Toward A Redemptive
Organization
Thomas F.
Tumblin
This paper extends research on
organizational decision making begun in 1987 which culminated in my
dissertation. The primary question of optimizing organizations continues to
push me to discover the edges as well as the center of the “redemptive
organization,” an elusive, ideal gathering of people who are both highly
productive and highly relational while serving society. In a Christian context,
the mission includes drawing the best out of the individuals as well as the
larger group to fulfill their God-designed purpose. In a conventional
organization, one that does not overtly express a Christian value system, the
mission includes fostering continuous growth of the individuals and the group
as a whole in a context of contributing to the good of the society.
These values of a strong mission
focus coupled with the commitment to grow people and serve the larger community
are the heartbeat of a decision model that acknowledges the organizational
culture as well as corporate goals and contingencies. Emphasis is placed on
decision making because how we choose ultimately will determine the shape and
direction of the organization. In my dissertation, the model I proposed was
adapted from the work of Lee Roy Beach of the University of Arizona. His Image
Theory research accommodates the context within which all decisions are made as
well as the various external elements that are not particularly controllable.
At the same time. Beach provides for the values, principles and philosophies
that help shape the organizational culture. He also provides the goals and
objectives that flow from the vision for the enterprise.
Since,
as we will see later, what we do influences how we understand who we are, Beach
includes activities as part of the decision making system. These primary
decision elements of culture, vision and activities (as they interact with the
externals and the decision frame) are the basis for decision making in an
organization. They become the source of options for decision candidates, the
set of possible decision solutions. In any given event, the options are
narrowed first by filtering them through the quality test if how well each fits
the culture, vision and activities of the system. If more than one
option “survives” the quality test, then the final solution becomes the option
providing the best benefit or yield.
I begin the discussion of the redemptive organization
from this foundation since it allows for the values proposed: a strong mission
focus, a high commitment to developing people and clear evidence of serving
society. Certainly no model will capture all of the ontological and
cosmological aspects of such an ideal, but I hope to journey toward it.
Redemptive
Defined
A
theological concept that captures the meaning of excellence proposed in this
context is the concept of
redemption. To broadly capture the idea, notice Colin Brown’s description:
Whenever men [sic] by their own fault or through
some superior power have come under the control of someone else, and have lost
their freedom to implement their will and decisions, and when their own
resources are inadequate to deal with that other power, they can regain their
freedom only by the intervention of a third party.[ii]
(New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, vol 3, p. 177)
To be redeemed, someone from outside of the system must
“buy back” freedom and resources. In the Christian sense, the Creator chose to
join the creation in human form to redeem humanity and all of creation (e.g.
Romans 8:19-23). Original purpose and relationships are restored, past failures
forgiven. New guidelines and lifestyles emerge. The context transforms.
In an organizational context,
these acts of liberating, ransoming and setting free release the mission of the
organization through people who themselves are being developed in healthy ways.
All of society experiences the repercussions. The very nature of redemption
implies that the values and purpose lead the enterprise toward the social good.
The intended outcomes are being accomplished according to stated values with
maximum benefit to all constituencies. Thus, a redemptive organization as
defined in this paper seeks to maximize value to the internal and external
stakeholders while fulfilling the organization’s mission with excellence. It
creates leaders, systems, structures and activities that execute the values and
purposes of the enterprise in a contagious culture of growth.[iii]
(DePree, Tichy, Drucker, others).
People
If it is a
Christian organization, either by its stated purpose or by the faith-based
value system of the key leader(s), then enter the elements of “presenting
everyone mature in Christ” (e.g. Ephesians 4:13, Colossians 1:28), of serving
society justly (e.g. Micah 6:8, Matthew 25:31-40) and of presenting a product
the excellence of which is motivated by a commitment to honor
God in our work (e.g. Ephesians 6:5-9, Colossians 3:23).
Mission
Mission, People, Service
Basic studies in organizational
leadership draw the tension between a focus on production and a focus on human
resources.[iv]
(Blake and Mouton, Hersey and Blanchard, others). Historically, an
over-emphasis on productivity would lead to an abuse of employees while an
over-emphasis on human resources would result in deficient products. The age of
the “both/and” calls of the tension of high productivity while fully attending
to the development of the people turning out the product. The excellent
organization constantly seeks the alignment of all recourses and energy toward
accomplishing the organization’s mission.
