Episode 16 | Pod Zero: Introducing Dr Ron Hurst
Throughout my career. I've met many a manager who wants to make a culture change and a culture change. You know, it just strikes me as, so almost ridiculous that we think that we can fundamentally change something that we don't even completely understand. Culture is something that's so deeply embedded in an organization that once that organization is 10, 20, 30 years old, the, the thinking that you can change it just smacks of, of arrogance. There's a, a consultant by the name of Edgar Schein who provides what I consider to be the most effective and, and clear definition of culture. And what he says it is a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore taught to new members as the correct way to perceive think and feel in relation to those problems.
What Schein is really talking about is that culture emerges from this crucible of problems, problems of external adaptation, how we face the external world, how we sell our product into the marketplace, how we deal with the adversity of our competitors and external environment. But it's also the internal problems, the integration problems, and the way that we come together and become a cohesive unit. And those problems that we overcome become the core of our culture, but really the key in what Schein is talking about is this their assumption. Unfortunately, we, as human beings, aren't always conscious of our assumptions. So to think that we can change culture just by mandating it so. This is really quite ridiculous now. Yeah, I'm talking about the problem, but let me just break this down in a different way. Schein also offers that organizational culture has three different levels. There are the artifacts, the values and the assumptions, and really the core are the core are the assumptions level.
We get stuck in the artifacts, the way that we do things, you know, you think about organizations that wear certain color uniforms or football teams that always tap a lucky, a lucky, inspirational quote, before they go out onto the field. Those are artifacts. We can change those, but it won't really matter because that's not where culture resides. And then they're the leaders that think by coming up with values and changing values, that we can change the culture. Well, they are surface level. If we're talking a organizational culture as an iceberg, what you're talking about now are what is at the water level? So values dictate the way we behave, but they're still, you can't just randomly change them. They have to be consistent with where the organization is and where it comes from and what it believes and what assumptions it's operating from.
I'll never forget. I was working with an organization here in Southern California, and we were doing strategic thinking training. And I asked them about their core values. And one of their managers did a quick Google search. I don't know why they did this, but they did a quick Google search. And they were stunned when they realized that the organizational values that Google lists at the top of its search index with the same seven values that their organization held. And I'm thinking, yeah, I think somebody just pulled that off of Google. It's not really what the organization's about. You've got some deeper work to do. The other thing that amazes me about values is this. I work with, with mid-level and frontline leaders all the time. And when I teach them about aligning to the organization's vision, mission, and values, I often ask them, what are your values do not look on your smartphone.
Don't look on the net. I just want to know how many do you know right now and remarkably with frontline leadership, there's almost always a gap between what the espoused values are and what the leaders can remember. So here's a fundamental question. If they can't remember them, are they living them? I doubt it. They're not what the organization values. It's what somebody put on a wall somewhere. So then we get down to this deeper level, the assumptions. How do you uncover the assumptions in an organization? Because if you really want to transform organizational culture, if you really want to transform it, you've got to get to the level of assumptions. My favorite way of doing this is a very practical tool. One of the things I've learned about assumptions is this the best time to uncover them because they are subconscious. The best time to uncover them is in an after action review, especially when something didn't go as expected.
Because inevitably when you ask what happened, why did it happen? What do we do to keep it from happening again, the basic format of an AAR or an after action review. You, you will uncover that when you dig in, you can find the assumptions in hindsight, because they're clear something that would never be visible during the planning phase or the execution phase of a project or a process becomes absolutely crystal clear on reflection. It's so I, I encourage you to do that the next time something doesn't go quite right. Do an after action review and ask what happened. Why did it happen? How do we keep it from happening again? Now, let me give you some really practical advice on the AAR, because I see people doing these wrong all the time. The what happened must be an objective statement. Fact, just if you were a scientist, observing your business process from the outside, no blame, no shame, no crap.
Just what happened. A scientific evaluation objective statement of what was seen, heard, or done. That's it. Then when we get into the, why did it happen? The key is on that word. Why? And I want you to think five why's in terms of problem solving, dig in and ask, why did that occur? And when you get an answer, why did that occur? And when you get an answer, why did that occur? One simple little rule here, always maintain objectivity if somebody says, because so and so screwed it up, stop and start over. When blame creeps into five Y five Y breaks down, it can't be about that. It's got to be about learning. Remember rule number one, never solve a process problem alone, which means you got to take people with you, which means people got to be the feel safe in learning and, and getting to the root cause and sharing the right information. So do the after action review. When you get into that five, Y you'll inevitably find the root cause of what led to this behavior. And almost always, there's an assumption made somewhere earlier in the process that now becomes visible as you dig in and do that five Y analysis.
A second way that you can begin to uncover the assumptions that are embedded within your organizational culture is to ask one of my favorite questions when you're doing one-on-ones. When you're talking to individual employees, I would just encourage you to ask them, Hey, you know the old saying, that's not the way we do things around here. Ask people the following question. When you find yourself saying, that's not the way we do things around here, what would the subject be that you're talking about? I guarantee you that because people are correcting group members, especially newer group members in the way we do things around here. When you ask that question, you're going to start uncover little parts of the hidden assumptions that drive your organizational culture. Now, with these tools in mind, let's just assume that you've with these tools in let's now consider a case where you've got a couple of assumptions identified and you can work with them.
