The Culture Wars

Our country is being pulled apart by people at both ends of the culture spectrum.

The political parties and most of the candidates are engaged in this hateful act. Over and over again they say and do things that are far out and of little use to anyone except the big internet companies who make money by getting people to click on something. People in other countries with whom I talk are amazed and wonder what we are doing to ourselves.

This is not just spoiling much of the public discourse; it also is poisoning our discourse at work. It is very risky to bring up something that may be controversial because arguments may break out and everyone gets angry. The pace of work slows down or even stops. Safety incidents are more likely to occur as people lose focus on their jobs. The culture of the organization gets broken down such that people stop talking together and learning stops.

There are many organizations that offer consultants to come into fix things as if culture is a thing like a car that we can take to the auto shop to fix something. Culture is not a thing.

In my view, culture is the outcome of the collective behaviors in which the people engage in their organization.

Here are some ideas about culture to think about:

• Does your organization have a culture of respect and trust where people can come together to learn, share ideas, help each other, try new experiments, grow, and create new things?
• Does your organization have a hard, top-down driven culture where directives and orders flow downward with little or no feedback?
• Does your organization have a culture where things are so disorganized that no one seems to know what is going on?
• Does your organization have strong silos of various experts who don’t talk and protect their territory with a vengeance?
• Does your organization have different business objectives, often conflicting with one another so no one is working for the greater good?

When consultants are hired to fix these sorts of problems, they usually fail. They are working at the wrong end of the process. The culture is the collective outcome of what we are doing.

Shifting the Culture

When Richard N. Knowles and Associates is asked to come into an organization we come with questions and create a safe space for people at all levels from across the organization to come together to solve their complex problems.

Most organizations have about 85-90% of the information they need to solve their problems. So when they work together on an opening question like, “How do we make this place better and more effective?” in a space that is safe to be open, to share, to listen, to explore new ideas, to explore old ideas in a new way, to learn together, lots of new possibilities emerge.

They co-create their agreements about how they want to work together like helping each other, telling the truth, treating each other with respect, working for the greater good, apologizing for mistakes, sharing all information and building trust. Since these are co-created by all the people, they hold each other accountable and learn. As they come up with things that they want to do to address the opening question, they form teams to address them and work on them.

As people begin to work together in a new way that they have co-created, the culture begins to shift to one that is vibrant, safer, more productive, and healthier.

In our workshops, all these ideas which the people come up with are written onto a big poster which they put in their workplace so everyone can talk about it and keep it alive.

All their work needs to be kept visible and open for sharing and upgrading as conditions change. Everyone from top management to those working below needs to be a part of this process.

We have done this in many organizations of all types, and the process always works as long as the people are willing to talk together, learn and make things happen.

A vibrant, new culture quickly emerges from doing real work together this way and is sustained by posting their chart and continually talking together about it.

For example, in working with the City of Niagara Falls, NY, the Mayor and her leadership team cut $16,000,000 out of a $62,000,000 budget (24%), improved services and ended up with a $4,000,000 fund balance in their first term.

Please give us a call at 716-622-6467 or go to RNKnowlesAssociates.com to learn more.