How's Your Culture look like? What color is it? Maybe it’s time to transform it…it's really worth Your while...

#HR #Management #Leadership #Change #Transformation #Culture #Lean #Agile

Did You had some initiatives to change something in Your organization that failed? Did You make a root cause analysis of that situation? Maybe it had something to do with people’s attitude toward the project? Maybe it was related to some elusive expectations? Or maybe the thing You wanted to change was somehow affecting the unwritten rules?

If answer to those questions is “yes”, that might mean that culture in Your organization or team isn’t ready for the transformation You want or need. First thing’s first – we need to have a clear understanding of what organizational culture is. As always there are numerous attempts to define it. I like the one provided by The Business Dictionary:

“Organizational culture includes an organization’s expectations, experiences, philosophy, as well as the values that guide member behavior, and is expressed in member self-image, inner workings, interactions with the outside world, and future expectations. Culture is based on shared attitudes, beliefs, customs, and written and unwritten rules that have been developed over time and are considered valid”

As You can see organizational culture is an overarching concept that looms over Your organization, but it’s also the foundation on which You can build. It can help You in transforming Your business or it can stop any change in it’s tracks. Sometimes to transform the business You need to start with addressing the culture. Peter Drucker is famous for many of his accomplishments and has a lot of famous quotes. One of them sums up the problem that You might be facing right now:

“Culture eats Strategy for lunch”

It’s simple but very powerful if You think about it. Whatever You are trying to do, whatever new thing You are working on, and whatever change You want or need to implement, if it’s not anchored or resonating with the current culture of Your organization, it will fail. You can have the best people designing the project, You can have the most expensive consulting services helping You in creating a plan of implementation, but if Your people are not ready, You will fail. At this point it’s good to realize what kind of culture You are nurturing and ask the question – “do we need to transform the culture?”. Because in order to adapt Your business You might need to change the culture first. 

One of the most influential typologies and analysis in the past decade was presented by Frederic Laloux in his book in 2014 – Reinventing Organizations. He used a color-coded typology inspired by the work of Clare Graves, and made popular by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan. Laloux outlines the evolutionary perspective of 5 types of organizations over the last ten millennia, in which 4 are historical and the last one is radically different and emerged very recently in comparison. Those types are:

• Red – this is the first form, which appeared about 10 000 years ago when people were organized into chiefdoms. The fundamental theme in those small groups is overwhelming personal power and keeping the organization intact through fear and submission. It’s very reactive and focused on short-term gains. Current examples of Red organizations include organized crime groups like the Mafia, street gangs and tribal militias.
• Amber – historically, due to the agricultural revolution, nomadic hunter-gatherers were transformed into settled farmers. After that, bureaucracy, political states, social institutions and organized religions emerged. Authority here is linked to formal roles instead of powerful personalities. There is a strict hierarchy that commands and directs all aspects of social activity. It’s breakthrough enabled creating capacity for long-term planning and scalability, which allow the accomplishment of complicated endeavors. Current examples, according to Laloux, include the catholic church, the military, and most government agencies.
• Orange – the next step in evolution of organizational life was a product of the industrial revolution. Those types of groups retain the hierarchical pyramid as their basic structure, but members are given more autonomy in how they reach their goals. In this stage, organizations are viewed as machines that need to be manipulated and controlled by their leaders. These types of organizations can feel lifeless and soulless despite the small freedom workers have in performing their tasks. The current examples of such entities are mainly the multinational organizations.
• Green – with the increased level of education among workers, especially in the second half of the 20th century, leaders of organizations encountered numerous problems with exercising hierarchical power. Green organizations emphasize the importance of empowerment, striving for bottom-up processes, being open and gathering inputs from all parts of the organization and trying to build consensus. They are focused on creating strong human cultures, but still have hierarchies, because in order to empower, You have to operate on the premise that Leaders have the authority to do so. There is an obvious trap here, because depending on how they behave they either remain Green or if the focus on culture is lost by some of the Managers, the organization can easily morph back to Orange. Laloux in his research points to Southwest Airlines, Ben & Jerry’s and DaVita, as examples of current Green companies.
• Teal – is an emerging organizational paradigm that advocates a level of consciousness including all previous world views within the operations of an organization. It’s a revolutionary new management model that operates from the premise that organizations should be viewed as living organisms, and therefore, function more like complex adaptive systems than machines. Accordingly, this organizational form is a structure of flexible and fluid peer relationships in which work is accomplished through self-managed teams. In Teal organizations, there are no layers of middle management, very little staff, and very few rules or control mechanisms. Instead of reporting to single supervisors, people are accountable to the members of their teams for accomplishing self-organized collective goals. As counter intuitive as it may seem, the elimination of controlling bosses typically enables a better controlled organization because, Laloux points out, “peer pressure regulates the system better than hierarchy ever could.” He gives current examples of such companies – Patagonia, Morning Star or Buurtzorg.

So what color are You as a Leader and what color is Your organization? Please answer truthfully! Whatever it is, You should focus on analyzing what kind of organization You should be, given the course You have set for the future. The goal could be to go to Teal, but maybe Your company is better off staying in Orange. It’s for You to decide, but be aware of the fact that You cannot for example implement LEAN and/or Agile if You have an Amber organization with a touch of Orange. 

I’m a strong proponent of LEAN/Agile mindset implemented in any organization. But to make it possible You need to include a mix of good practices from Orange, Green and Teal. Most of this mindset is based in Green, and for Orange centric Leaders it’s seen as simply process improvement techniques and nothing more. But without adopting the “culture over strategy” perspective, You cannot gain the benefits from the LEAN/Agile philosophy. And there are plenty! Even if You don’t have any interest in moving to Teal, it’s good to have at least a touch of Green in Your team or company. Having that said, there is huge variability and more evolved colors are not always the best in every situation, market or business domain. So depending on what would serve You best in Your business, so should tailor Your strategy to it. But if Your long-term plans revolve around concepts in the higher level color, You should begin with transforming the culture first. If You don’t You will fail! 

So, are You ready to face the truth? If yes, You should critically look at Your organization as a whole, and see what color does it have and what kind of Leader You are. And most importantly, what kind of color the organization and You should have to succeed in the new reality. There might be a mismatch here, and it’s crucial to bridge this gap. It could be a very long and even painful road ahead, but You need to take it. Without it, You will just waste time, money and effort on plans and strategies that will just not work. So it’s really worth Your while to go back to basics and start the transformation there!

Let’s talk!

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