Chapter Ten – Reality and the Ideal Vision

This chapter focuses on the long term sustainability of change in an organization. They give the example of a hospital. In this culture, nurses are not generally given autonomy to question the decisions of doctors. In many hospital environments, a nurse would be severely chastised for doing so. They generally don’t have a formal training class in nursing school that tells them this. Instead, they learn it for themselves in watching the behaviors all around them. It is part of the culture. In truly toxic cultures, people often just give up trying to do the right thing, but simply keep their head down and do their job to get through the day. If it gets bad enough, they may even leave.

Changing the culture of an organization certainly involves modifying systems and processes, but all the tactical changes in the world can’t affect a change in the way people feel about their job and the way they behave. The process the authors suggest for beginning true organizational culture change is called “Dynamic Inquiry.” This process was developed by one of the authors, Annie McKee. Again, the explanation of the process is extremely vague. They talk about avoiding the trap of asking survey questions that only lead to a narrow set of answers, by asking open-ended questions and conducting interviews. These interviews which are conducted at all levels of the organization will typically result in themes which become apparent. These themes give the organization an idea of where to begin. They emphasize focusing on what’s right, as well as what’s wrong with the organization. This helps people get motivated to go along for the change ride, as they hopefully see their personal visions align with those of the organization.

The next case study they use is that of Lucasfilm CEO, Gordon Radley. He worked for a few years in Malawi with the peace corps and became so connected to the tribe he worked with that he ended up getting a Malawi tribal tattoo on his cheek. In running Lucasfilm, he realized that the strong sense of family that exists in a tribe was completely absent in his organization. He took steps to correct this. Most of these steps revolved around getting the employees to be as excited about how they feel about their job as they are about what they do each day in their job. “Working together for something bigger than just ourselves,” is of paramount importance here. In the end, Radley says that a groups “tribal feel” is a good measure of how well they have identified their ideal vision and aligned people around their “common purpose. “ Again, very similar to the organizational culture-building tool I use at work and, in this case, Radley even refers to it by the same name. To create a common purpose, it’s important to connect with employees at all levels of the organization to hear their thoughts and feelings about what’s going on and what they’d like to see. In this, way, the common purpose will align with many of their personal visions, and create resonance and buy-in within the organization.

They go into a case study here of a company in India that had a very emotionally intelligent leader at its helm. He went through a structured process to gain the results he was looking for. First, he “centrifuged” decision-making, allowing it to happen at all levels of the organization. In fact, he encouraged the front line folks to come up with creative ideas and problem solve on their own without having to consult leadership. The second step happened with middle management. Once they saw how this change was affecting the organization and the attitudes, the managers began to emulate the CEO (and now front line) behaviors and got engaged in the process. As relationships continued to build, an atmosphere of mutual support began to grow. People took more risks and became more efficient and effective. Lastly, the CEO insisted on accountability to ensure these changes stuck. Front line employees were so engaged with the new work environment that they began taking up the mantle of sustaining and reinforcing the culture on their own.

A more specific example of this process in action revolved around UNICEF. When an executive leader recognized that many people were not engaged with the powerful work that the organization did. She decided to have all the support staff scheduled to go out “in the field” and see the work they do with local people in person. The entire support staff became highly engaged and were suddenly much more passionate about their jobs. One ‘driver’ in particular started to interact with the locals while waiting for the volunteers to finish giving out vaccinations in the village. He conducted mini-classes, speaking to the mothers of the children in particular about why the immunizations were so important, what some possible side effects could be and about how they could calm the nervous children down. On one occasion, the shipment of vaccines had ‘t arrived at a particular village. In the past, he might have simply driven the volunteers back home. Instead, he got in his vehicle and drove off to a larger and distant village to pick up more of the vaccine and bring it back to the small village. He was unwilling to disappoint his most recent class of mothers. He was acting under the new cultural norms. This kind of engagement at every level of the organization creates resonance and hence productivity in ways that no amount of top down directive can.

The chapter ended with a summary of their three key steps in creating a sustainable culture of emotionally charged people who resonate with the work they do.

1.   1) Discovering the emotional reality. The group’s values and the organization’s integrity must be respected.  Of necessity, visions change from time to time but they must remain attuned to the organization’s “sacred center” or values. The leadership must truly listen to what the employees have to say about the culture emotional reality of the organization.

22)   Visualizing the Ideal. If the front line people are involved in creating the new vision, they will connect with it on a much deeper, personal level.

33)   Sustaining Emotional Intelligence. Among other things here, they mention that leaders must not only hold people accountable but also hold themselves accountable as models for the proper behavior.

A great example of number 3 occurred at my work recently. We had rolled out a new safety initiative which involved getting people to use the cross walks in the parking lot, rather than taking the shortest distance between two points. This was a culture shift. Our company's President was leaving a building and heading to her car in the parking lot. She got halfway through the parking lot when she realized she was not using the cross walk. She turned around, went back to the sidewalk, moved over toward the proper crosswalk and re-crossed the parking lot, this time using the crosswalk. What she didn’t know was that people were watching her from a window in the building. That sent a very clear message that no one in the organization is above these new cultural norms, not even the president of the business unit.