By Priscilla Nelson and
Ed Cohen
While working as senior talent leaders for a global organization that went through a $2.5 billion scandal (not counting peripheral damages) when the chairman confessed to “cooking the books,” causing the near bankruptcy and closure of the company, we had the opportunity to observe and be a part of culture’s true influence. During turbulent times, like those we have been going through, leadership is not determined by rank but by the strength of the talent and conviction to build the relationships necessary to bring about collaboration and seek solutions.
In our situation, leaders came from all areas and from all levels. There was desire, but without knowledge, they required continuous guidance. This is a must-start, high-impact area for learning and development. Learning professionals communicate with leaders, provide advice on how to lead during turbulence and make available rapid-skill enhancement. One such area where learning professionals can have tremendous impact is by educating (yes we mean educating) leaders about how much they influence their organizational culture.
Organizations are made up of both conscious and accidental cultures and turbulent times truly magnify both. The conscious culture comes from what’s written and documented. Its accidental culture comes about from those accepting and performing around unwritten or unspoken behaviors and norms passed from one employee to the next, and even one generation to the next. Most likely an employee “knows” that it is part of the culture, yet it has never been documented. Accidental cultures can create both positive and negative outcomes. Here are examples of how the accidental culture emerges: At one business, a team has an impromptu happy hour every Friday where they celebrate all their accomplishments, welcome new members and say goodbye to those leaving.
Another business tolerates leaders and managers that chastise employees in front of others. Yes, we’ve all seen this at some point in our careers and maybe you are currently experiencing this kind of culture in your organization. Obviously you would not see anything written that encourages this behavior, which is why this is a good example of how accidental culture emerges. And in fact over time, it may become so acceptable that it is actually not considered a violation of core values when it happens.
Sometimes process leads to accidental culture. Many organizations require their people to complete times sheets (beyond the hourly workers). This is quite common in service organizations where time is billed to the customers. Logging hours spent on each project is a mandatory part of the job and yet while necessary, it can accidentally create a “watch the clock” type of culture.
As stated earlier, a conscious culture evolves from written and spoken goals, values and behaviors, and practices that are taught, measured and reinforced in the organization. There are distinct benefits to a conscious culture:
- Leaders more rapidly assimilating to the culture.
- Employees more quickly understanding the range of acceptable behaviors.
- Recruitment is easier.
- It is easier to identify and take action when there is a lack of fit.
- There is a likelihood of successful integration in the case of a merger or acquisition.
- Systemic change is easier because there is no battle between the conscious and accidental cultures.
The accidental culture generally emerges from the history of those before us and we massage and manipulate that history for our own preferences and norms. The reality is that throughout an organization’s life, additional norms, behaviors and practices creep in. This is even more pronounced during turbulent times, where positive and negative behaviors are magnified. Positive behaviors include greater pride, fierce loyalty to the organization, a stronger work ethic, broader collaboration and boosted collegiality. Negative behaviors include fear, distrust and anger that results in hoarding of information and unhealthy internal competition. If not part of the conscious culture, together both positive and negative behaviors bring about the accidental culture.
The “fallout” from organizations going through turbulent times extends itself to the employees, their families, the public and many times the greater global community. Recall the ramifications of the volcanic eruptions over Iceland. It had a tremendous financial impact on the airline industry and those of us who fly hither and yon. It also resulted in many people being laid off. Peripherally, businesses (many of them small) all over the world dependent on the airline industry were also impacted. From taxi drivers, to hotels and the local flower shop down the street that could not import the special arrangements you wanted. The culture of an entire industry, those working for that industry and each of these examples were influenced.
Consider also the recent Toyota crisis. Cultural differences between Japan and the United States brought about other challenges. In Japan, subtlety and withdrawal have very deliberate intentions, where in the United States they would be seen as arrogant or dismissive. Rooted in many aspects of Confucianism, Japan puts much more focus on the responsibility of the individual to others. Building and helping community is an expected responsibility and when an individual falls short in meeting those expectation there is great shame. There is, therefore, a great pressure to unite around ideas, projects and causes than what we might see in the United States.
Roland Kelts addresses this in detail in an article in the Christian Science Monitor, February 2010. According to Kelts, “We tend to prize opinionated, headstrong mavericks who are often lauded for their capacity to stand out from the crowd. In Japan however, it is the individual who can facilitate and sustain maximum harmony among group members – the Japanese concept of wa – who achieves praise for leadership in society.”
Never wanting injury or death from such an event, in many ways their conscious culture of humility drove Toyota, a Japanese-based corporation, where Mr. Akio Toyoda took this as a very personal catastrophe and, again, according to Kelts…” a surer sign of a successful corporate leader in Japan is that he (they are almost all men) remains virtually invisible to the public eye, while his organization thrives, and face saving, allowing others to maintain their dignity even when they have erred, is tantamount to ensuring that all group members feel respected. Openly admitting a mistake, or forcing another to do so, invites embarrassment and disharmony. Far better to indirectly make or exchange concessions; indirection eludes confrontation, thus avoiding conflict.”
