[Abiel Guerra]

Transcript: Ed Schein talks to Karl Moore

The MIT professor discusses the idea of ‘cultural islands’ in organizations and how they need to be aligned for better understanding.

Karl Moore | Special to Globe and Mail

Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2010 01:03PM EDT

KARL MOORE: This is Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, talking management for The Globe and Mail. Today I am delighted to speak to Ed Schein who is a senior professor at MIT and has written about change for many, many years now. Good morning Ed.

ED SCHEIN: Good morning.

KM: One of the things that you are best known for is your understanding of writing, research and corporate culture. What have you come to about corporate culture these days? What are you thinking about it?

ES: What are my thoughts about corporate culture? I have just finished revising one of my two books on that subject and I am in the middle of revising the other. The biggest learning that I have had that is forcing me to change the focus is that occupations have cultures, nations have cultures, ethnic groups have cultures and with globalization it is not just going to be about organizational culture.

For example, in many organizations, the dilemma between engineering, finance and marketing is much greater than the problem of their overall corporate culture. In medicine, for example, the conflict between the nursing culture and the doctor culture and the administrator culture is much more of an issue than what is the corporate culture of the whole hospital system.

So, in rewriting I am pushing toward these subculture issues as being the real problem. Then, when you take that into the international scene, you not only have occupational subcultures, but you have the national cultures; you have the doctor from India and the nurse from some other country in a hospital run in the U.S. and all of this has to somehow come together.

I have begun to think about this notion of cultural islands. Where can you actually get multicultural units into a talking relationship with each other so that they can begin to explore their common ground? It is not going to happen in the daily work scene. I think that we have to create cultural islands to allow that kind of communication to occur.

KM: So for a general manager, they need to become bicultural, tri-cultural and really understand the world of the marketing people, the finance people.

ES: They do not have to actually understand those cultures; what they have to be able to do is create settings where those cultures will understand each other enough to get aligned. You are never going to integrate all of these cultures but you have got to get them aligned and get them working toward the same purpose. So the good general manager understands this and creates forums, such as taking everybody to Japan, to allow the communication to occur.

KM: How often should an organization change its culture?

ES: It should not change its culture at all. It should work out its business problems.

KM: That would lead to a corporate culture change.

ES: Well, usually the culture is what the corporation has learned that has made it successful. So the culture is mostly your strength; so you only want to change it when you have a business problem and the culture is what is in the way. Most of the time, even with [New York’s] Consolidated Edison, they are calling all of this culture change, but most of the culture of Con Edison is intact, as evidenced by their ability, for example, to train 10,000 people in a few months on what is a hazard. That sort of training-oriented, top down, is the essence of their culture and without that they would be a much worse organization. The idea of culture change for its own sake is nonsense.

KM: This has been Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, talking management for The Globe and Mail. Today I have been speaking with Ed Schein, a senior professor at MIT.

Copy Right: Globe and Mail.

Goffman

Today somebody reminded me this movie, and when I first watched the movie I made the connection with Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman work on face.

Goffman discovered that, when an individual comes in contact with other people, that individual will attempt to control or guide the impression that others might make of him by changing or fixing his or her setting, appearance and manner. At the same time, the person that the individual is interacting with is trying to form and obtain information about the individual.

Goffman also believed that all participants in social interactions are engaged in certain practices to avoid being embarrassed or embarrassing others.

For example, when a lady who is attending a formal dinner—and who is certainly striving to present herself positively—farts, nearby party-goers may pretend not to have seen her fumble; they assist her in maintaining face. Goffman avers that this type of artificial, willed credulity happens on every level of social organization, from top to bottom.

So, unlike the movie, social order and culture rules dictates that, upon a meeting, we don’t say to someone “I’m very uncomfortable with this situation” or “I find this conversation uninteresting”, that would be, as Edgar H. Schein put it, “social murder”.