Mission People Service
One of the contemporary advocates of investing in the
good of society is Amitai Etzioni. In his The Golden Rule: Community and
Morality in a Democratic Society he continues his communitarian agenda that
“applies the notion of the golden rule at the societal level, to characterize
the good society as one that nourishes both social virtues and individual
rights.” He proposes a careful balance of each, otherwise described as
individuality plus community or autonomy plus social order.[v]
(pp. 4-5). The ideal
inverting
symbiosis… is a blending [of order and autonomy] that – up to a point – enhance
one another (so that in a society that has more of one, the other grows
stronger as a direct result), a symbiotic relationship; bit if either element
intensifies beyond a given level, it begins to diminish the other: the same two
formations become antagonistic.[vi]
(p. 36)
For example, society only takes on coercive policies and
actions when there is a “clear and present danger,” and then starting “without
resorting to autonomy-restricting measures.” If the risk persists, the next
level of action should be “minimally intrusive” and, lastly, in a fashion that
minimizes any “autonomy-diminishing, possibly unintended, side effects.”[vii]
(p. 52). When applied to organizations in society, he proposes providing more
time for people to adjust to the impacts of globalization, creating new jobs
through public funding to community institutions, work sharing coupled with
enhanced job security, a solid system for caring for the oppressed and
disadvantaged, and a pursuit of voluntary simplicity paired with a quest “for
other resources of satisfaction that are not resource intensive.”[viii]
(pp. 82-84).
The establishment of societal
values evolves dialogically. In an atmosphere of “pluralism within unity,”
regional, national and international conversations (or megalogues) take place
which seek to find the moral voice of society and follow that voice. These
megalogues result in identifying shared core values.
In search of a principled way to determine which
values are properly accounted for, I join with those who hold that if a
community (by demographic process or other forms of consensus building) reaches
closure, the values endorsed or implied have been imbued with a measure of
legitimacy, but not sufficient accountability. I further argue that if these
values also comport with the societal values (often ensconced in the
constitution or other such laws), this fact enhances the standing of the chosen
values, but even these two criteria applied together are insufficient. The
same, for reasons provided, holds for the fact that a given set of values are
the results of properly constructed moral dialogues and/or the product of a
global consensus building. In searching for the final touchstone, I draw on the
observation that certain concepts present themselves to us as morally
compelling in and of themselves.[ix]
(p.241)
Good societies require people who can balance
their religious or secular ethical commitments with respect for autonomy,
especially the rights of others; who are willing to engage in moral dialogues
rather than promote state-enforced morality; and who limit the scope of their
shared formulations of the good to core values.[x]
(p. 254-255)
In other words, religiosity is not a prerequisite
for communitarianism. “This is the ultimate reason that the communitarian
paradigm entails a profound commitment to moral order that is basically
voluntary, and to a social order that is well balanced with socially
secured autonomy – the new golden rule.”[xi]
(p. 257).
In critique of Eztioni, while this may be true for the
pluralistic society, the tenets of Christianity (as well as other faiths) add
expectations that go way beyond those of the community. What does it mean to
have an organization whose product quality reflects the principle of working
“as unto the Lord?” What additional evidence of integrity and service show up
when customers are people created in the image of God? Faith-based
organizations become “societal-value plus” – the minimum standards are exceeded
by the guidelines of religious teachings.
Servant Leadership
Writing
from an overtly Judeo-Christian perspective, Robert Greenleaf made popular the
concept of servant leadership as the foundation for legitimate power and
greatness in society. He retired from American Telephone and Telegraph after
almost forty years of training managers, his last position being Director of
Management Research. Most of his published writings came post-retirement.
His thinking and writing on servant leadership grew out
of his work with colleges and universities during the 1960’s and 1970’s who
were trying to deal with and heal from the vast student unrest.[xii]
(p. 3). His contribution has been a call for leaders and trustees of key
institutions to serve society as they were intended to do. If institutions in
business, education, the non-profit world of foundations and churches were to
truly serve society responsibly, they would change society for the better.
