Rethinking Complexity

Threats, Norms, and Culture: What a new study of national cultures might teach us about the cultures our organizational systems produce

Is it appropriate to kiss in a restaurant? How about in an elevator? Would it be socially acceptable to curse in a public park? Eat during a job interview? Turns out—and it’s not particularly surprising—that the answer to these questions has a lot to do with the country you live in.  It also turns out that the ecological and historical threats a country faces correlate with how its citizens respond to the answers above, according to a study published this month in Science Magazine.

The study, lead by Michele J. Gelfand of the University of Maryland, is based on research gathered in the late 1960s that introduced the distinction between tight cultures—those with strong social norms and low tolerance of deviant behavior—and loose cultures—those with weak norms and high tolerance of deviant behavior.

The most recent findings published in Science Magazine are based on data that Gelfand and her colleagues collected  from 6,824 respondents living in 33 different nations.

Every time the Science Magazine article summarized a research outcome, I found myself translating the results from citizens to employees and from nations to organizations. “Tight nations,” wrote Gelfand, “have narrow socialization that restricts the range of permissible behavior.”

Three Levels of Conversations: Learning to Access an Organization's Unique, Imaginative Intelligence

Can you help us with our strategic planning? Our organization needs assistance in constructing specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound (or SMART) goals and clarifying objectives.

Like most consultants, I am often approached with such requests.  Typically, a leader wishes to tease out a tactical plan in half a day in order to quickly move into action.

Organizations commonly believe that the fastest way to changing a system is to hover over technical and transactional details, which seldom correlate with either work satisfaction or success.

Strategic planning constructively highlights the learning of past experiences. It also focuses on the most obvious and visible issues. It does not, however, dig deeper into the future possibilities or collective wisdom of the organization.

Curious and a tad frustrated, I asked my mentor, Michael Jones: "How do you invoke a greater sense of aliveness for an organization? What kinds of conversations need to take place in order to change behaviors and activate imagination?"

The Powers of Place, Part 1

I remember looking up at the wooden beams and panels holding up the aged roof. My eyes studied its rugged patterns before moving across the room, finding little artifacts in almost every corner that continually brought the century-old structure to life.

This old building wasn’t a historic home in the U.S. or an old church in Europe. It was my great-great grandfather’s house in Santa Clara, Cuba.

Earlier this month, I traveled to the island with my mother and grandmother on a humanitarian visa to visit our relatives who still live there. This was my fourth trip to Cuba in a span of 19 years and it was as rich culturally as my first trip to the island was when I was 12 years old.

This most recent trip brought Renee Levi’s powers of place theory to life for me the moment we jumped in the car that took us from Jose Marti Airport in Havana to Santa Clara in central Cuba. The powers of place theory views locations as living centers that create a sense of wholeness in human beings. The theory asserts that all places channel a transformative power that we can feel when we’re in harmonious relationship with the location we’re in.

Innovative "Clouds" on the Organizational Horizon

Ever wonder why organizational leaders cling to old ways of doing business? I did the other day while looking at my desk, equipped with a 1-week-old Motorola XOOM, a wireless keyboard, and some scattered whiteboard markers. I found myself questioning why organizations tend to be reluctant about technological innovations, like “cloud computing," when its tools can enhance operations in the long-run.

Many of the antiquated, organizational constructs that guide our daily work life tend to constrain responsiveness, creativity, innovation, and communication. These command-and-control management systems are falling flat in today’s world and, consequently, many well-intentioned organizations are fading fast from the scene. In his book Dot.Cloud, Peter Fingar wrote that “in a world of hyper-change, centralized controlled hierarchies (remember the Soviet Union) simply cannot see the opportunities or move quickly enough.” With many of our organizational leaders trapped in old patterns of static thinking, how can we expect them to readily adopt new work life philosophies that involve innovation and technology?

Many theories about culture, sub-culture, hyper-competition, management, and leadership styles attempt to explain why decision-makers lose their innovative edge. I suspect the most obvious explanation is that our overarching culture prevents the leader-follower relationship from becoming mutually influential. “Are you a leader? A follower? The reality is that we fulfill both roles simultaneously” accordingly to author Robert Kelly. Unfortunately, the current attitude doesn’t support such a reality—not even where cloud computing is concerned.

Pill popping isn't state of the art trauma relief for veterans -- but the chain of command doesn't know it yet

Many of the US Marines who’ve recently come home from combat deployments to Afghanistan have been finding it difficult to get to sleep lately, even if they’re completely exhausted.  The military medical system struggles to help them, and still fails to a great degree in many cases.  

At the recent International Military and Civilian Combat Stress Conference in Pasadena that was held from 12-15 May, several treatments for combat related stress were bandied about.  The primary treatment in the field is generally the distribution of pharmaceuticals of various types:  anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, and sleeping pills.  Still, these soldiers cannot rest, they have nightmares, and they find it more and more difficult to intellectually downshift.  Intrusive thoughts and images just won’t go away no matter what they try.  Like many other stereotypical males of this society, bred to be the bacon-bringers and cave-protectors, Marines gamely push on through, day-to-day, rejecting these emotional instabilities, which they see as signs of weakness.

