Using simple concepts to address big problems | Managing Leadership

Magical thinking

I was speaking with an American CEO of a major enterprise in a Middle Eastern country. This outfit had employees from a range of cultures and countries that literally spanned the globe, and of educational and socio-economic backgrounds that covered all the ground. I asked him how he dealt with so diverse a group - how did he arrange organizational policy regarding, say, ethics, in a way that satisfied company requirements and incorporated diverse habits and beliefs?

“I treat them all the same,” he answered. “I build policy from a customer-focused rationale, and explain it to them. I’ve never had a problem.”

We discussed here on Wednesday the wide ranging perceptions about one’s power or capabilities that others, at sufficient remove from those, might have. These might even stray well into the irrational. But that such misperceptions occur and even become so entrenched as to be impossible to dislodge is a well-established fact.

Moreover, it is not just about aircraft carriers and earthquakes. It can have to do with corporate reach or even individual influence. People can develop mistaken notions about where these begin and end. They then can ascribe inappropriate motivations to what they may perceive as your malevelant use or refusal to use those powers.

Yesterday, we turned that conversation to the issue of how technology is embedded in culture. Our point was that the products of a culture - for our purposes, be they physical or management art or science - may be essentially inaccessible in important ways to those not of that culture.

Issues such as these become increasingly prominent in an age as robustly global as ours. Certainly, the world economy has been as - perhaps even more - integrated in the past. But today the continent and culture-spanning interactions occur essentially instantly.

And the mis-appreciated, or ill-considered, implications inherent in thoughtlessly cultural-centric, carelessly relativistic, or even altogether willfully heedless approaches to management across these frontiers will only produce greater such difficulties. What’s more, un-prevented, unnoticed, or untended, they will propagate dangerously throughout our organizations.

What to do about this?

The CEO we heard from at the beginning of this post had good advice for us, here. The most important piece of it was to explain, and the most important thing to add is the further advice to listen.

Explain and listen. Constantly. This will head off many inappropriate perceptions of what you can or cannot, will or will not, do. It will alert you to perceptual variations that you must be heedful of and responsive to.

And once doing that becomes a natural, institionalized part of your global habits, it will begin to make things seem so simple. Next week we will be reviewing a book that will offer some wonderfully scalable ideas as to how to do this.

The book is based on science. But the insight it will offer you to help address the problems we’ve reviewed in the past three days - well, it’s magic.

See you next week!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of truly understanding the nature of change, its occurrence in (or to) your organization, and what can be done about or with it, please see this comprehensive series, starting here, for managers who live in the real world, by Steve Roesler of All Things Workplace.

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