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During last week at Cape Cod Institute (CCI), attending Intentional Use of Self: Strategies and Skills for Consulting, Coaching and Change with Edith and Charles Seashore (The Seashores), we become resourceful practicing check-ins and check-outs, at the begining and at the end of the 5 sessions of the course… As one participant put it, the course could be named “Check-in / Check-out” : )

Well, I revisited Schein´s article “Kurt Lewin’s Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes Toward a Model of Managed Learning” where he talks about the practice of check in / check out and the effects of this on the group. Read by yourself:

During the last two years I changed the structure of the class sessions by arranging us all in a circle, introducing the concept of dialogue, and starting each class with a “check-in” which involved asking each student in turn to say something about “where you are at right now” at the beginning of each class (Bohm, 1989; Isaacs, 1993; Schein, 1993). Though this was at times cumbersome because it took quite a while for 30 people to check in, the ritual itself became very meaningful and important to the class. The circle format and the dialogue assumptions made each session much more interactive and comfortable. It allowed me from time to time to also ask for a check out by going around the room near the end of class to see where people were at. If we were short of time we used a truncated version of check in by asking each person just to say two or three words such as “anxious but motivated,” “tired and sleepy,” “comfortable and eager,” “distracted” and so on.

The Check-ln guaranteed that everyone would have a voice without having to raise their hand or figure out how to get in, a process that was especially important for the foreign students with language problems. One could see week by week how they become more comfortable during the check in and how this generalized to comfort in the remainder of the class session. Check-ln also revealed the class mood, things that were going on in the students’ lives that were a distraction, fatigue levels and other factors that enabled us all to start class work on a more “realistic” level. It reinforced the dictums I had espoused–”always deal with the reality as you find it” and “go with the flow.”

Just by checking in / checking out I experienced the most interactive course in CCI, being these my 3rd year and 3rd course, and building the best relationships among participants.

Anyway, right now I´m in Roger Schwarz course on Group Facilitation, back in highly content / low process course again : )

Also, in the same article, Schein describe the practice of “The Empahty Walk” , which is all about building relationships, explore diversity and discover the own self inside us:

Students have found and built relationships with homeless people, street musicians, prostitutes, go-go dancers, trappist monks, convicted murderers, blind people, dying aids patients! successful celebrities, fishermen, hare krishnas, and so on. They discover, among other things, that the difference between them and their target is often less that their difference from each other. They realize how insulated their lives are from many real world problems, and how narrow their own perspectives are. They come face to face with social status and the dilemmas of having a privileged position in society, usually in the form of anxiety and guilt when they contemplate how one approaches a homeless person without “talking down to them.” The discovery that some of these people have had or still have rich lives comes as a shock. In every case it opens the student up to becoming more inquiring and more sensitive to others, an essential step in becoming a successful change agent or manager.

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Este es un vídeo que de manera obvia alude a Mr. G.W. Bush y sus cualidades. Sin embargo, presenta de manera exagerada (tal vez no tanto) los problemas de comunicación que se viven de manera cotidiana en las organizaciones….

Esta es una metáfora bastante ilustrativa sobre como nace la cultura en las  organizaciones.

1. Introducir veinte monos en una habitación cerrada.

2. Colgar un plátano del techo y colocar una escalera para poder alcanzarlo, asegurándose de que no exista ningún otro modo de alcanzarlo que no sea subiendo por la escalera.

3. Instalar un sistema que haga caer una lluvia de agua helada en toda la habitación desde el techo cuando un mono empiece a subir la escalera.

4. Los monos aprenden rápido que no es posible subir la escalera evitando el sistema de agua helada, asi que se asegurarán de que por ningún motivo algún mono se acerque a la escalera, empleando para ello, si es necesario, la violencia física.

5. Luego, reemplazar a uno de los veinte monos por uno nuevo. Inmediatamente, intentará subir la escalera para alcanzar el plátano y sin entender por qué, será golpeado por los otros.

6. Reemplazar ahora uno de los viejos monos por otro nuevo. Entonces será castigado a golpes también, y el mono introducido justo antes que éste será el que más fuerte le dé.

7. Continuar el proceso hasta cambiar a los veinte monos originales y que queden únicamente monos nuevos.

8. Ahora ninguno intentará subir la escalera, y más aún, si por cualquier razón a alguno se le ocurre pensarlo, éste será masacrado por el resto de los monos. Y lo peor es que ninguno de los monos tendrá la menor idea del porqué sucede esto.