I think
of responsibility as beginning with a concern for self, to receive that inward
growth that gives serenity of spirit without which someone cannot truly say, “I
am free.” One moves, then, to a response to one’s environment, whatever it is,
so as to make a pertinent force of one’s concern for one’s neighbor – as a
member of a family, a work group, a community, a world society. The outward and
the inward are seen as parts of the same fabric. Responsible persons have both.[xiii]
(p. 293).
In this challenge to the next generation
of leaders, Greenleaf calls for counter-weighting the pulls of a bureaucratic
society by embracing the virtues of beauty, momentaneity (seize the day),
openness, humor and tolerance (i.e. “the ability to bear suffering with
serenity”).[xiv] (pp.
298-302).
I
suggest these five words – beauty, momentaneity, openness, humor and tolerance
– as marking some dimensions of a life style that is rooted in an inward grace:
sensitive and aware, concerned for the ever present neighbor, both the well-fed
one next door and the hungry one on the other side of the earth, seeing and
feeling what is right in the situation.[xv]
(p. 302).
Genuine
servant leadership at the very least has the quality of serving others, both
for individuals and for organization. The core values might derive from
community megalogues and/or from religious precepts. For the redemptive
organization, the priorities of mission, people and service will be
non-negotiables.
Alignment
Along with these overarching values of mission, people
and service, there will be other values influencing the enterprise. Yet, all
other organizational elements (other values making up the culture, vision and
activities) must libe up with the overarching values to achieve excellence.
Excellence
lies
in creating alignment – alignment to preserve an organization’s core values, to
reinforce its purpose and to stimulate continued progress towards its
aspirations. When you have superb alignment, a visitor could drop into your
organization from another planet and infer the vision without having to read it
on paper.[xvi] (Collins,
Leader to Leader Journal, no. 1, Summer 1996).
How
does one correct alignment? First by “identifying and correcting misalignment,”
a process where stakeholders can safely target and eliminate misaligned
processes and policies – anything inconsistent with the core values. Then,
create new alignments (“mechanisms with teeth”). An example he gives is of the
Granite Rock Company that is so committed to continuous improvement that it
encourages customers to deduct from their bill payment for anything with which
they were dissatisfied.[xvii]
(ibid). In the commitment to constant alignment, Collins suggests only 10%-20%
of the effort be to identify core values. Once that is done, 0%-5% of energy
should be spent in drafting and redrafting statements. The bulk of the time,
80%-90%, should be spent in creating alignment.
Pfeffer
and Sutton underline the need to do more than simply talk about alignment when
they talk about closing the “knowing-doing gap.”[xviii]
(Harvard Business Review, May-June 1999, pp. 139ff). Companies which do this
well have leaders who both “know and do the work” (i.e. keep attuned to the
real capacities and challenges), who have a bent toward “plain language and
simple concepts,” who “frame questions by asking ‘how,’ not just ‘why,’” have
strong habits that ensure implementation of ideas and believe “experience is
the best teacher.” Pfeffer continues the conversation in an interview with Alan
Webber of FastCompany. Some of his “16 rules to help make things happen in your
organization” include the following admonitions.
·
Doing means learning. Learning means mistakes.
·
Have no fear. [Cp. Seize the day.]
·
Talk [by itself] ain’t cheap. It’s expensive – and
destructive.
·
Decisions, by themselves, are empty.
·
Make knowing and doing the same thing.[xix]
(FastCompany, June 2000, pp. 168ff).
In seeking alignment around
the core values, the organization must move beyond what it knows or mere
dialogue to action. Implementation of the core values becomes the fruit of the
values, just as faith or belief need to result in a life style and activities
that reflect the faith.
Identifying
Core Beliefs
Collins
goes on to say: “you cannot ‘set’ core values, you can only discover them. Nor
can you ‘install’ new core values into people. Core values are not something
people ‘buy in’ to. People must be predisposed to holding them.”[xx]
(ibid). He suggests creating a group of five to seven people whom others in the
organization believe best embody the spirit and ethos of the corporate entity.
This group then bores into their own sense of non-negotiable values, those
timeless, transferable principles that guide their lives and which they thereby
vest in the company. The danger is confusing timeless values with operating
practices and norms. Often organizations will protect the latter thinking a
practice or norm is actually the value. For example, an organization may state
its value is never firing anyone except for blatant misconduct. While that may
be the practice, the value behind it is probably more like we highly value
employee longevity and will operate in a way to foster it. Again, for the
redemptive organization, the priorities of mission, people and service will be
clear and operative. Any number of other core values certainly would be added,
depending on the nature and purpose of the organization.