The goal here is that we need to be able to change culture in a very strategic way and the way that I like to do this, I, I use a metaphor. I want you to think about if there was a car driving on a freeway and you wanted to get them to stop and change directions, what would you do? Would you go run out onto the freeway and put it your hand in front of them and yell stop? Well, if they're doing 70 or 80 miles an hour, that is a really losing strategy. What I want you to think about is this. I want you to get in your car. I want you to merge onto the freeway. I want you to come up to speed, and then I want you to signal that person to follow you. That's the metaphor. We need to think about culture.
Because culture has a mind all its own because it's, it's tacit. It's, it's unconscious in the collective consciousness of the organization. The only way that you begin to shift it is to get people to recognize that you understand it, you're living it and you're having them move with you. And once you've made that little time, any shift, you can take them with you on a journey where you validate the assumption and you show them how the assumption is being honored in the new situation. As you start to shift the culture. Now there's another piece to this in shifting culture. That's really crucial. You need to be thinking out, taking people with you. There's a Harvard professor by the name of John Cotter, who wrote an amazing book and model on leading change. And I love one of his first steps in this model is create a guiding coalition.
I want you to recognize that as a senior leader in your organization, if you're trying to the culture in a specific way, you have to uncover these assumptions. You have to validate the assumptions and honor those assumptions and show them how the direction that you're trying to take the organization is, is consistent with those assumptions. And if you and your senior leaders are all in concert, all doing the same thing, moving the organization in the same way you can win. But if you just do the, the simplistic way that I see a lot of managers do it, let's rewrite our vision statement. Let's rewrite our values. You're going to fail. So what is the action coming out of this? I strongly encourage you do after action reviews to start the uncover cultural elements of those assumptions that are embedded within the collective consciousness of the organization.
And as you have opportunities to talk to individual members of your organization, ask them that question. If, if you found yourself saying that's not the way we do things around out here, what would you be talking about? And start to build a picture, start to triangulate the different cultural elements by looking at that question from multiple members of the organization, see what they're talking about. And you will quickly zero in on these, these tacit or these unspoken assumption, these unspoken assumption about the organization's culture. And if you do those two things, you can shift the organizational culture.
My company Developing Leaders Inc. provides a number of performance improvement related services to companies such as yours. We work with the Fortune 500 and local so Cal Businesses. If your company needs support in developing their process performance or in enhancing leadership effectiveness, reserve your no obligation strategy session with us today.
Reserve Your Strategy Session
Throughout my career. I've met many a manager who wants to make a culture change and a culture change. You know, it just strikes me as, so almost ridiculous that we think that we can fundamentally change something that we don't even completely understand. Culture is something that's so deeply embedded in an organization that once that organization is 10, 20, 30 years old, the, the thinking that you can change it just smacks of, of arrogance. There's a, a consultant by the name of Edgar Schein who provides what I consider to be the most effective and, and clear definition of culture. And what he says it is a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore taught to new members as the correct way to perceive think and feel in relation to those problems.
What Schein is really talking about is that culture emerges from this crucible of problems, problems of external adaptation, how we face the external world, how we sell our product into the marketplace, how we deal with the adversity of our competitors and external environment. But it's also the internal problems, the integration problems, and the way that we come together and become a cohesive unit. And those problems that we overcome become the core of our culture, but really the key in what Schein is talking about is this their assumption. Unfortunately, we, as human beings, aren't always conscious of our assumptions. So to think that we can change culture just by mandating it so. This is really quite ridiculous now. Yeah, I'm talking about the problem, but let me just break this down in a different way. Schein also offers that organizational culture has three different levels. There are the artifacts, the values and the assumptions, and really the core are the core are the assumptions level.
We get stuck in the artifacts, the way that we do things, you know, you think about organizations that wear certain color uniforms or football teams that always tap a lucky, a lucky, inspirational quote, before they go out onto the field. Those are artifacts. We can change those, but it won't really matter because that's not where culture resides. And then they're the leaders that think by coming up with values and changing values, that we can change the culture. Well, they are surface level. If we're talking a organizational culture as an iceberg, what you're talking about now are what is at the water level? So values dictate the way we behave, but they're still, you can't just randomly change them. They have to be consistent with where the organization is and where it comes from and what it believes and what assumptions it's operating from.
I'll never forget. I was working with an organization here in Southern California, and we were doing strategic thinking training. And I asked them about their core values. And one of their managers did a quick Google search. I don't know why they did this, but they did a quick Google search. And they were stunned when they realized that the organizational values that Google lists at the top of its search index with the same seven values that their organization held. And I'm thinking, yeah, I think somebody just pulled that off of Google. It's not really what the organization's about. You've got some deeper work to do. The other thing that amazes me about values is this. I work with, with mid-level and frontline leaders all the time. And when I teach them about aligning to the organization's vision, mission, and values, I often ask them, what are your values do not look on your smartphone.