Es así como nace la cultura organizacional.

Esta anecdota está basada en el artículo Five Ways to Develop Your Corporate Culture, de Naomi Moneypenny.

Interpretación de la metáfora desde el punto de vista de cultura organizacional.

Los monos no saben por qué golpean al mono que intenta hacerse del plátano, ya que ahora dicha conducta (la de golpear) es un supuesto básico compartido por ese grupo, subyacente e inconciente: fue desarrollado como una solución a un problema que se le presentó al grupo y que se repitió una y otra vez, hasta que se convirtió en un supuesto básico compartido, y los monos no son conscientes de ello.

Estas dinámicas implican la necesidad de alguna intervención de cambio cultural cuando las mismas provocan un desajuste entre la cultura organizacional y el entorno donde se desempeña la organización. En una organización madura es más difícil cambiar estos supuestos básicos compartidos, porque todos los sistemas, hábitos y prácticas de la organización buscan mantener el equilibrio y la integridad del sistema / Cultura.

Para aprender algo nuevo requiere re-evaluar la situación, identificar los supuestos básicos compartidos subyacentes en la forma de actuar de la organización o del grupo, para examinarlos detenidamente, analizarlos, comprenderlos y decidir si obstaculizan o apoyan la efectividad organizacional, a fin de desarrollar un esfuerzo de cambio planificado si se concluye que representan un obstáculo.

Algunos mecanismos de cambio de cultura son la promoción de los híbridos dentro de la organización (rebeldes culturales), la promoción sistemática de cierta sub-cultura y la incorporación de personal ajeno a la organización. Cuando la situación es grave, mecanismos como fusiones y adquisiciones vienen a cambiar los supuestos básicos compartidos que representan patologías organizacionales.

Para profundizar en el tema, consultar “Organizational Culture and Leadership” de Edgar H. Schein.

De acuerdo a Peter Bregman en su blog del Harvard Business Review,  es posible cambiar la cultura organizacional mediante las historias que se cuentan en esa organización.

Para ello, las dos cosas que recomienda hacer son:

1. Llevar a cabo acciones dramáticas que representen la cultura que se desea impulsar en la organización y dejar que otras personas cuenten historias sobre esas acciones.
2. Encontrar personas que realicen acciones dramáticas que representen la cultura que se desea crear en la organización y contar historias sobre esas acciones.

Bregman trata de ejemplificar lo anterior diciendo que si se busca mejorar la comunicación de los ejecutivos y el personal de una organización, la acción a realizar es dejar de revisar la computadora cada vez que se escucha la notificación de la llegada de un nuevo email. Para esto, sugiere Bergman, se debe poner a hibernar la computadora cuando alguien llega a tu oficina.

Parece simple cambiar la cultura organizacional de esta manera, ¿verdad? Sin embargo, ¿cómo se logra que los ejecutivos dejen de prestar atención a sus computadoras, para dársela a sus colaboradores, cuando esto es un hábito bien establecido en ellos?

¿Cómo se convence a un ejecutivo de comprar la filosofía de trabajo en equipo, o del empowerment, cuando su carrera y éxito profesional están fundamentados en trabajo individualista, de control unilateral y de supervisión estrecha sobre sus colaboradores?

¿Cómo se logra esto, para así generar las historias que cambiarán la cultura?

Entiendo que éste es un breve artículo de un especialista en gestión del cambio, liderazgo  y cultura organizacional, sin embargo, es un excelente ejemplo de los consejos e ideas abstractas, frecuentemente impracticables, que no aportan una base o fundamento para tomar acciones concretas en situaciones concretas y que, si se llevan a la practica, es muy probable que se provoquen consecuencias contraproducentes.

Este tipo de consejos son  los que aborda Chris Argyris en su libro “La Asesoria Deficiente y Trampa en que Caen los Administradores”, en el cual aborda de manera crítica el tipo de consejos vagos y ambiguos que con frecuencia aportan consultores y profesionales en recursos humanos.

Peter Bregman: “A Good Way to Change a Corporate Culture“.

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