The Sullivan Principles
One snapshot of a corporation
that wrestled with being a force for good is the debate within General Motors (GM)
during the 1960s and 1970s regarding investments in South Africa while it was
under Apartheid. The Rev. Leon Sullivan, a Black Baptist preacher from
Philadelphia and director on the GM Board in the ‘70’s, called the corporation
to face the evils of Apartheid. His call for divestiture, both on the GM Board
and before Congress resulted in what have been labeled the Sullivan Principles.
He challenged all entities to pull out of South Africa until Blacks were
treated equally with Whites, including equal pay and the right to vote. For
those companies in South Africa that would not treat all employees with the
same dignity and freedoms, Sullivan called for divestment from those companies’
stocks.[xxi]
(Alternatives to Despair, pp. 153-160). Crawford and Klotz, commenting
on the impact of Sullivan’s influence, note that the companies that did
voluntarily sign the Sullivan Principles after they were introduced in 1976
were a key influence toward the demise of Apartheid.[xxii]
(How Sanctions Work, pp. 132-4).
How does an organization attend
to the systemic nuances within any enterprise and thereby incorporate the
overarching values of the redemptive organization? In the next section I will
review the insights from social psychology.
Shaping the
Organizational Culture: Sensemaking
A classic thinker in the area of
organizational psychology is Karl Weick, Rensis Likert College Professor of
Organizational Behavior and Psychology at the University of Michigan. In his
recent compilation of articles entitled Making Sense of the Organization,
Weick unpacks the process of attaching meaning in organizations. He identifies
seven properties of the process: social context, personal identity, retrospect,
salient cues, ongoing projects, plausibility and enactment.[xxiii]
(pp. 461-63).
Social context refers to the
influence of others engaged in the enterprise. Organizing is a social act and
“is influenced by the actual, implied or imagined presence of others.”[xxiv]
(p. 461). A referent group supports, validates and shares in the meaning of the
organization.
Personal identity names the sense
each of us has in a social setting. How we perceive ourselves and the
interactions we are having within that context influences the nonlinear
sensemaking process. If one evidences low self identity, the temptation is to
interact differently than one who evidences a higher self identity.
Retrospect – “[w]hen people
refuse to appreciate the past and instead use it casually, and when they put
their faith in anticipation rather than resilience, then their acts of retrospect
are shallow, misleading and halfhearted, and their grasp of what is happening
begins to loosen.”[xxv]
(p. 462) – influences the meaning invested in the organization. Weick calls for
a balance of learning from the past while not imposing it on the present or
future.
Salient cues act to
elaborate tiny indicators into
full-blown stories… The prototype here is a self-fulfilling prophecy or an
application of the documentary method… When cues become equivocal,
contradictory or unstable, either because individual preferences are changing
or because situations are dynamic, people begin to lose their grip of what is
happening.[xxvi] (p. 462).
Ongoing projects reflects the
tempus fugit nature of life. The participants in an organization need to
“connect the dots” of ongoing events. Particularly in a learning organization,
how do the events fit together and how should actions and interpretations be
updated in light of them?[xxvii](ibid)?
Plausibility simply refers to the
criteria for acceptable meaning or sense. For sensemaking to be acceptable it
must be convincing. The social group must deem it reasonable.
Thus, plausible sense is
constrained by agreements with others, consistency with one’s own stake in
events, the recent past, visible cues, projects that are demonstrably under
way, scenarios that are familiar, and actions that have tangible effects. When
one or more of these sources of grounding disappears, stories may strain
credibility, leave too many cues unaddressed, or be impossible to compose, in
which case people begin to lose their grasp.[xxviii]
(ibid).
Enactment simply acknowledges
that an organization exists to act. How one acts and invests meaning in those
acts shapes the sense of the organization. Working a database, making
decisions, creating a product, these and any number of actions themselves
become part of the sensemaking process. “[S]ensemaking seems to follow roughly
a sequence in which people concerned with identity in the social context of
other actors engage ongoing events from which they extract cues and make plausible
sense retrospectively while enacting more or less order into those ongoing
events.”[xxix]
(p. 463).
