Organizational Culture Change

Check out my latest article at The Hindu Business Line - Organizational Culture Change. Full text follows:
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The changing culture is a complex problem faced by many organisations. It's a lot like repairing the engine of a moving vehicle. While new firms have the luxury of gradually building the culture that best serves their interest, larger organisations tend to find themselves ‘stuck' with cultures that may be completely at odds with their stated vision or strategy. The big question then is whether it is possible to change culture mid-course. The answer may lie in understanding how culture is created in the first place.

Individual & organisational values

The crux of culture is values — in simple terms values expressed in the form of behaviours is what is perceived as culture. Values themselves may be of two kinds — individual and organisational.

The source of organisational values is usually the values of the founders. However, with time, as the firm transitions the values could change. This could be due to a lack of attention paid to the developing culture, particularly when meeting the demands of rapid growth. This takes the form of indiscriminate addition of individuals whose values may be at odds with the founding values. While organisational values may be documented formally, the ‘real' organisational values are informally “stored” in the minds of members of the organisation. 

Individual values may be of two kinds — expressed, and suppressed. Expressed values are those that members of an organisation choose to express in their behaviour based on their assessment of what is required in the organisation or ‘what works'. The other values possessed by an individual member may be suppressed, at least in the organisational context. It is this interplay between “stored” organisational values and individual values that develops into “culture” in the manifested form. The metaphor of an iceberg could represent this interplay. What is seen above the surface is culture, but what lies beneath is the cause — the complex, ever-evolving dynamic of organisational and individual values.

The right culture

The next question that arises is — what is the right kind of culture for a particular organisation. The simple answer to this would be — the culture in which there is no conflict between organisational and individual values, and where organisational values themselves are aligned to what the organisation seeks to achieve. It is important to recognise that the culture manifested at any time is indeed already the most appropriate culture for the current interplay between organisational and individual member values.However, this culture may happen to be completely counter-productive to the organisational goals, owing to degraded organisational values or high conflict between individual and organisational values. Any attempt to transform culture by simply manipulating the manifest dimension of culture will not succeed unless the underlying interplay of values is not addressed. 

Thus, culture transformation must address both organisational and individual values. On the organisational values front, one may first need to begin with an assessment of what the organisation's values really are. If the current state of values is a diluted version of the original intent, a fresh rediscovery or redefinition of values may need to take place in order to define an ideal state.

On the individual values front, the first intervention should be at the ‘input' stage, where new members are inducted. If a well-defined organisational identity or value is in place, it is not difficult to identify and add individuals who are in alignment. The bigger challenge is for existing members. Here, the solution is likely to be a more gradual one. It may involve a reassessment of all levels in the hierarchy to determine the “culture” icons best suited for leadership roles in the “new world” as it were. Leadership roles are the key fulcrums upon which culture is reinforced. This is because leadership behaviours typically tend to activate the relevant values in followers (provided the followers subscribe to those values at least partially). Over time, a culture transformation process would start to work on the organisation's memory, replacing negative versions of the organisation's values that are “stored” in the minds of members with fresh versions, till the new version becomes the new normal.

Setting right a malfunctioning or poorly aligned organisational culture is undoubtedly a complex process and may require an intuitive, right-brained mindset on the part of the designers, as well as multiple iterations to arrive at the right solution.Finally, culture needs to be an integral component of organisational strategy, as it is the foundational building block upon which the organisation's purpose can be manifested into reality. 

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Some older columns:

• Selfless leadership - an Indian perspective
• Organizations as fulfillment engines
• Organizational memory and change
• Leadership Phases in Society
• Strategic Obsolescence
• From Alienation to Meaning
• Institutionalizing Insight
• The Service Oriented Organization
• The Free sourcing ecosystem
• Changing Time
• Organization Culture as an Emergent Phenomenon
• Wealth in Ideas and Relationships
• Unlocking Value - extending self-actualization to organizations 
• An evolutionary view of leadership
• Leaderless Groups - a case against hierarchy
• The long tail opportunity
• Interactive Brands
• The spiritual organization
• The networked marketplace
• Decision making in groups
• Free riding and social loafing

Selfless Leadership - An Indian Perspective

My latest article in The Hindu Business Line - Selfless Leadership - An Indian Perspective.
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Most leadership theories (with a few exceptions, of course) are variants of a ‘hero' based ideal. In other words, the leader is a heroic individual of some sort who summons his followers to accomplish great things. Additionally, there is a tendency to glorify leadership as an achievement or a sort of reward for one's performance in a specific sphere of life.This has led to a situation where society tends to confer leadership upon individuals simply because they are able to function effectively in their individual roles without evaluating whether the individual truly possesses the skill to lead others.Any system that follows such a pattern of leader selection is bound to create a society of unfulfilled ‘followers'.

