The COVID-19 opportunity of a lifetime: Transform your organization’s culture to create your masterpiece organization (Part 1)

? Ten-minute read

In the penultimate paper from a series of special COVID-19 briefings, Dr. Charles Spinosa shows why your organization’s culture is important, how it works, and what the key building blocks are. In the next, how shows how to make the changes to create your masterpiece.

In the most recent thought piece I wrote, called COVID-19, the unnatural act of managing moods, and creating a masterpiece instead of the new normal, I advised against trying to gear up to compete in the new normal and instead create a cultural masterpiece that will put your competitive advantage out of reach of other organizations. In that, piece I focused on managing moods and other emotions as part of your masterpiece. In doing so, I trusted that everyone knows what counts as a negative and a positive mood. I claimed simply that, with positive emotions, we and our colleagues would find burdens light, feet faster, and minds sharper. All true; however, in writing that piece, I realized that the key practices we are changing as we move into the virtual world are precisely the ones we need to change to transform an organizational culture: practices for reaching resolution, handing-off, evaluating performance, and celebrating.

In today’s virtual world, reaching resolution requires managers to spend much more time coaching others one-on-one. Virtual hand-offs—the bane of asynchronous working—require detailed question answering: “What was the concern you were addressing?” “What unusual circumstances did you encounter?” “What are you sure you succeeded in doing?” “What needs checking over?” And so forth. Effective virtual performance management needs to overcome people’s strong virtual tendency to hear what they want to hear by carefully drawing out each other’s background worries and concerns.

I am yet to find any organization that has achieved good virtual celebrations. People are so weary that any celebration turns simply into mindless relaxation. The words of any well-thought-out panegyric fly straight to heaven.1

Thus, although COVID-19 is making critical management practices difficult, it also offers organization leaders a golden opportunity. With all the change happening, now is the time to bring your culture into alignment with your style of managing and your strategy. Make your culture a work of art, increase revenues and profits by at least 20%, and make your competitive advantage incomparable. If you are starting out with a weak culture, increase revenues and profits by much more.

Cultural habits are hard to break

Why is now the time? Normally, when a leader drives a culture change, there’s enormous resistance. Normally, you find even close allies on your senior team resisting. Culture is hard to see. It’s hard to make the change visible. And cultural habits, which tell you what counts as good and what counts as bad, are extremely hard to break. When you change culture, you are changing some of what is good into bad and some of what is bad into good. Right now, with COVID-19, everyone accepts that change is necessary. I have never witnessed that before.

Unfortunately, I cannot explain culture and show you how to begin changing it in one short, thought piece. However, I will do it in two. In this longer one of the two, I’ll show why culture is important and how it works, set out its genuine building blocks, and identify where others go astray and try to make culture change simpler than it is. I’ll also describe the most common types of culture and suggest how they are suited to the four main strategies organizations have. By the end of this thought piece, you will have a philosophically sophisticated understanding of culture and have the distinctions at hand both to identify your kind of culture and figure out the culture you want for your masterpiece organization. In the thought piece I publish after this, I’ll describe how, in this once-in-a-lifetime moment, to shape your coming-to-resolution practice to become the keynote of each of a set of cultures I recommend.

To achieve your masterpiece, you will have to make similar changes to your hand-off, performance evaluation and celebration practices. I hope to give you the insights you need to do that by looking at practices for coming to resolution. (However, if there is strong interest, changing those other practices could be the subject of other thought pieces.) I promise the next thought piece will enable you to answer a critical question: “Do I have the moral imagination to understand cultures and the fortitude for driving a culture change to create my organizational culture into my masterpiece?” I promise that you will see that you have more moral imagination than you might think.

How do organizational cultures work?

We all know cultures are mostly invisible to those who dwell in them. We notice some rituals, some works of art that tell us about our culture, but those tend to be special occasions. We don’t notice culture in our everyday ways of going about business. When we join a new company, we first experience it as alien but within a few days we are already seeing things from the organizational culture’s point of view. It’s like adjusting to the mood of a party. We do it almost instantaneously. However, when film writers and directors create powerful movies, they bring out the main elements of cultures. Consider how quickly we tune into Star Wars and see Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, and Han Solo tune into each other. Likewise, consider how, with The Hunger Games, we are a little slower to tune in, but once we do, we get what Katniss is up against and how she and Peeta come to have feelings for each other. Now, try to imagine Princess Leia connecting with Katniss. Why is it so hard to imagine?

It’s not their roles. They are both rebels up against a truly evil state. It’s not their personalities: they both sense that they are special, draw admiration from people easily, have a deep-seated sense of doing what is right, are courageous and noble. The dividing wall is their different cultures.

Star Wars takes place in a shared mood of hope. Ambitions matter if they are valuable and require going up against extraordinary odds—“Never tell me the odds”—and don’t matter if they are normal and low risk. Likewise, the prevailing style is opportunism: find opportunities and take them even if they pull you away from your community, for instance, going to another planet to become a Jedi warrior. The Hunger Games has a shared mood of resentment: the Hunger Games are the signature practice of resentment. Individuals from the losing side of a war are selected by lottery to hunt and kill each other. In this mood of resentment, things matter so far as they are causes for anger and don’t matter if not. The Hunger Games is a little more difficult to tune into because the style of the rulers is trendiness—hence the fashions—while Katniss has a style of seeking justice, hence her slowness to kill.