But stiff lips inevitably often cannot break the cycle of stress, panic, and emotional turmoil.  Not finding peace, enlightenment, or even a decent night’s sleep, many are directed by their military chain of command to seek the advice of professionals.  Psychological screening has now become commonplace for recently deployed soldiers. 

As a veteran myself, I’ve been in the same place, and I have recently reached out to a psychologist for answers to my own sleep problems. 

Kurt Lewin – Lessons from the OD Master

Kurt Lewin was born in what is now Poland on September 9, 1890. He and his family moved to Berlin when he was fifteen.  Lewin obtained his doctorate degree in Psychology from the University of Berlin in 1916 and later become a professor.  He left Germany in 1930 as Jews were being ousted, first taking a six month assignment at Stanford University followed by a two-year assignment at Cornell School of Home Economics, and eventually settling at the University of Iowa. 

Early in his career Lewin took on the study of Taylor and Scientific Management. He agreed with many of Taylor’s principles but objected the notion that work had no meaning for workers other than money.  Lewin believed that work brought meaning to one’s life. In fact, he felt that work could be a path for self-realization.

Group dynamics and Lewin are intricately connected in the evolution of OD.  He understood that we become interdependent as we join a group either by natural association, choice or directive.  Lewin’s contributions in group dynamics started the famed T-Group sessions.  From this experience we learned about the power of group interaction and feedback.  Lewin borrowed the term feedback from electrical engineering and applied it to describe the adjustment of a process by informed data about its results.  Feedback was meant to unfreeze the person’s former belief systems.

Trapped in Office Toxicity

What leads us to these toxic work environments in the first place? And why do we choose to stay trapped in them? Are we masochists or is there something more subtle at work?

 

Nowadays it seems everyone’s had at least one bad boss—that lone supervisor who generally stands in the way of professional happiness and fulfillment.

I still remember my initial brush with one and the agonizing saga that ensued.

I was sitting at my desk one October morning in 2005 looking for story leads online and listening to the staticky chatter on the police scanner—two tasks common to all newspaper crime reporters, which is what I was at the time.

That’s when my former boss Holly—who was chief of the regional bureau where I worked—walked over, pointed to her office and lowly growled “Aimee, I need to see you for a moment.” The left corner of her lip curled. Her blue eyes were icy. Her pale, typically expressionless, face looked sinister.

My colleague in the neighboring cubicle—a fellow reporter who had spent the past two months showing me the ropes of the new bureau I had joined and venting about everything that was wrong with it—lowered her gaze, raised an eyebrow, and snickered as she shook her head in amusement. It was a cross between I’m glad I’m not you and I’m glad you’re going to get what you deserve.

Fire, brimstone, and an apocalyptic wrath fell upon me in that office minutes later—a tirade laced with professional belittlement and traces of conversations I’d had with that same snickering reporter who questioned Holly’s reign and the bureau pecking order every chance she could.

What values does an effective leader need to have?

My perspective of leadership has been influenced by many sources but the greatest lessons are from my parents who taught me that I should always treat people, all people, with dignity and respect.

What my parents taught me wasn’t what I learned in business school – and the quest to expand my understanding on how to be an effective change leader in the 21^st century continues to suggest that my parents were right.

Northhouse’s definition of leadership as “a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal… an interactive event” (p. 3) resonates with me. It makes sense to me that leadership capacity building be approached from the perspective that leadership is a “process” and “an interactive event” centered on the exchange between the leader and follower where both have an equal footing – a shift from the follower being subordinate.

Thinking better can mean slowing down to think more

The complexity surrounding our everyday life leaves many of us feeling drained, perpetually chasing an infinite to do list.

We run faster and faster, hurrying to get things done, to meet deadlines, and to keep pace with demands and challenges. This hectic pace is overwhelming that it challenges our ability to sustain high performance.  

How do we get beyond this cycle of doing? How do we move beyond simply surviving? How can we embrace complexity rather than cope with it?

The answer might be easier than you think. But it requires a shift in our mental models and our values.  

What the Fortune 500 can learn from rural islanders

Old traditions can be innovative. 

As I contemplate the meaning of inter-organizational collaboration , I am reminded of stories I have read and heard about St. Helena Island, South Carolina, the place where I now live.  It’s the kind of place ignored by management gurus and corporate boardrooms;  it’s also the kind of place they could learn a lot from. 

In the literature, organizational collaboration is described as occurring when people work together on a shared goal, through purposeful relationships in which they also share a commitment to each other’s success.  This definition of collaboration is reminiscent of the historical cultural practices of the African American Gullah island community that is my adopted home. 

Until 1953, St. Helena Island could only be accessed by boat.  But it was an island of fertile soils, verdant forests that harbored abundant wildlife, and was surrounded by Atlantic coastal waters rich in the best kinds of seafood…shrimp, crab, flounder and more.  Island communities were divided by boundaries that formerly marked plantations but that worked together for the good of all.  With access to very little cash, what I now call collaboration was a way of life that sustained St. Helena Island, Gullah people, and their culture for nearly a hundred years - from 1865 until the mid 1950’s. The islanders called it sharing.  In the 1930’ a visiting writer described the practices of the islanders as a “yeoman’s economy.”