can do something about.

FIVE HOWS OF CULTURE

Culture occurs at the synapses where people interact. Synapses, as we know, are capable of receiving signals from many different sources at once, as a diamond can receive light from many angles and refract it in many directions. So let us imagine the processes of culture entering these synapses as light enters the facets of a diamond. The nature and character of the stone—thus, the culture—determine which light will get through, and in what direction it will travel. Though many things come to bear upon how culture grows and operates, some forces and structures are more influential than others. Figure 10.2 identifies 22 of what I think of as the most influential dimensions of culture, the facets through which human energy flows. Each dimension is defined by the way it manifests itself within the three types of cultures we are most concerned about. In order to better survey these dimensions, I have grouped them on a table into five HOWS: How We Know, How We Behave, How We Relate, How We Recognize, and How We Pursue (see Figure 10.2). The table provides the defining characteristics of each dimension for each of the three cultures we have discussed (the fourth, anarchy, I have inserted as a placeholder to remind you where it lives in the spectrum of culture, but left blank because it rarely relates to our lives today).

FIGURE 10.2 The Dimensions of Culture

How We Know

The first thing that distinguishes the nature of a culture is how it creates, communicates, and uses information. This single factor is so central and influential to our HOWs that it warrants a group by itself.

• Cultures of blind obedience hoard information in the hands of the elite few. Workers are primarily task-oriented. Bosses issue decrees from above with no explanation, and nothing strategic can be gained from letting others in on your secrets.

• As organizations and groups gain