Understanding and Leading Corporate Change… It's Just Human Nature!

My early training was as a cultural anthropologist and it still amazes me that few people really understand the degree to which our basic human nature impacts on most of our very modern behaviour and thinking. As leaders and managers, if we want to understand how to change people, couldn't we benefit from the insights generated by over 100 years of anthropological research - insights into how our unavoidably human nature helps or hinders organisational and individual change efforts.

Anthropology, the study of humanity, has developed an impressive range of unique, practical knowledge about how people organise themselves to get things done. However, anthropology’s reputation for researching the exotic, even the esoteric, often stands in the way of bringing these discoveries to the attention of the business world.

Photo: Anthropologist, Margaret Mead, conducting fieldwork in the exotics!

This is why, through my own research and the filter of personally working for over 20 years in international business, I have identified some highly practical anthropological tools for effecting fundamental individual and cultural change. These ‘rules of thumb’ originate in the Cultural Theory (CT) of anthropologist Mary Douglas, first proposed in her 1970 anthropological classic Natural Symbols.

Photo: Mary Douglas’ fieldwork was done in Africa

For over 30 years, Mary and her disciples conducted comprehensive, applied research to demonstrate how the complex dynamics of human organization can be reduced to four basic building blocks. In a given situation, we react either as hierarchists, individualists, egalitarians or fatalists. In another situation we may choose to act differently e.g. we often adopt a different mindset to organizing to get things done at home versus at work. But the value systems behind how we think people should organize remain explicably constant across similar situations. As an example, think about the different possible solutions our four types might draw upon when facing a problem at work, or in voting about solutions to a major social problem like climate change:

1. The hierarchists' solution: We need more rules... and more power to create and enforce rules! For example, in order to save the environment, we need more regulation to make sure people don't waste resources and that companies don't pollute. If we can be made to adhere to the rules, and maybe throw in a bit of rationing and targeted taxation when needed, all will be well with the planet.
2. The individualist's solution: We need more freedom to use rational choice. Getting back to the environment, there really isn't a problem that can't be solved by a bit of human ingenuity. Technology will save the day, and nature will bounce back. It always has before... hasn't it?
3. The egalitarian's solution: We need greater solidarity... community! Hey, we could even save the planet if we all consume less and downshift. We need to share the existing resources and leave enough for future generations. Let's not be greedy, guys.
4. The fatalist's solution: Well. There is nothing we can do. Just keep your head done and try to survive by following the rules. The planet is doomed anyway.

Except for the fatalists, I would say these are valid solutions - well, at least to their adherents way of thinking. They represent four different rationalities (see diagram below), but you will find it hard to get individualists to accept an egalitarian's solution, just more bureaucratic rules can be slow death to the egalitarian or the individualist. Changing our default mindset is tough (just talk to a neo-liberal economist to experience an individualist on steroids) - and this is why changing organisations is so difficult. 

So what are the grid and group variables (for those who want to know a little theory)? Basically, they refer to two types of group control. Group refers to how tightly our behaviour (and values and beliefs) are constrained by identification with a particular social entity, like a work team, a sports team, a tribe or even a cult. Grid refers to how much of our sociability is bound by rules… the grid. It is easier to demonstrate how the organizational characteristics of any group is formed by these two types of control in a a very management theory friendly Boston Box developed by Mary Douglas and her school called the ‘grid-group heuristic’.

Organizations like the military, big corporates, the Catholic church and sports teams promote values around unitary cultures where individuals are encouraged to identify with the ‘team’ (a high group dimension). At the same time, the behaviour of individual members is highly structured by many rules and often bureaucratic decision-making (the grid!). The political values encouraged by such group are inherently conservative.

Egalitarian organisations - like communal groups, political activists and even cults - are also high on the group dimension as they usually demand that members subscribe heavily to the core values and beliefs of the group. However, different from a bureaucracy, they often have few rules to govern the group. They are low grid. In the extreme, anarchy rules OK for those of the homo sapiens species with an egalitarian mindset!

Individualists! We know them only too well. Low grid and low group, they have ‘weak ties’ to organisations (until they build their own) and hate the constraints of the rules (which is why entrepreneurs are often replaced by professional managers at the helm of their own organisations). Politically, and usually economically, they are often our neoliberals and at the extreme of our 2X2, they fall into the libertarian camp. Examples could be pioneers, entrepreneurs, and most students who do not fall readily into an anarchistic mindset. 

This leaves just one more group - the Fatalists - who in theory should not survive in management circles. In practice, they often do manage to keep their head down during organization reshuffles and mainly keep their jobs! Like individualists, they do not really identify with the group, and are low on the group dimension. Unlike the individualists, they are heavily constrained by following the rules (high grid), which is why they can often fly under the radar in a bureaucracy. Politically, you won’t find them voting unless they have to.  

Basically, for any particular change situation, we make decisions and take actions based on these four largely mutually exclusive shared value and belief blocks. These mini-systems form the four individual mindsets about how things get done and and how organisations can be changed. Despite top management attempts to create unitary corporate cultures, large scale organisations are comprised of sub-cultures based around these mindsets. Hey, what about the divide between accounting (those control geeks!) and the sales team (talk about ‘individualists’). Or didn't our egalitarian software development team called them the ‘egoists’! You know what I mean...

But how much easier it is to manage people, or manage group change, when you only need to understand the dynamics around these four components.  

I am happy to help you better understand these organisational and individual change dynamics. Please contact me if I can help you plan how to lead your next organizational change more effectively, or just look catch up with some of my blog articles on a Cultural Theory of Change from my Alpine Views Blog.

Richard Francis

Transnational change agent

Alpine Views Blogger