As John Milton shows us in Paradise Lost, hope and resentment are opposites. Hope is always having song in your heart as do the angels in heaven, and resentment is idealized by Satan’s vengeful fight against his great enemies—God and Christ—to clear some space for himself. “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” Likewise, styles of opportunism, justice, and trendiness oppose each other. Opportunism looks unjust to people whose style is justice. Justice looks dull to the trendy. Leia to Katniss: “Should I marry Han and respect my brother Luke?” Katniss to Leia: “No, they are unbearable opportunists.” In organizations where there are multiple cultures, communication fails, as between Leia and Katniss. When a company does not understand how its culture is different from various customer segments’ cultures, it’s Katniss talking to Leia. When the culture has a positive mood and clear style, spirits soar. Hearts are clear. Thinking is on fire.

Theoretical reasoning

Why do I say that shared mood (or mattering), shared style, and some signature practices that manifest the two are the keys to culture? I follow Heidegger who claims that practices, skillful ways of living, are basic, not thoughts or implicit beliefs. Our ways of living—our practices—manifest themselves in our shared sense of what matters—our shared mood—and our shared way of coordinating together all the things that are valuable to us.2 With a style of opportunism, all the other goods such as intelligence, constancy and care dwell in the light of opportunism. In an opportunistic culture, a schemer is intelligent. In a culture that prides itself on justice, an impartial judge is intelligent. A culture’s style and mood manifest themselves most clearly in signature practices: taking on crazy odds or the ritualized hunger games.

With this philosophical approach, I am opposing many social scientists and consultants. Consider Edgar Schein, Cameron and Quinn, and Connors and Smith. They all claim that culture lies in our implicit beliefs about important things like intimacy or safety.3 Thus, they think that they can stand outside their cultures, evaluate the implicit beliefs, and then change them in the light of reason. If you believe Mr. Spock is real, you can believe them. In contrast, I say we dwell in our cultures and can only change them from within. Like Neurath and 19th century whalers, we rebuild the ship while sailing it. (And consequently, we get better and more profound operational results.)

Typical moods of organizational cultures

In my work, I typically find four negative and four positive shared moods. Negative ones are resentment, fear, resignation, and arrogance. Positive ones are hope, admiration, zeal, and joy. Moods determine how things matter. We’ve already seen that for hope and resentment. In fear, things matter so far as they are threatening. (Note, you can be living in a fear culture and have no feeling of fear because you are finding nothing threatening. It’s the dimension in which things matter that is fundamental, not the feeling associated with that dimension.) In resignation, things matter so far as they keep a steady keel. In arrogance, things matter so far as they lend themselves to ruling the roost. In admiration, things matter so far as they increase affection. In zeal, things matter so far as they further the mission. In joy, things matter so far as they enable us to join with someone to create a great performance.

Typical styles of organization cultures

I also typically run into nine cultural styles. The mood and style association determines whether the style is positive or negative. Opportunism joined with hope is positive; joined with arrogance, it is Enron negative. The main styles are perfectionist, pragmatist, developmental (developing people), opportunistic, trendy, just, play to win, get stuff done, and collegial.

A perfectionist style with a mood of hope gives you an Apple which focuses its perfectionism on design. A perfectionist style with fear or resignation becomes obsessive. A company with a good mood and a pragmatist style has managers who are skilled at and take pride in making tough trade-offs fast. With a bad mood, such companies accept shoddy work. Microsoft and Dell would stand out as companies in a mood of zeal and a pragmatist style. A developmental company tries to develop the capacity for customers, employees, and shareholders to have good lives. When in a good mood, such companies are enormously productive. Consider Google or John Lewis. In a bad mood, like many utilities, the developmental style leads to low productivity because everyone is focused on developing themselves on weekends and holidays. Successful hedge funds and venture capitalists have a mood of zeal and a style of opportunism. They go after the next new thing in a highly disciplined manner. Consider Bridgewater.

Cultural and strategic alignments should be clear. A mood of hope and style of perfectionism goes well with a strategy of competing on product quality. A mood of admiration and developmental style will give you the edge in competing on customer experience. Zeal with pragmatism will enable brilliant execution, particularly cost efficiency. Joy with a style of trendiness goes well with owning a niche, where you are continuously a trend setter.

Questions to answer before moving on to Part 2

These are hard questions. Answer them as honestly as you can. This is not a marketing exercise.

What motivates people most (and most often) in your organization? Is it threats (fear), overcoming resistance (resentment), keeping an even keel (resignation), ruling the roost (arrogance), going against the huge odds (hope), feeling great about your colleagues and customers (admiration), sticking to mission (zeal), or helping others out (joy)?

And when you’re hiring someone, completing an initiative, or celebrating a success, which of these drives your actions most (and most frequently): getting it exactly right (perfection), a good trade-off (pragmatism), developing someone’s genius (developmental), noting and grasping something missed by others (opportunism), potential for trend-setting, fairness (justice), finding a way to win (playing to win), productivity (get stuff done), or fitting in with how things are (collegial)?

I advise eliminating first the answers that you’re sure are not right. Work over the ones that are left. If you end up with a couple of moods and a couple of styles, you have four potential cultures. Do you want to strengthen one of them? Or do you want a new one? If so, what is it? Next time we will look at how to change your all-important coming-to-resolution practice to spur the strengthening or transformation of your organization’s culture.

1 Museum curators are coming the closest to creating celebratory panegyrics that hit home. Here’s our favorite: Cocktails With A Curator. Model celebrations on this.

2 Our fundamental text here is: Heidegger, M. (1971). “The Origin of the Work of Art.” In Poetry, Language, Thought. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Since it’s hard reading, I suggest my professor and then co-author: Dreyfus, H. (2005). “Heidegger’s Ontology of Art.” In H. Dreyfus and M. Wrathall, A Companion to Heidegger. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. For an introduction to the philosophy behind the thought here, see Tao Ruspoli’s wonderful documentary Being in the World available on Amazon.

3 Schein, E. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Cameron, K. & Quinn, R. (2011). Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Connors, R. and Smith, T (2011). Change the culture: Change the Game. New York, NY: Penguin.