To make sense of something is to
begin to provide a plausible platform for sharing mental models, coordinating
activities and interacting to produce relationships. To organize around
something is to converge on an event whose articulation and preservations feels
beneficial and of joint relevance. Sense makes organizing possible. And
organizing makes sense possible.[xxx]
(p. 95)
For the redemptive organization,
sense if based on the overarching values of mission, people and service. These
and other values provide the paradigm for goals, activities, decisions,
systems, structures and any other facet of the organization. Often the phrase
which captures the sentiment is “wanting to make a difference.” Each act and
each event gains meaning within the parameters of the overarching values.
Beyond Etzioni’s megalogues strategy of discovering socially affirmed values,
the redemptive organization begins with at least three of the values in place,
the foundation of sensemaking for this type of organization.
Sensemaking Revisited
To describe it another way,
imagine an organization into which comes an interruption, surprise or
discrepancy. Weick would call thias an ecological change.[xxxi]
(p. 98). How the individuals perceive and explain the change Weick calls
enactment. It is “better understood by examining what is in people’s heads and
imposed by them on a stream of events than by trying to describe what’s ‘out
there.’”[xxxii]
(p. 182).
“A driver nicknamed Ole Red was a
past master at enacting environments for [international commerce commission
truck scale operator] inspectors. ‘He’d pull into entry points when he was carrying
nothing. Just to drive those guys crazy. He’d pull up to the scales, get out of
his truck, and start pounding all over his trailer with a little hammer. The
operator would come out and ask him what the hell he was doing. Red would start
at him real good and tell him he was overloaded, but was carrying a load of
canaries and he wanted to get them all in the air before he got weighed.[xxxiii]
(Krueger, 1975, p. 118 as quoted in Weick, p. 204).
As individuals attempt to explain
the ecological change, they select answer(s) to the ever-present question,
“what’s the story here?” “To answer that question, individuals and groups sort
through prior cues, label them and connect them, which often results in
plausible stories that are good enough to keep going and enlarge the circle of
interested parties.”[xxxiv]
(p. 237). So, selection is the retrospective interpretation of enacted cues.
Once the “story” is identified,
it is placed in the context of past events using plausible arguments and
connections. Retention – how we do things around here – is the result. Meanings
of enactment are preserves as organizational memory.[xxxv]
(p. 306).
The final step in sensemaking
draws on guidance from the past while remaining alert to the non-routine in the
present. The organization needs to learn from the past without imposing those
lessons on the present and future. This step of remembering champions the
ambiguity of knowing what has been learned while acting as if there is much
more to learn. It seeks to avoid automatically putting any new experience into
an old category of meaning. Does Ole Red have a semi-truck full of butterflies
or is it really empty?[xxxvi]
(pp. 357-359)?
Sensemaking in Organizational
Terms
To return to the seven properties
of sensemaking, seven questions can be matched up with the properties:
- Social
context – does the form encourage conversation?
- Identity
– does the form give people a distinct, stable sense of who they are and
what they represent?
- Retrospect
– does the form preserve elapsed data and legitimate the use of those
data?
- Salient
cues – does the form enhance the visibility of cues?
- Ongoing
projects – does the form enable people to be resilient in the face of
interruptions?
- Plausibility
– does the form encourage people to accumulate and exchange plausible
accounts?
- Enactment
– does the form encourage action or hesitation?[xxxvii]
(p. 464)?
Organizational Frames
Bolman and Deal provide one
additional element to organizational understanding – the concept of
organizational framing. To use Weick’s argument, too often leaders are unable
to break free from past events and experiences to understand the present and
future. They have an established frame of reference through which they
understand the enterprise. Bolman and Deal enter the conversation with the
suggestion that an organization can be viewed from four primary frames of
reference and intentionally changing perspective, or reframing, can help enrich
our understanding. The four frames also
provide language and paradigms for better communication among varying
perspectives.
One of the
four frames is the structural frame that can be described as bureaucratic with
committees, boards, clearly defined roles, relationships and goals. The
symbolic frame is looser, often with few structures, iconic, myths, beliefs and
spirit. The human resources frame is people-centered over mission-driven, and
values investing in employees and creating mutual rewards. The political frame is power-centered and is characterized by
bargaining and negotiation.