An Indian definition of leadership
Is there a distinctly Indian definition of leadership? The answer to this may be found in India's cultural foundations. The central idea of the Indian philosophical tradition is the idea of selflessness. An individual begins on his path of spiritual evolution with the initial ego-centric belief that he is distinct and special in relation to others, but as he progresses further he realises that while the particularities of his existence or station in life may be distinct from others, the underlying conscious principle is the same.Krishna's demonstration of his own cosmic form (containing the entire universe within it) to Arjuna in the Gita essentially reinforces the same idea of a universal consciousness that cuts across all beings.It may be argued that an individual who is able to perceive this unique combination of specificity and universality in other human beings is the one who is best suited to lead others.In other words, an individual with a greater degree of selflessness is the ideal candidate to be a leader of other human beings.

Ideals of a selfless leader
A leader whose foundation is the idea of selflessness manifests this in many forms in his relationship with followers.
Freedom: The first ideal of such an enlightened leader would be ‘freedom'. A selfless leader would allow other individuals to operate with a high degree of freedom while providing an outline of what needs to be accomplished.How the follower navigates his way towards the outcome is entirely left to his creative faculties. This approach contradicts the traditional organisational way of getting things accomplished — fear and conformity to pre-defined safe paths.Fear and conformity-based leadership styles are essentially expressions of a control-based tendency which, in turn, stems from an inherent ego-based foundation which demands that all outcomes bear the stamp of the leader.A selfless leader, on the other hand, will demonstrate a lesser tendency to control simply due to the absence of any desire in him to stamp his individual personality on everything that his team produces.

Follower evolution centricity: A selfless leader would be constantly conscious of the specific evolutionary state of his follower, and would constantly try to raise him to higher levels of selflessness.Thus, the role of such a leader is not only to create outcomes through his team, but also to raise followers to his own state of being. In fact, all outcomes are in the distant future, and all that can be done in the present is really to ensure that people working towards those outcomes are raised to higher levels of consciousness (which is essentially the ideal of Karma Yoga).

Enlightened doer-ship: An enlightened leader would constantly reinforce the idea of enlightened doer-ship. This means that credit-seeking would be a shunned practice. This returns once again to the Vedantic ideal that the idea of a specific doer is an ego-centric idea. Ego-centric behaviour in any team pursuit rapidly diminishes the motivation and performance of other players in addition to creating a zero sum situation where people perceive that for one person to win, another has to lose. This does not mean that skilled performers are not rewarded — it only means that rewards are structured on a non-zero-sum, non-relative basis.One may even argue that skilled performance is its own reward and per se does not need any other reward to reinforce that behaviour!

In conclusion, it must be pointed out that a selfless leadership based organisation does not completely shun individualism. In fact, it celebrates individualism in a different manner — through the freedom it offers to its members to creatively express themselves towards the accomplishment of outcomes.All it does though is to check individualism that is expressed in the desire to possess greater control and power.

Older Columns:

• Organizations as fulfillment engines
• Organizational memory and change
• Leadership Phases in Society
• Strategic Obsolescence
• From Alienation to Meaning
• Institutionalizing Insight
• The Service Oriented Organization
• The Free sourcing ecosystem
• Changing Time
• Organization Culture as an Emergent Phenomenon
• Wealth in Ideas and Relationships
• Unlocking Value - extending self-actualization to organizations 
• An evolutionary view of leadership
• Leaderless Groups - a case against hierarchy
• The long tail opportunity
• Interactive Brands
• The spiritual organization
• The networked marketplace
• Decision making in groups
• Free riding and social loafing

Leadership phases in society

My latest column for The Hindu Business Line: Leadership phases in society .Full text follows:
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Stagnation is the bane of any social order in that it disallows a full expression of society's potential.
Leadership is the lever through which society casts itself out of periods of stagnation towards periods of possibility. There appear to be essentially three phases of leadership in society (or for that matter any institution or organisation). These three phases represent three states of being or collective will, and not necessarily a sequence.

