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rUBRIC: AMONG PROFESSORS
CULTURE IS SOMETHING THAT must be
maintained By Niels Willems & Wieke Janssen Streamer
1: Cultural research is an intervention Attention is paid to corporate culture particularly when large changes are needed. Professor Sanders prefers to deal with the here and now. Ask yourself daily: “what nourishes me, what eats away at me?” My entire career has actually focused on one subject: developmental processes. I was originally interested in the transitions individuals make during their lifetimes, from puberty to adolescence, for example. Early in the 1980s I met Geert Hofstede who had completed his research at IBM into differences between national cultures in more than sixty countries. Geert and I subsequently began working together on corporate culture. At that time my interest in transitions broadened to include corporate development. Transition means fundamental change. This is a process of moving from certainty via uncertainty to the development of a new certainty. One might also call it a transition to new patterns of behavior and frameworks of reference. As the common understanding among members of an organization, culture resists discussion. Strong external influences can result in major breaches and consequently changes in culture. In the 1960s and 1970s “corporate culture” as a concept had not yet been invented. Research conducted at that time was into “team spirit” or the esprit de corps. In the western world corporate culture became a subject of interest to corporate management by virtue of the fascination with Japanese corporate culture at the beginning of the 1980s represented by the publication of The Art of Japanese Management by two professors from Harvard University, Pascale and Athos, whose approach was subsequently idealized by a great many people. The Japanese are very collectivistic and pay a great deal of attention to what others think. Their thinking on the form and direction of team spirit was adopted by many first in the United States and later in Europe. The great breakthrough for corporate culture as a research subject came with the publication in 1982 of In search of excellence: Lessons from America's best-run companies by Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman, however. They developed a language for the soft aspects of management by addressing leadership, skills and corporate mission. Many others followed their suggestion that these subjects might indeed be the most important factors for corporate success. Seldom has a book been as celebrated as Peters and Waterman’s. In the mid-1980s we began to approach businesses regarding our research into corporate culture. Many managers appeared to be tremendously curious about the subject, but there was also some timidity. Some found exposing corporate culture in general too intimate and preferred that we first conduct our research at another firm. Interest was nonetheless appreciable. Managers wanted a tool to be able to work with culture, that is, they were interested in a way to measure culture in order to be able to influence it. Measuring culture is a process of consciousness-raising for all concerned. What we noticed as we began to map their corporate cultures is that the research project itself was an intervention. When we spoke with people about the culture within their organizations a process began – evidently by itself – in which they began to question their own assumptions. “Why do we do things the way we do?” Cultural research can probe very deeply. I recently bumped into someone whom I couldn’t immediately recognize. We looked at each other and then simultaneously said, “cultural research”. As the director of a large firm sixteen years ago he was involved in our project. He recalled the metaphor we used then to describe his organization: like a public notary’s family on a Sunday. It’s not difficult to imagine that this kind of experience had an impact on people. Attention to what corporate culture can mean for the development of an organization is in general related to change. The question is: how can culture be changed in order to create support for a needed turn around? My interest was primarily in continuity, that is, how to maintain a culture. I believe there is much power in regular maintenance. I attach great importance to the few minutes I take for myself each day. Maintenance has to do with staying in shape physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. This is not only true for people, but also for organizations. Staying in top shape means not taking things for granted simply because “we’ve always done it that way”. Maintaining culture means dealing consciously with the here and now. It is also important to have a vision of where you want to go to. This means constantly asking yourself: “what nourishes me, what eats away at me?” Physical maintenance refers to a good balance between work and private life as well as the balance between sleep and being awake. Do you take time? Emotional maintenance refers to feelings such as irritation and tension felt in relation to others. Do you talk to others? Do you watch out for others? If someone gets angry during a meeting, do you later ask what’s really troubling them? Intellectual maintenance is best maintained by sharing our mental images. Do you share what you’ve seen with each other? Moments of truth can teach us much more than any workshop or course. Spiritual maintenance deals with questions of meaning and interpretation. Where are you going? Are you now doing what you want to do? Maintenance means taking distance. Internal leadership means being able to differentiate between issues that come and quickly go and things that are built to last. What are the lasting questions upon which one reflects? In his book The Seven Habits, Stephen Covey hammers home the importance of having a goal after which to strive. Yet he also urges us to put first things first. His concern is the ability to manage the tension between what we strive after and what we must do immediately. Making a habit of this can help relieve an overfull agenda. In this way you no longer feel that life is living you, but that you live life, that is to say, you’re in control of your life. This gives rise to space and attentiveness to see and catch hold of the energy within the moment which encourages synchronicity. This is recognizable in so-called “predictable miracles” – apparent coincidences which happen to you and which have a natural explanation. Rather than having to force others to give you what you need, things simply come to you. If you’re open to it, then you’ll notice it. It’s all about a comfortable feeling and that’s the liberation. Could I have understood this in my thirties? I think so. Now, however, it resonates more. Between 39 and 41 I went through a classic midlife crisis. My life was chaos. During some workshops at the National Training Laboratories in the U.S., I discovered a part of my past which I’d never really examined. After exploring it I felt much more myself. In addition to permanent maintenance, sometimes crisis and catharsis are needed in order to change. Scars are part of an adventurous life. I’ve trodden my own path.
Geert Sanders His tenure at the University of Bremen and his membership of the board of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) are examples of Sanders’s regular involvement in international projects. . |
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