When the
organization or culture “does not make sense,” try changing the lense (e.g.
from political to symbolic) to better understand the dynamics and values at
play. There often is a mix of frames in an organization with one as predominant
(cp. a church with “bells & smells” worship and multiple committee board
structure). Below we will see that Schein talks about there being a primary
culture with the eventual development of subcultures. These cultures and
subcultures each have their own nuances, but still occur within one (or more)
of the frames.
One of
the helpful discussions in Bolman and Deal includes the leadership practices of
strategic planning, decision making, reorganizing, evaluating, approaching
conflict, goal setting, communication, meetings and motivation as seen through
the four frames.[xxxviii] (p.
265ff). How each of these activities (cp. enactment) are accomplished,
perceived and given meaning depends at least in part on the frame through which
they are understood. In Beach’s Image Theory model, the frame for decision
making allows for permeability and change. In other words, how one frames or
reframes is negotiable and depends on the decision event and the decision
maker(s).
Leadership and Culture
Peter
Koestenbaum, in Leadership: The Inner
Side of Greatness, describes his leadership diamond model.[xxxix]
(p. 70). In the midst of an ambiguous world where each leadership challenge
brings with it conflicting feelings and contradictory ideas, the leader is
called to live in the tension of vision, ethics, reality and courage. For
Koestenbaum, attending to these four elements in an unpredictable world ensures
effective leadership, what he calls greatness.
“In leadership, greatness matters. There are
four ways to express greatness. The authentic leader is committed to greatness
in all of them. A visionary leader always sees the larger perspective, for
vision means to think big and new. A realistic leader always responds to the
facts, for realism means to have no illusions. An ethical leader always is
sensitive to people, for ethics means to be of service. A courageous leader
always claims the power to initiate, act, risk, for courage means to act with
sustained initiative.”[xl]
(p. 318).
Leadership
plays a critical role in organizational culture. How individuals lead and interact
with other leaders reflects the real culture of the enterprise, beyond any
stated list of values. There would be friction in a redemptive organization,
for example, if it begins adding people who themselves do not embrace the
overarching values of mission, people and service. As Collins has reminded us,
organizational core values come from a predisposition of the individuals rather
than imposition.
Edgar
Schein reflects the same bias as he defines group culture.
The
culture of a group can now be defined as: A pattern of shared basic assumptions
that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and
internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and,
therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think,
and feel in relation to those problems.[xli]
(p. 12).
The levels of culture
are artifacts (“visible organizational structures and processes – hard to
decipher”), espoused values (“strategies, goals, philosophies – espoused
justifications”) and basic underlying assumptions (“unconscious,
taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings – ultimate
source of values and actions”).[xlii]
(p. 17).
These levels of culture “basically spring from three sources: (1) the beliefs,
values, and assumptions of founders of organizations; (2) the learning
experiences of group members as their organization evolves; and (3) new
beliefs, values, and assumptions brought in by new members and leaders.”[xliii]
(p. 211). In many ways the “stewards” of the culture are the leaders as they
directly or indirectly monitor and influence the corporate culture. How do
leaders anchor or embed the culture of an organization? Schein suggests the
following mechanisms.
Culture-Embedding Mechanisms[xliv]
(Schein, p. 231)
[Primarily re: early stages of an organization]
|
Primary
Embedding Mechanisms |
Secondary Articulation
and Reinforcement Mechanisms |
|
What leaders pay attention to, measure, and
control on a regular basis |
Organization design and structure |
|
How leaders react to critical incidents and
organizational crises |
Organizational systems and procedures |
|
Observed criteria by which leaders allocate
scarce resources |
Organizational rites and rituals |
|
Deliberate role modeling, teaching, and coaching |
Design of physical space, facades, and buildings |
|
Observed criteria by which leaders allocate
rewards and status |
Stories, legends, and myths about people and
events |
|
Observed criteria by which leaders recruit,
select, promote, retire, and excommunicate organizational members |
Formal statements of organizational philosophy,
values, and creeds |
In Schein’s
understanding, “leaders do not have a choice about whether or not to
communicate. They only have a choice about how much to manage what they
communicate.”[xlv] (p. 253).
