A635.3.3.RB – 50 Reasons Not to Change the Tribes We Lead

What defines success or failure of today’s organization is the effectiveness and efficiency of the overall behavior of an organization.  To be globally positioned with a competitive edge, it is imperative that organizations embrace change to meet the needs of their customers and stakeholders and retain highly skilled employees.  The organization’s leadership has an empirical need to identify a new set of desired behaviors and develop a strategic plan that collectively leads to organizational behavior that is effective and efficient to achieve its stated goals and improved organizational performance. 

Whatever the new final set of desired behaviors are, top management has to decide to proceed with implementation of the identified needed set of behaviors, develop the plan on how it has to be achieved and provide resources for the change initiative.  Supervisors lead and facilitate the employee's  performance of desired behaviors that will result in improved effectiveness and efficiency in overall organizational behavior.  It is critical that management seeks feedback from their employees about the plan to assess if the plan needs modification to improve the organization’s ability to behave in the new set of desired behaviors.

Canfield (2011) wrote that it is of business or organizational imperative for a company to be competitive and fruitful in the local and global market.  He further stated that for us to compete, we have to improve; to improve, we have to change; and to change, we have to seize our old practices that are not meaningful anymore and we have to start doing new things that are meaningful.  To be competitive locally and globally, organizational leaders must develop and harness an innovative culture and empower change.

The typical human reaction to change is resistance.  I have heard excuses from other leaders that I have worked with in the Human Resources world is that the change is contrary to the company policy or the organization is not ready for such change.  The worst excuse that I had used when a need for additional FTE, new technological software or new computer arises was that we do not have the budget to cover the cost rather than reviewing our current budget and make adjustments or prepare a budget proposal for the following fiscal year.  Another excuse that I have heard from one of our management team when we try to implement new processes or procedures was that we have tried that before and it did not work. 

According to Brown (2011), the objective of change is increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization and even to the extent of ensuring the organization’s survival.  Kotter (1947) stated that the number one error many organizations make on the stage of organizational change is allowing too much complacency.  When organizations like Bethune-Cookman University plunge ahead in implementing organizational change without establishing a high enough sense of urgency in fellow managers and employees, this type of error is fatal when complacency levels are high, and transformations will always fail to achieve the organization’s goals and objectives.  Highly skilled and smart leaders like the NASA management team, fail to create sufficient urgency at the beginning of organizational change or transformation due to various interrelated reasons.  They overestimate how much they can force over expanded changes.  They overestimate the hardship that individuals experience to be driven out of their comfort zones, and they lack the patience and are paralyzed by the downside possibilities of reducing the levels of complacency. 

Kotter (1947) further indicated that one of the error that organizations like NASA make is neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the agency culture.  Change only sticks when the implemented change gradually passes into the very bloodstream of the work unit and the body of the organization.   According to Kotter, two factors anchor new approaches in organizational culture.  One is the conscious attempt to show individuals in an organization how specific behaviors and attitudes assist in improving work performance.  Second is sufficient timeline that needs to be taken by leadership to ensure that the next generation of management actually personifies the new approach of change.  Criteria for promotions need to be re-shaped because one wrong succession decision can make transformations fail and can undermine a decade of hard work.

“Culture is that complex whole which includes, knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and other capabilities and habits acquired by a man as a member of society." ~ Sir Edward B. Taylor (1871). 

I am not one hundred percent in agreement with Seth Godin’s concept of change being driven by the tribe.  It has always been noted that culture and society are closely related.  A tribe is a group of individuals who are leading and connecting people and ideas, while society is defined as a “group of people involved in persistent interpersonal relationships, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Society) 

The question here is do people have the power and right to change the culture without having to belong to a tribe, and my response is yes.  Culture determines what we know, what we don’t know, and what we want to be.  It is like a stream flowing down from one generation to another where each generation contributes something to said stream, but for every generation, some generation were either left behind or drops to the bottom and is lost to society.  That said, although culture makes us who we are, we, humans also make culture. We periodically make changes to our culture, where culture guides us through life and where we remake and modify it to tailor our needs and passion.

            It is human nature that we constantly make changes to our culture including our ethical behaviors.  Many people face moral dilemmas to disprove the existence of moral absolutes such as agreeing that lying is wrong but only in most situations but not all.  I believe that moral dilemmas are an isolated representation circumstances where we must choose the greater good when one or more absolutes impact the result of a given situation. 

            Our behavior, the way we live and the way we respond when people treat us, judgments we make when other people are mistreated are the things that reveal what we actually believe about right and wrong.  For example mutilation of women, human trafficking, and slavery.  In general, every sensible human being should agree that such action is wrong, but this is not to say that something is wrong only because everyone agrees it is wrong.  It might be logically possible that we are mistaken, and it is just our cultural conditioning that tells us such abominable and offensive actions are wrong.  Or is it most likely that our deepest intuitions about these matters could be mistaken?  Which would only mean that slavery is not really wrong; we only “think” it is.  On second thought, if our basic intuition is wrong if it is barely the result of cultural conditions, could there be a possibility that our other fundamental beliefs and intuitions, i.e., belief in cultural conditioning are also the result of this same conditioning process?

Culture is very critical to the survival of human race. It impacts our very existence! People retain a highly progressive brain which allows us to communicate symbolically, to learn quickly, and to innovate.  We sometimes lack instincts or if otherwise, they do exist they are not fluently apparent.  It is our culture that empowers us to survive.  Culture deliver answers to fundamental problems or issues, i.e., finding food, clothing, and shelter.  Culture provides admonishment or guidance for our daily living, and social organization is keeping us from annihilating each other.

Every generation has to learn from the culture of its society, or it will demise.  All the fundamental institutions of society such as the economy, education, recreations, religion, and politics represent the needs that society must meet.  Variety of means in addressing these requirements is handed down from one generation to the next.  They represent our culture where what we lack in physical character and strengths, we make up for in our competency to communicate and learn culture from one generation to the next.

References:

Brown, D.R. (2011). An experiential approach to organization development (8^th ed.). Upper

Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Canfield, J. and Smith, G. (2011). Imagine: Ideation skills for improvement and

innovation today. Blake Lake Press.

Kotter P, John (1947). Leading Change, With a New Preface by the Author. Harvard Business

Review Press, Boston, Massachusetts.