Expression:
Capturing the mood of the times The first phase is the formation of a strong collective mood due to various circumstances. This leads to the arrival of an individual who effectively expresses the current state of the collective consciousness, and is thus elevated to a leadership role. Political history is rife with examples of such leaders who brilliantly capture a prevailing mood to their own advantage. Such leaders may later be viewed harshly by history, but the fact remains that the collective will, at least temporarily, was in sync with the aspirations of these leaders. Thus in this first phase, the leader is very much a part of the collective, and a representative of its wishes. This phase may be termed as an `Expression Phase'.

Evolution:
Arrival of a transformational leader The second phase of leadership in society occurs with the arrival of a transformational leader. This leader's views may often not even match the will of the collective on a number of issues. He may craft a completely new agenda or vision for the future yet unforeseen. Yet, the persuasiveness, and the moral character of such a leader may cause the collective to suspend its current way of looking at things in favour of a completely new future. So, in this second phase, the leader is almost outside the collective, and yet successfully charts a new path for it. This phase may be termed as an `Evolutionary Phase'.

Revolution:
Collapse of old orders The third phase of leadership is a complete erosion of boundaries between the leader and the collective. This tends to occur in certain mass movements where the objectives to be accomplished become so ingrained in the collective that the leader may just become a figurehead, while the collective marches on, often crafting strategies and tactics on the go. This phase is based on a sense of distributed ownership, and is also characterised by a breakdown of existing norms and institutions. This phase may be called as a `Revolutionary Phase'.

The entire process may be quite long drawn, and when finally the goal is accomplished, society reverts to the first phase, wherein a leader is selected who will preserve and maintain the current will of the collective. TRINITY Interestingly, the three phases have a close relationship to the Indian idea of cycles of creation and destruction. The triumvirate of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva represent the tendencies to create, preserve and destroy at a cosmic level. Thus, the evolutionary phase of leadership represents a creative era in which society reinvents itself. The preservation phase represents an era when society maintains the status quo. The revolutionary phase represents a destructive period when all old ideals and institutions may be cast aside in favour of a desired future state, sometimes without even knowing the precise contours of the future state.

It is interesting to note that in the first two phases, leaders continue to operate within the boundaries of existing institutions, while in the third phase the desire for rapid change far exceeds the need to preserve and work with existing institutions. Also in the first phase, there is a fairly precise articulation of how the future looks, while in the last there is only an articulation of how the future must not look. In sum, viewing leadership through the model of these phases enables us to get beyond the current personality-centric or heroic definition of leadership towards a new definition that is based on the complex relationship between what society `needs' at a given point of time and how it chooses to accomplish the same through a tool called the leader.

Older columns:

• Strategic Obsolescence
  
• From Alienation to Meaning
  
• Institutionalizing Insight
  
• The Service Oriented Organization
• The Free sourcing ecosystem
  
• Changing Time
• Organization Culture as an Emergent Phenomenon
  
• Wealth in Ideas and Relationships
  
• Unlocking Value - extending self-actualization to organizations 
• An evolutionary view of leadership
• Leaderless Groups - a case against hierarchy
• The long tail opportunity
• Interactive Brands
• The spiritual organization
• The networked marketplace
• Decision making in groups
• Free riding and social loafing

Interview of UTV's Ronnie Screwvala

UTV's Ronnie Screwvala makes some interesting observations about "Scale versus control" in this Knowledge@Wharton interview.

That was a crossroads that we had already crossed -- UTV as a company and myself personally. For me, scale is more important than control. Once you start thinking about scale, performance is going to count in any case because we are a public limited company. Whether Disney thinks I am a good CEO or the rest of the shareholders think I am a good CEO is equally bad or good -- because I have to be accountable for my performance. The other thing that comes about when you cross the 51% threshold in shareholding is that of overall accountability in that context -- and therefore management versus shareholding. If I think I am not the right person to lead the company at the next level of its growth, I could just continue to be a shareholder.
More here

An evolutionary view of leadership

Yesterday, The Hindu Business Line carried my latest column in which I explore the relationship of leadership to various kinds of wages. Link: An evolutionary view of leadership

Full text follows:
A casual perusal of the management section of any bookstore would suggest that ‘leadership’ is the most desirable goal that people have for their lives. This may indeed be true, but evidence in the real world suggests that there is more to leadership than meets the eye.

