Anyone who has traveled widely, and who has paid attention, will have noticed that there are distinct – sometimes startling – differences between the way people from varying cultures perceive and respond to the same behavioral cues. The same thing happens in corporate cultures.
When we acculturate to a particular workplace, we adopt more than a regime of behaviors that dictate how we act, dress, speak, and collaborate. We imbibe the thought processes and assumptions that underlay these.
We don’t offer particular cues, or expect specific responses, simply because they are what has been choreographed for us, or because they are written into the corporate code of conduct. We exhibit them spontaneously, because we have internalized the system of thinking that automatically produces them. And that thinking, actually, is so fleeting and instinctive that we typically don’t even realize we are engaging in it – we seem to produce the behavior spontaneously. Because, well, it’s the only reasonable thing to do.
That’s not the end of the matter, either. Beneath these assumptions are core beliefs and values that form the foundation for the way we view the world. They evolve over time and from a complex interaction of influences as our group is formed to pursue a specific purpose, and a particular collection of people – including, it must be said, although far from exclusively, the entrepreneur, at that stage – gather together to figure out how to make that happen.
The group grows. It takes on new people who are taught what their predecessors have learned, and who add their own influences to the evolving development of the group and its collective interaction with a changing environment. These values, together with the assumptions based on them, and the unconsciously exhibited suite of behaviors and impressions based on those, become more deeply and indelibly imprinted in the collective persona, exhibited in variously appropriate ways by all of its members, as they confront each other and outsiders across the space and time in which the corporation exists.
That is to say, these values do not come from a statement facilitated by a professional consultant at an off-site retreat for senior managers, which product is then mounted on a plaque in the lobby, and printed on cards for employees to carry. The resulting assumptions guiding the corporate view of the world and its place and role in it are not announced in the annual report or at weekly all-hands meetings, or promulgated in memos from HR. The instinctive intellectual, emotional, behavioral – and collective – reactions employees make based on those are not enumerated in job descriptions, or dictated on the spot by supervisors.
And none of these cultural elements, to say nothing of the greater corporate culture itself, are “created” – or, even, in the meaning used with all the most well-intentioned enthusiasm of its promoters, “changed” – by a “leader” possessed of any degree of charisma, world-changing vision, transforming communication ability, emotionally intelligent “relationship” skills, or the like.
Yes, the boss can make a difference, even a dramatic one. But not as a “leader” who is presumed to be the source of an organization‘s culture. Indeed, many of the more unfortunately dramatic differences that are made are by those who imagine themselves to be so – or who are encouraged to see themselves this way.
Tomorrow, we will take a look at how organizational leadership fits in to this picture, in the context of our larger discussion. Please do stop in!
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Today’s tip: Speaking of unfortunate claims about individual leadership generally, or specific individual leaders, please see Miki Saxon‘s most recent collection of quotes regarding some such figures in the current financial crisis. Each wave of embarrassing and destructive disasters to sweep across various industries in the business world over the past several decades has produced its share of these. Miki has a way of cutting through the verbiage to the vulnerabilities at their core. Her site, Leadership Turn, in addition to offering her own trenchant, straight-from-the shoulder views, presents a good mix of perspectives by both regular and invited guest writers. This is another one to add to your regular reading list.
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I’ve been eyeing this series of posts for a while, Jim, and I keep looking for a place to join the conversation that might actually be a contribution. I’m instinctively inclined to side with you, and the gist (I think) of what you’re saying: in an ideal world, leadership would grow out of, and be a reflection of, an organization intelligently and purposefully focused on accomplishing its mission.
It’s probably says something about the way my mind works, but I keep asking myself, what keeps that from happening? It’s a way of operating that promises to be more efficient, more effective, and far less expensive than other approaches.
Who doesn’t want that to happen? The Board? The shareholders? The employees? Forbes, Fortune, the Journal, CNBC, and the rest of the business press?
“Singular individual leadership” does have a constituency, and my bet is most of them are not drooling idiots. And not evil, either.
How does a bad idea prevail despite its obvious shortcomings?
Because I’ve consulted to blue and pink collar workplaces absolutely ravaged by the effects of poor leadership, I’m extremely pleased whenever I find one that’s well managed. So far, I see no coherent thread whatsoever.
Many “leaders,” (many of whom got promoted from within) are relaxed, not narcissistic, pretty healthy folks. Some of them convey that, and are very effective. Some get chewed up and spit out.
Some “charismatic” leaders are laughably vain, and far from perfect in their business judgment. Everyone sees it as the performance it is – to the point that there’s snickering just offstage – but that leader somehow finds a way to be effective despite it all. And when they move on, it’s experienced as a loss by the organization. Somehow they filled the bill.
It’s a puzzlement.
Like Shaun, I’ve been following this series of posts. I think there’s a real tension in them between the workplace we might like and the one we’ve got.
In most of today’s workplaces, bosses are not chosen by the people who will work for them. Instead, they’re appointed by other bosses who will be above them. And, in most of today’s workplaces, the boss has the institutional power to reward and punish. We have very few effective models of anything else.
But a consequence of that is that the boss has an inordinate influence on the culture of a work group because of his or her power to reward and punish.
Hello Shaun,
It is perplexing, isn’t it? Sometimes it seems as though there’s an “already bought in” dynamic at play – one way to look at it is that we don’t readily change opinions in which we’ve invested so much – we’ve chosen our story and we’re sticking to it; another is that the investment causes us to interpret evidence only in the context of the intellectual framework to which we’ve committed – we simply are no longer able to see things from another perspective.
Another difficulty here may be that no one’s ideas are wholly erroneous – individuals do exhibit leadership – my question is where that leadership originates: should we be cultivating it in individuals or in the organizations that, I argue, actually are its source?
Your observations about the difficulty of finding a common thread woven through disparate examples of successfully managed organizations certainly adds to the puzzle, doesn’t it? The example of the clownishly charismatic leader who is effective despite him- or herself is instructive of the complexity of the matter.
That may be further evidence that management is hard, and the dynamics it has to understand and sort out are complex and shifting. But I think that that evidence points to our need to do more work trying to understand it – not to the presumption that we already do, which is suggested (rather too stridently, it sometimes seems to me) by current approaches to individual leadership.
Thanks for your visit and your always thought-provoking observations. It is far more important to raise questions while they are there to be raised, than to rush to answers which work only to conceal the continuing presence of those questions. Thanks!
Hello Wally,
That’s so effective a way to put the issue – in the real world of work bosses are managers appointed by the board and other bosses, not “leaders” gathered around by “followers” or voted into position by their acclaim.
Your connection of the fact of a manager’s power to reward or punish with his or her perhaps inordinate influence on corporate culture strikes at the heart of the matter, it seems to me. Managers must have that power – there is no good reason to happy-face it away – it is essential to focus and progress.
However, it can, and often does, become a problem when managers misread the meaning of that influence, or misplace its source as inherent in themselves rather than in their positions or the logic of the organizational structure. One of my concerns is that the common means of viewing individual leadership almost inevitably – indeed, by design – leads to this error.
Your comments always restate my posts more concisely and effectively – I can’t even respond as succinctly! Thanks as always for such thought-provoking insight!