Do you see where we are going with this? When Toyoda testified on Capital Hill the entire exchange of plans for the event and his subsequent trip to Washington, D.C., were fraught with cultural mishaps and miscommunications. His apology was akin to the ultimate public humiliation. For the sake of Toyota and the global community he called upon all the strength he had available to do so. Toyota employees around the world saw him as a great leader and a hero. This selfless act helped to begin rebuilding the lost employee pride in the never-before tarnished reputation of Toyota. They felt more united and the organization began its recovery.
BP employees are also experiencing what it feels like to have shame introduced “accidently” into their culture. It’s quite common for employees to take on the embarrassment caused by of the actions of others and good leaders must recognize the need to care for these wounded leaders and employees. If the organization has planned and prepared well, many programs and systems will be in place for such turbulent times. If not then the road back will be tricky and filled with additional challenges because it requires shifting the organization’s culture to get it back on track. An event that rocks their world, such as the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, can be the catalyst that introduces many accidental elements into the culture.
Turbulence of any kind can affect an organization’s culture. To prepare for these changes, the necessary steps to protect and adjust the organizational culture must be planned, and this planning needs to be done before, during and following turbulent times. This is an area where learning and development professionals play a primary role. Because they have regular access to more people than those in any other part of the organization, they are uniquely prepared to play a powerful role in its revitalization. They can gather information, facilitate learning solutions, communicate changes, assist in determining necessary cultural changes, and provide coaching for leaders to introduce and reinforce desired outcomes. Moreover, learning and development professionals, given their scope of responsibility, are well positioned to observe the organizational culture as it grows over time. And thus they also tend to be well-aware that because people tend to be comfortable with the current organizational culture, for them to consider cultural change, a significant event must usually occur. Any major event can be the catalyst for shifting the organizational culture. Even so, attempting to change this culture could well be the most difficult project you will ever take on. Attempting to shift from the accidental culture back to the desired conscious culture is a daunting task.
Here are four steps to regain or establish a conscious culture:
- Identify all of the components of the existing culture. Include the written, spoken, unspoken and unwritten.
- Facilitate what to keep, what to eliminate and what to add. This step merges the positive accidental culture into the conscious culture and helps identify the negative accidental influences that need to go away.
- Revisit your organization’s core purpose and values, and reorganize them if necessary. In order to get Toyota back on track, Akio Toyoda realized the need to shift his purpose to “serving the greater global community” in addition to caring for his employees, the team, neighbors, and protecting the organization. When documented as part of the conscious culture of Toyota, this shift has the potential to positively change the organization forever.
- Communicate and reinforce the core purpose and values. A conscious culture can drown out the accidental culture only when it is consistently communicated and reinforced.
Let’s take a look at BP. Their perceived lack of disclosure and transparency has now become part of their accidental culture. In addition to impacting their brand, it is influencing the decisions of employees around the world. The collateral damage is well known, the small fisherman who must now close his family owned business after three generations and 30 years, the restaurant owners who are unable to provide fresh oysters for their guests and see diminishing sales as customers go elsewhere, the families who have survived one crises after another in the Gulf, and the thousands of species at risk for extinction. Had BP come forth earlier with the facts about how many gallons of oil were actually leaking into the Gulf, perhaps better or faster methods might have been available for containment. Until the leaders decide to be more transparent and forthcoming with information, they will continue to have this consequence as an accidental component of their culture.
Looking further at BP’s culture, how will they overcome the shame that their employees are now carrying with them? This can be accomplished by adding to the leadership development agenda, measured steps to constantly reinforce the need to communicate with employees, to let them know everything about what is known and unknown. Beyond that, an organization like BP needs to invite their people to be a part of the solution (which is much more than capping the well in the Gulf). BP could reap the benefits of maximizing the contributions of their dedicated workforce. If BP takes the right steps to reduce the fears of their people and to engage them in the process of revisiting their culture from the inside-out, then they will reap the benefits of having more than 100,000 brand ambassadors. Their employees and their culture could actually grow stronger as a result of this catastrophe. From their conscious culture, an aware, mobilized workforce could become a part of the story of BP’s turnaround. BP leaders need to “care for the wounded” and that includes their employees.
Remember healing always starts from within. These lessons don’t have to be learned in crisis. Organizations can create and sustain a conscious culture that welcomes the positive accidental influences and eliminates the negative, and learning professionals can be right there at the front lines, using leading through learning strategies to help their organizations.
About the Authors: Ed Cohen & Priscilla Nelson, partners at Nelson Cohen Global Consulting www.nelsoncohen.com , provide thought leadership and strategic guidance to leaders and companies around the world. Ed has worked in more than 40 countries and is the only Chief Learning Officer to lead two companies to ASTD BEST Award #1 ranking; Booz Allen Hamilton and Satyam Computer Services. Pris has 30 years of experience with Fortune 500 companies around the world. She has received international acclaim for her work in global leadership development, diversity and executive coaching. Priscilla and Ed are co-authors of Riding the Tiger: Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times (ASTD 2010).