In the real world, leadership is often bestowed upon an individual who is most likely to work in the interest of the group he leads, even if it means sacrificing his own well-being. While, the first-half of that statement is rather clichéd, the second part is the one that is more interesting. It is our tendency to choose leaders who will not work for their own self-interest that leads most people to actually not want to be leaders themselves. They will gladly be followers and reap the benefits of having a leader who will work to maximise the wellbeing of his constituency, rather than step on the pedestal themselves. This argument is also found in Plato’s Republic.

Plato’s Republic presents this idea through an argument between Socrates and Thrasymachus in the course of which Socrates says: “No one willingly chooses to rule and to take other people’s troubles in their hand and straighten them out, but does ask for wages… In a city of good men, if it came into being, the citizens would fight not to rule. There it would be clear that anyone who is a true leader doesn’t by nature seek his own advantage but that of his subjects. What kind of wages is Socrates referring to? The answer is — money, honour or a penalty if the individual refuses to lead.” (Source: Justice and the Leader, by Plato from Republic Book I – Hackett Publishing, 1992)

Leaders and wages

Now, this seems to suggest that people only become leaders in order to get the above kinds of ‘wages’ and for no other reason. In other words, if there were no ‘wages’, no one would ever want to be a leader. This may be a bit far-fetched. Surely, history has shown us enough examples of ‘wage-less’ leaders such as Gandhi and Mother Teresa. The idea of ‘servant leadership’ developed by Robert Greenleaf suggests that a leader’s role is purely to serve the needs of his constituency and not to increase his personal power or glory. In other words, for such leaders the wages, if any, are purely incidental.

Is there any way to reconcile these two schools of thought — one which suggests that all leaders work for tangible or intangible ‘wages’ and the other that suggests that leaders should only serve their followers and have no other goals? It may be instructive to view the concept of leadership as an evolutionary hierarchy. At the lower end of the hierarchy are leaders who are in it for the wages. Needless to say, they too serve their followers, but do so with personal goals in mind. As the leader evolves over time, the marginal utility of wages would decrease and finally reach a point where he demonstrates the qualities of a classic servant leader who is focused on the needs of others.

Servant leaders

Examples of such evolution are easy to find, particularly among business leaders who after many years of building great companies move on to set up charitable foundations that are not profit oriented (the Bill Gates Foundation for instance). In between these two extremes, there could be many other variants with differing ratios of ‘wage’ to ‘wage-less’ orientations.

Viewing leadership in this manner, as an evolutionary ladder, also helps us resolve Plato’s problem of people not wanting to be leaders in the first place. The initial steps of this evolutionary ladder allow and encourage wages, thereby ensuring that people are motivated to take up responsibilities that they would have otherwise shirked, and the higher levels of the ladder are for people who are not in it for themselves.

The key thing then becomes identifying the right kind of leaders for the right kind of roles in society. An example of how things go wrong when there is a mismatch between the role and the wage orientation of leaders in that role is the political leadership in this country which has long been tarnished by cases of corruption by individuals who seek personal ‘wages’ over the larger good . On the other hand, middle managers in most businesses belong to the ‘wage oriented’ category, and they certainly seem to do justice to their roles by both maximising their personal gains as well as achieving organisational goals.

In conclusion, it makes sense to allow and embrace both wage oriented and non-wage oriented leadership, provided that the extent of wage orientation in the individual matches with the leadership role that is on offer.

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Previously published articles:

• Leaderless Groups - a case against hierarchy
• Free riding and social loafing
• Decision making in groups
• The networked marketplace
• The spiritual organization
• Interactive Brands
• The long tail opportunity
  

More on leaderless groups

Forrest Christian has an interesting response to my earlier post on leaderless groups. Do check it out here.

I particularly agree with his views on the 'Big man' school of management that involves people bowing to ONE supreme leader in whom we place our faith to lead us. Such structures may have worked well in colonial times, but certainly have no place in the modern workplace, and indeed society. In this context it is interesting that elections in the US tend to surround the 'Big Man' i.e the presidential candidate, whereas elections in India tend to focus more on political parties and their ideologies. I remember reading somewhere that on 'Individualism', Americans score much higher than Indians. I suspect that the Big Man school of management has it's foundations in individualism.

Personal Leadership

Leadership by its very definition seems to assume the presence of a follower who needs to be lead. However, this follower may not always be another person. One form of leadership that I believe in is Personal Leadership - the ability to lead yourself from your current circumstances or situation to a better future. In other words Personal Leadership means taking charge of your own life or situation before taking charge of other people.