E Schein, in CorporateCulture-Survival Guide identifies realities about what culture is.
“Culture is the shared tacit assumptions of a group that it has learned in coping with external tasks and dealing with internal relationships”
“Although culture manifests itself in overt behavior,rituals,artifacts,climate,and espoused values,its essence is the shared tacit assumptions.As a responsible leader,you must be aware of these assumptions and manage them,or they will manage you”
Since the basis of culture then is TACIT i.e unwritten and assumptions how do you then get to understand,know and interpret them?
How do you change the culture of an organization?
“You cannot therefore create a new culture.You can demand or stimulate a new way of working and thinking;you can monitor it to make sure it is done;but members of the organization do not internalize it and make it part of the new culture unless over time,it actually works better”
Peter M Senge in The Fifth Discipline proposes several steps to establish “The art and practice of The Learning Organization” on the basis that “in the long run,the only sustainable source of competitive edge is your organization’s ability to learn faster thatn its competitors”
In this short article the writer will investigate if The Learning Organization as suggested by Peter Senge could in fact facilitate the Culture change accepting the findings of Schein that they are in fact unwritten and assumptions.
Personal Mastery.
In the simplest form Mastery of the Person starts with the now well known quote attributed to Ghandi,”Be the change you want to see in the world”
How well do you know yourself? You cannot give something you do not have so how well do you know yourself?
4 Stages of Competency brings home the understanding that you”need to know what you don’t know” if any development is to take place. Organizations learn when individuals learn.What congruency exist with the Values of the organization and that if the individual.
Classifying behavior.Introducing the Platinum rule a start is made by classifying a persons behavior.The Platinum Rule – Do unto other as you know they would like to be treated!
Robin Sharma in his book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari suggests The Ritual of Self Leadership with five daily disciplines:
The Discipline of Personal Renewal.
The Discipline of abundant knowledge.
The Discipline of Physicality.
The Discipline of Early awakening.
The Discipline of Death Bed mentality
2. Mental Models.
When we set out to improve the level of engagement in the organization it is important to uncover our own Mental Models and also use the acquired skill of engagement through Advocacy and Inquiry to uncover Mental Models that exist with other members of the organization.In the simplest form Mental Models are built up over years and may result from experience/s we had that causes us to react or act in a certain way without even being aware that the reason we are acting in this way is because of the existence of a Mental Model.An example could be expecting people to ascribe to a stereotype because of the religious or colour grouping they belong to.If we are going to talk about the tacit assumptions that make up our culture then this is an area we cannot avoid talking about.
3. Systems Thinking.
Dr Edward Deming ,revered around the world as a pioneer in the quality management revolution refers to Systems Thinking as “Understanding Complexity”
We are living in a society that is event driven and how we react to the various events will in many ways determine whether we are in the fire fighting mode of simply reacting or even anticipating or whether we are in the mode where we are looking at the Structures and Mental Models that cause the events.This is then when we give credence to the complexity and seek longer term permanent solutions rather that quick fix solutions.
4.Shared Vision.
John Kotter in” Leading Change – Why Transformation Efforts fail” lists lacking a vision as one of a possible eight reasons.The importance of a clear picture of what this Vision is cannot be over emphasized.But if this is true for the organization then it is equally true for the individual.Shared Vision is sharing visions of each individual being aware of the congruency with that of the organization or transformation effort.Talking about it is what completes the picture as the initial idea may only be 65% complete.The benefit of the first three steps in The Learning Organization are realized here when because of the improved awareness of engagement skills enable now a frank discussion of a Vision.
5. Team Learning.
Dr John C Maxwell from The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork identifies the first law as The Law of Significance with the the observation “One is to small a number to achieve greatness”
Having gone through the steps of awakening in each individual the need to Master the Person(own/self),working at the identification of Mental Models,both your own and others models through a fully engaged public window,solving problems with a mindset that accepts we need to understand the complexity,understanding what the bigger picture is both our own and the transformation efforts,we are set to apply experiential laws of teamwork and start operating as a learning team which is in the words of Persr Senge the only way of competing succesfully by learning faster than your competitor is.
CONCLUSION;
Since we have set out trying to establish how best to change something that is based on assumptions,unwritten and is followed because it is believed that it allows us to deliver results-the suggested approach is to create an awareness in each individual and also collective that will start a process of engagement leading to the ultimate goal of having teams learning and thinking together.
The Learning Organization is best run over a three day period with distance learning activities following at the completion of the three days.
The Slight Edge Consultancy