So, in the redemptive organization, how leaders react to events, how they
reward status or resources, how they include or exclude members will help set
the culture, particularly at the early stages of the organization. As the
organization matures, the secondary mechanisms begin to take prominence. Rites,
rituals, systems, procedures, stories, stated philosophies all begin to
formalize the culture.
Schein
echoes Beach’s concept of an observed dominant culture in an organization that
eventually creates or allows subcultures. The primary culture begins to
differentiate itself. As a group matures, it will create subgroups through the
process of differentiation: functional/occupational (diversifying roles and
responsibilities), geographical decentralization (multiple sites), by
product/market/technology, divisionalization (creating work groups and
departments), by hierarchical level, mergers/acquisitions, joint
ventures/strategic alliances/multi-organizational units, and/or structural
opposition groups (e.g. unions, internal competition).[xlvi]
(p. 256). For example, note the subcultures created when new technology enters
an organization. Schein discusses the contrasting assumptions of this type of
change in chapter 14.
Typically
subcultures begin to appear as the organization moves through its life stages.
At the founding and early growth stage, change usually comes incrementally
through general and specific evolution, through insight from what he describes
as “organizational therapy” or intervention, and through promotion of hybrids
within the culture. At the middle stage, changes usually come through systemic
promotion from selected subcultures, through organizational development projects
and the creation of parallel learning structures and through what Schein calls
technological seduction – the adapting of new technology. In the maturity and
decline stage, change comes through the infusion of outsiders, through scandal
and myth explosion, through turnarounds, through coercive persuasion and
through destruction and rebirth.[xlvii]
(p. 304).
To summarize, the
critical roles in leadership in strategy formation and implementation are (1)
to perceive accurately and in depth what is happening in the environment, (2)
to create enough disconfirming information to motivate the organization to
change without creating too much anxiety, (3) to provide psychological safety
by either providing a vision of how to change and in what direction or by
creating a process of visioning that allows the organization itself to find a
path, (4) to acknowledge uncertainty, (5) to embrace errors in the learning
process as inevitable and desirable, and (6) to manage all phases of the change
process, including especially the management of anxiety as some cultural
assumptions are given up and new learning begins.[xlviii]
(pp. 383-84).
It seems clear that the
leaders of the future will have to be perpetual learners. This will require (1)
new levels of perception and insight into the realities of the world and also
into themselves; (2) extraordinary levels of motivation to go through the
inevitable pain of learning and change, especially in a world with looser
boundaries in which one’s own loyalties become more and more difficult to
define; (3) the emotional strength to manage their own and others’ anxiety as
learning and change become more and more a way of life; (4) new skills in
analyzing changing cultural assumptions; (5) the willingness and ability to
involve others and elicit their participation; and (6) the ability to learn the
assumptions of a whole new organizational culture.[xlix]
(pp. 391-92).
If Schein’s lists appear
complex and daunting, they are. Peter Senge joins in the chorus when he describes
the systemic nature of profound change.[l]
(pp. 561-565). (Cp. Robert Quinn’s Deep Change.) When going through
profound change, there will be shifting dominance when addressing one challenge
inevitably brings a new challenge to the front. Like pressing on one side of an
inflated balloon leads to ballooning on other sides, the leader should
anticipate the next challenge. Secondly, profound change involves related
capacities. Progress in one area or capacity often leads to progress in
another, related area of the system. Thirdly, profound change models fractal
relationships. “[L]ocal challenges constitute microcosms of more global
challenges, and local successes may establish a foundation for global change.”[li]
(p. 563). The variables can act like a shell game. The systems within an
organization can as well hide as reveal new learning. How can a leader
influence realities so complex?
Vulnerability and Honesty
Service
Increasingly
the organizational literature advocates the use of teams within organizations.
Multiple leaders grouped in a synergistic, high performance team are the best
hope for redemptive organizations as well. The complexities of staying aligned
with the core values of the enterprise in a quantum world demand more than any
one leader can offer. The stumbling block often comes from instilling
sufficient trust and vulnerability in the organization to allow honest feedback
and cooperation.
Chris
Argyris champions what he calls the Model II organization where stakeholders
are free to openly question information without fear of reprisal. Most
organizations operate in Model I form – withholding information so as not to offend or undermine
one’s position. They refuse to question underlying assumptions and theories.
