Culture : The social system of an organisation

“Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with a passion”– Brian Chesky, Co-Founder, CEO, Airbnb

General

The performance of a leader depends on their ability to get other people to commit to and deliver their common goals. But as those who have spent time in large organizations will tell you, getting people to align their efforts is a lot like herding cats. You may be putting in a whole lot of energy and resources into it, but unless you have the skills, they will do what they damn well please.

The first step that any leader needs to take (on entry into the organisation) is to understand 'the social system' that exists. Unless they take time to undertake this cardinal step, it would be almost impossible to get a handle on the subject of managing and changing how people work together to meet evolving business requirements.

The Social System

Every organisation, whether it is a WhatsApp Group, a Residential Welfare Association, a shop, a school, a Governmental Department or a business entity (whether a two man and a dog establishment or a multi national enterprise) - has a social system. This system is born out of how people come together to do their work.

As they meet, there is a constant struggle of influencing each other to get what they want. They share information, make their necessary trade-offs and decisions. How they work together creates energy-gains or energy-drains and determines whether they deliver on the commitments they make to each other.

Managing the social system has two parts which you, as a leader need to do:-

Part 1. To determine what critical decisions and trade-offs must get made, by whom, to accomplish your business goals. Then you use that insight to design disciplined, routine, regularly scheduled mechanisms-to bring the right people together at the right frequency with the right information to make those decisions.

Part 2. To actively shape the behaviors that are displayed in making those decisions. In the course of those interactions, people may be hoarding information, going off on tangents, and not getting to the core of the issues. They may also be driving individual agendas, hiding conflicts, and failing to reach clear resolutions. You have to shape the content of these discussions and ensure that the right behaviors are taking place in them and the output links to results.

In short, you have to actively design and lead the social system of your business, which comprises all of the operating mechanisms, the connections among them and what happens in them.

Glitches in the System

A well oiled and smoothly functioning system enables a business to execute ambitious strategies to enter new markets, gain market share, or improve profits. But as I work with organizations all over the world, I find (consistently) that the social system in most businesses are out of sync with what they want to accomplish.

Business results can fall short for a variety of reasons— because the positioning is incorrect, the goals are unrealistic, or the business is hit by something unanticipated in the external environment.

However, a leader will always investigate the social system to see if it is the source of the problem and take specific steps to fix it. Because that is the tool they have to provide momentum to the business.

Change : the litmus test for a leader

All too often when trying to initiate change, people fall back on changing the organizational structure, replacing key people, and altering what is measured and rewarded. While these steps may be necessary, it's putting the cart before the horse.

Take a look at your business through the lens of the social system. Look at the interaction among people, the information flows, and the anatomy of decision making. Can you map your operating mechanisms, ensure that each of them is geared around a business result, and diagnose how each of them is actually working?

If new ones are required or existing ones are obsolete, it's your job to change them. And if the people are not having the right discussions in them or behaving in the right way, it's your job to correct those behaviors, using persuasion, power, and rewards, whether money, recognition, or promotion, depending on what drives anything.

That's how the social system changes-through conscious actions in designing and redesigning the operating mechanisms and conducting the dialogue in a way that shapes people's behaviors.

And as you do this repetitively, with discipline, you change the quality and substance of business decisions, and because the behaviors that get shaped in the operating mechanisms carry over to people's everyday work, you sustain a change in how people work together. With this, you accomplish the elusive goal of culture change and develop the ability to deliver on commitments and achieve business results.

Conflict

In any business, conflict is built in as functional silos, departments, and individuals compete for resources and for their point of view.

Whenever a business is repositioned or priorities change, you have to think about where the conflicts might erupt to block progress and perhaps create operating mechanisms to get them resolved. Unresolved conflicts are a drag on decision making and action, because people withhold their commitment when they don't think their ideas have been vetted.

As a leader, you have to build into the design and leadership of the social system the means to draw conflicts to the surface and resolve them.

The true test of leadership skill is how the person is molding people's thinking to see the bigger picture beyond their narrow self-interest and to ensure intellectual honesty in the decision-making process.

Conclusion

Culture of any organisation, when seen as a social system is a breakthrough in how to operationalize a change in culture and link it to the change in positioning.

And we know that linking positioning and the working of the organization is paramount for success.

As you rebuild the social system in your organisation, you need to make judgments on people. How do you select them? How do you get them into the right jobs, jobs where they contribute and also develop their abilities to lead? Most people think judging people comes from gut reactions.

My observation is that it is a very developable skill.