Tribes, Culture & Making Change [2007]
This week I went back to an organisation I’d done a couple of Trajectories workshops with earlier this year.
For those of you who don’t know, my Trajectories development process helps organisations, businesses and groups to prosper in fluid and fast-changing situations.
It's based on the assumption that to do well in such situations, an organisation needs a strong sense of "self", a keen empathy with stakeholders and customers, and a clear view of how the socio-economic environment you operate in is affecting you..
Anyway, this group had changed. Four or five months ago we’d done a workshop to help them develop a stronger sense of group identity – an essential precursor to harnessing their strengths and doing more of what they needed to do. But now their horizons had expanded..
The good thing was - they were heading exactly in the direction they’d wanted to go. But could their trajectory be maintained or would they fall back to earth?
This group now had to find ways to sustain its growth path and do what it does more easily and effectively.
The same fluid, fast-changing environment that makes this necessary, also makes it difficult to achieve. Expectations keep on evolving; but who has the time to stop and question how they should be met?
And what do you do when all your efforts are going into feeding the beast you've created? Throw money at the problem? Often it’s a matter of creating greater expertise [training or new people] and better systems and stronger shared understandings.
That takes time and effort.
Organisational culture has a strong but subtle effect on your rate of adaptation and indeed, on the way you perceive your role and your opportunities. And responses to change seem very tribal.
When it comes to change, the intellectual Grey Lynn tribe wants it done properly. It wants plans and precision and alternatives. It wants to know nothing’s been left out and everything’s been organised.
When it discovers complexity, its instinct is to analyse and get lost in the detail. That's not really in harmony with moving at an accelerated pace.
I've mentioned the book “The Knowing-Doing Gap” by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton before In it the authors explain how action and change within organisations can be avoided by a wide range of strategies – including commissioning a report about change, meeting to discuss possible change, or issuing a directive requiring change.
Now that I recognise them, I'm getting better at herding the Grey Lynn cats towards change. But there are many pitfalls. They are expert at delaying tactics.
- Paralysis by analysis is of course, the primary weapon. Reports, then opinions on the reports. Then another report because the first one's out of date.
- There's the sudden devastating last-minute critique of the primary purpose of the change . Nicely passive-aggressive.
- Scope creep works - broadening the terms of reference is very good because it looks like action.
- And if all else fails, try a plausible non sequiteur.
Focusing on how to proceed rather than what to do is a subtle but interesting way to avoid the risk of action. At the most uber Grey Lynn – cultured organisation I ever worked with, they admitted having had meetings about how to have meetings.
It's not uncommon to find Grey Lynn and Balclutha tribal values together in an organisational profile, but Balclutha tribal culture is quite a different kettle of fish. Though it dislikes “change for change’s sake”, its attitude to necessary change is to just get on with it.
We use the phrase “Bugger the boxing, just pour the concrete” to describe the expediency that characterises this tribe.
This is the kind of tribe you need in an emergency. And it’s the kind of tribal input that works quite well when things are evolving fast. As long as you're not too picky about what and how. They take a long view.
You do something and if it isn’t quite right, you improve upon it later. If you get round to it. Odd things do get set in the Balclutha concrete sometimes.
In a Grey Lynn tribe setting it’s great fun to play a devil’s advocate from the Balclutha tribe. You just keep asking questions like: “But is a report really action?” Annoying.
I did a research project earlier this year with focus groups from different tribes. The Balclutha group was the only one that immediately set to solving the problems they had identified. Not prettily, but very effectively.
In the same project, the Grey Lynn group really enjoyed dissecting the issues but it didn't occur to them to recommend ways of implementing solutions.
Grey Lynn change anxiety can be pervasive. In its presence you can find yourself being edged away from actual actions so subtly that action plans begin to seem like the real thing .
If you find yourself backed into this position you can at least stipulate North Shore tribe action plans - one page only, with one author and a strict deadline.
The North Shore tribe seems to dislike undue analysis and it likes to focus on tangible goals.
That may be why eBay has only just realised it needs to understand more about its customers. According to Fast Company magazine, now that growth has slowed to a relative trickle, eBay has begun to collect information about buyer behaviour on its site.
It was all so great when the company was growing at 80% a year - they could just focus on the vendors because that's where the money came from.
So whay am I saying?.Well it's about diversity isn't it? Any culture has its blind spots. Growing and changing just exacerbates them. A clear view of the future needs more than one sort of lens..
Have a Great Christmas/ New Year [see below]
Cheers
Jill
PS Good News for those who like their Xmas pudding. The New York Times [11/11/07] reports that people who are overweight have better survival prospects than those who are underweight, normal weight or obese. So just keep that BMI hovering between 25 and 30 and you'll be fine.
Jill Caldwell is Director of Windshift Communications Ltd. Click Here to contact Jill directly This is a free monthly newsletter provided to direct subscribers only. No further use is made of subscriber information. [Copyright Windshift Communications Ltd 2006]
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. . .you can find yourself being edged away from actual actions so subtly that action plans begin to seem like the real thing . . .