Model II individuals and companies press past the niceties and formalities to
get at the base truth of issues in a learned atmosphere of trust. “The sacred
set of values, therefore, in an organization are these: valid knowledge,
informed choice and personal responsibility to monitor the effectiveness of the
effort.”[lii]
(Strategy and Business, issue 10, Q1 ’98, p. 92; see also “Teaching Smart
People How to Learn,” Harvard Business Review, May-June 1991). If the
overarching value are to remain strong, truth-telling from all participants becomes
essential, another of the core values.
Thrall, et al. in Ascent of
the Leader[liii]
reinforce this vulnerability in their call for creating atmospheres and
relationships of grace that allow blatant openness and risk – risking to be totally
honest with one’s weaknesses as well as one’s strengths. While the team works
to protect each one’s weaknesses and enhance each one’s strengths, the culture
of openness fosters doing so with full disclosure of who the players are and
the pros and cons of the ideas being discussed. The prerequisite disciplines
for operating in such a culture are humility, submission, obedience and
suffering/maturity.
Ironically, Jim Collins, in his
new research on “Level Five Leadership” has discovered that humility was a
common trait of leaders who have taken organizations from good to truly great.
In a five year study of companies whose stock for fifteen years was at or below
the general stock market and then showed fifteen years with at least three
times the market. Of the 1435 companies they researched, eleven met the good to
great criteria. Their cumulative average stock returns were 6.9 times the
market for the fifteen years after the turning point in the company. The
research uncovered what is called “Level Five Leadership” which entails
building “enduring greatness through a paradoxical combination of personal
humility plus professional will.”[liv]
(Harvard Business Review, Jan 2001, pp. 67ff).
Leaders in these companies that
went from good to great displayed predictable stubbornness and resilience often
seen in effective executives. They were ruthlessly focused. At the same time,
they were reluctant to take credit for the progress in the organization. Often
they would talk about the impact of others in the organization or the “luck”
they experienced. Collins did not expect to find this latter trait and only
reluctantly acknowledged what the data was showing.
The other factors common in this
list of good to great leaders included:
·
Attend
to people first, strategy second. Get
the right people on board in the right positions.
·
Live
the tension of present reality and future hope – brutally pursuing both faith
and fact.
·
Build
momentum like slowly pushing a flywheel – tedious and laborious until it
finally reaches the breakthrough point of its own momentum.
·
Simple
mastery of three questions: at what can we be best in the world, how do our
economics work best and what ignites the passions of our people.
·
Avoid
jumping too quickly to new technologies while pioneering the application of
selected technologies that meet the three questions.
·
Create
a culture of discipline: disciplined people, disciplined thought and
disciplined action (combined with an ethic of entrepreneurship).
Many of these insights parallel those discussed
earlier.
The Redemptive
Organization Revisited
In
light of the organizational culture and leadership issues addressed in this
paper, the decision model for the redemptive organization adds the overarching
values element that drive the enterprise.
The decision frame remains flexible and permeable to allow for learning
and responsiveness to changing contexts.
Sensemaking continues as individuals interact and link:
plausible explanations from the past and present
while remaining open to new learning.
Change occurs in systemic processes flowing from the decisions and their
implementation. Leaders monitor and
influence the culture maintaining the primacy of the overarching values while
seeking to constantly embody those values in evolving forms and
structures. Stakeholders within and
outside of the organization witness the imperfect execution of a focused
resolve toward accomplishing the mission with excellence while developing people
and serving society.
Bibliography
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Collins, Jim. “Aligning
Actions and Values.” Leader to Leader Journal, Summer, 1996.
___. “Level Five
Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve.” Harvard Business
Review, January 2001, pp. 66-76.
Hersey, Paul, Kenneth H.
Blanchard and Dewey E. Johnson. Management of Organizational Behavior:
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Kurtzman, Joel. “An
Interview with Chris Argyris.” Strategy and Business, 1st Quarter,
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___. Managing with
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Tumblin, Thomas F. Image
Theory and Decision Making in Higher Education. Ann Arbor, MI: Unpublished
Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1997.
Graphic #1
Graphic #2
Mission People Service
Graphic #3