Don't look on the net. I just want to know how many do you know right now and remarkably with frontline leadership, there's almost always a gap between what the espoused values are and what the leaders can remember. So here's a fundamental question. If they can't remember them, are they living them? I doubt it. They're not what the organization values. It's what somebody put on a wall somewhere. So then we get down to this deeper level, the assumptions. How do you uncover the assumptions in an organization? Because if you really want to transform organizational culture, if you really want to transform it, you've got to get to the level of assumptions. My favorite way of doing this is a very practical tool. One of the things I've learned about assumptions is this the best time to uncover them because they are subconscious. The best time to uncover them is in an after action review, especially when something didn't go as expected.
Because inevitably when you ask what happened, why did it happen? What do we do to keep it from happening again, the basic format of an AAR or an after action review. You, you will uncover that when you dig in, you can find the assumptions in hindsight, because they're clear something that would never be visible during the planning phase or the execution phase of a project or a process becomes absolutely crystal clear on reflection. It's so I, I encourage you to do that the next time something doesn't go quite right. Do an after action review and ask what happened. Why did it happen? How do we keep it from happening again? Now, let me give you some really practical advice on the AAR, because I see people doing these wrong all the time. The what happened must be an objective statement. Fact, just if you were a scientist, observing your business process from the outside, no blame, no shame, no crap.
Just what happened. A scientific evaluation objective statement of what was seen, heard, or done. That's it. Then when we get into the, why did it happen? The key is on that word. Why? And I want you to think five why's in terms of problem solving, dig in and ask, why did that occur? And when you get an answer, why did that occur? And when you get an answer, why did that occur? One simple little rule here, always maintain objectivity if somebody says, because so and so screwed it up, stop and start over. When blame creeps into five Y five Y breaks down, it can't be about that. It's got to be about learning. Remember rule number one, never solve a process problem alone, which means you got to take people with you, which means people got to be the feel safe in learning and, and getting to the root cause and sharing the right information. So do the after action review. When you get into that five, Y you'll inevitably find the root cause of what led to this behavior. And almost always, there's an assumption made somewhere earlier in the process that now becomes visible as you dig in and do that five Y analysis.
A second way that you can begin to uncover the assumptions that are embedded within your organizational culture is to ask one of my favorite questions when you're doing one-on-ones. When you're talking to individual employees, I would just encourage you to ask them, Hey, you know the old saying, that's not the way we do things around here. Ask people the following question. When you find yourself saying, that's not the way we do things around here, what would the subject be that you're talking about? I guarantee you that because people are correcting group members, especially newer group members in the way we do things around here. When you ask that question, you're going to start uncover little parts of the hidden assumptions that drive your organizational culture. Now, with these tools in mind, let's just assume that you've with these tools in let's now consider a case where you've got a couple of assumptions identified and you can work with them.
The goal here is that we need to be able to change culture in a very strategic way and the way that I like to do this, I, I use a metaphor. I want you to think about if there was a car driving on a freeway and you wanted to get them to stop and change directions, what would you do? Would you go run out onto the freeway and put it your hand in front of them and yell stop? Well, if they're doing 70 or 80 miles an hour, that is a really losing strategy. What I want you to think about is this. I want you to get in your car. I want you to merge onto the freeway. I want you to come up to speed, and then I want you to signal that person to follow you. That's the metaphor. We need to think about culture.
Because culture has a mind all its own because it's, it's tacit. It's, it's unconscious in the collective consciousness of the organization. The only way that you begin to shift it is to get people to recognize that you understand it, you're living it and you're having them move with you. And once you've made that little time, any shift, you can take them with you on a journey where you validate the assumption and you show them how the assumption is being honored in the new situation. As you start to shift the culture. Now there's another piece to this in shifting culture. That's really crucial. You need to be thinking out, taking people with you. There's a Harvard professor by the name of John Cotter, who wrote an amazing book and model on leading change. And I love one of his first steps in this model is create a guiding coalition.
I want you to recognize that as a senior leader in your organization, if you're trying to the culture in a specific way, you have to uncover these assumptions. You have to validate the assumptions and honor those assumptions and show them how the direction that you're trying to take the organization is, is consistent with those assumptions. And if you and your senior leaders are all in concert, all doing the same thing, moving the organization in the same way you can win. But if you just do the, the simplistic way that I see a lot of managers do it, let's rewrite our vision statement. Let's rewrite our values. You're going to fail. So what is the action coming out of this? I strongly encourage you do after action reviews to start the uncover cultural elements of those assumptions that are embedded within the collective consciousness of the organization.
And as you have opportunities to talk to individual members of your organization, ask them that question. If, if you found yourself saying that's not the way we do things around out here, what would you be talking about? And start to build a picture, start to triangulate the different cultural elements by looking at that question from multiple members of the organization, see what they're talking about. And you will quickly zero in on these, these tacit or these unspoken assumption, these unspoken assumption about the organization's culture. And if you do those two things, you can shift the organizational culture.
My company Developing Leaders Inc. provides a number of performance improvement related services to companies such as yours. We work with the Fortune 500 and local so Cal Businesses. If your company needs support in developing their process performance or in enhancing leadership effectiveness, reserve your no obligation strategy session with us today.
Reserve Your Strategy Session