Speaker #0Welcome to Ask Dr. Change. I'm Dr. Linda Ackerman-Anderson. I'm happy to have you join me today to explore how to seriously up-level your leadership and consulting to transformational changes, all through Conscious Change Leadership. Welcome. Today I want to talk about a really interesting, subtle topic, the hidden power of underlying cultural dynamics. This topic came to me recently working with a consultant in a client organization and she was reporting a meeting that she had with the change leadership team she was supporting and she said there was a key issue in the project that everyone was dancing around and around and around and she said there's no way we're going to move ahead unless we can deal with this and one of the leaders in the team said. We're too nice to talk about this. And it immediately surfaced in my mind an underlying cultural dynamic of too nice. I'm going to get to that. It's one of several patterns I'd like to talk with you about today. Our ability to see these subtle patterns, you know, culture has personality. There are dynamics, there are patterns, there are ways we operate that we have difficulty naming. but they have huge influence on us, on how we operate, how we make decisions, how we interact, our relationships, and it's all culture. You know, typically when we're doing culture assessment, we have a values-based assessment that delivers a bunch of values, or maybe there are operating practices that are surfaced in cultural assessments. The kind of underlying dynamics I'm talking about aren't necessarily revealed in the classic cultural assessments we're familiar with today. And they have extraordinary power over what it is that we're attempting to do, especially in organizations that are undergoing transformation. Consider a major contrast, just to make the point about this, a fear-based underlying dynamic. People are afraid to tell the truth. They're afraid to take risks. They're afraid to be seen or to be called out. They're afraid to make a mistake. I recall a long time ago being asked to come in doing a presentation on change leadership in a utility in the East. And I walked into headquarters and I found the place where I was met and found the place where I was going to be speaking. And walking through those halls, I could just feel, you know, a sea anemone that suddenly contracts all of its tentacles. That's how it felt to me walking into this place. People didn't look at each other. They didn't interact with each other. They walked down the hall like robots, automatons. And in the meeting itself, everyone was very stern and very contained and controlled. I did the presentation. It went fine. I walked out of there and I said to myself, please don't call me back. I don't want to work in this environment. It was so fear and fear. threat-oriented. Now, compare that to a learning and encouragement culture, where people are encouraged to take risks. They want to innovate in new ways. We're adding new people or young people to major projects to give them experience to develop them. We're encouraging people to actually speak their mind and ask their questions. and feel safe in doing so. Very different experiences in those organizations. How do we define that? How do we describe it? How do we identify it? That's the challenge. I want to give you a whole series of examples that I've experienced, just to name several, and you may recognize some of these in your own experience, or this may prompt you to identify what really are the underlying cultural patterns. in the organizations that you serve. To start with, I want to talk about my initial conversation with the consultants about NICE. I, years ago, worked with a faith-based healthcare system, and we dubbed the pattern, The Price of NICE. And one of the ironies in that situation is, we weren't allowed to talk about the price of NICE. It wasn't nice to talk about the price. So they did an enormous cultural assessment and only wanted the good news. and didn't want to deal with some of the relationship patterns, political patterns. There was some manipulation going on. There was withholding of information going on. And the leaders, because of their spiritual base, because of the way in which they operated, they chose not to deal with those issues. And it definitely inhibited them. In another organization, a utility, I recognized I worked with them for a long time. Sometimes it takes working with an organization for a long time to be able to see or recognize these underlying patterns. In this particular case, there was a senior leader who was troubling, challenging, difficult to work with. And this went on and people recognized interacting with her was challenging. I had great... challenges interacting with her and attempted to surface some of it. The pattern in that organization was they spent at least two years not addressing poor performance. And what did that cost them? Let alone, you know, financially, but how about emotionally and culturally and relationally what it costs them? And to this day, recently, I still Work there at times recently recognized that there are challenging individuals. They won't address them. They won't deal with them. They won't make the hard decisions. The price of nice. So that one has some longevity with my experience. Let's talk about several others. How about the data-driven organization? I worked with one organization that I wanted to assess its a massive transformation, a retail-based organization, massive transformation, and their office of change management was struggling. So they asked me to come in and do an elaborate study of what was happening, what their practices were, what was missing in their change management approach, et cetera. And I spent three months doing that assessment with them. They really wanted a lot of detail. And when I presented it, the answer was, thank you. We just needed the data to prove that we needed to fire the leader of this project. They didn't want to deal with what came out of it. They didn't want to learn anything about it. They did that assessment, big learning for me, by the way, they did that assessment to develop the data they needed to make that decision. So I'm sure it was painful to the individual that was the target of this. It was painful to me to have spent so much time and energy doing that assessment and not having them actually take learning and insight out of what was actually revealed about their change management practices. Data-driven, they just wanted the information. Another example in another major utility, we ran a major transformation. They did a pilot study in two different districts. to demonstrate the power, the influence of two different leadership styles. They were carrying out the same transformational initiatives and projects on how they interfaced with customers and the various ways in which they developed and serviced products and services. And so, however, one leader was very command and control. The other leader was very engaging and optimistic. And so after a couple of months, to me, it was very obvious what was going on. And they instituted a year-long assessment of those two districts to discover, did command and control produce better outcomes, or the empowering, engaging leader produce better outcomes? Well, the answer was obvious and would have been obvious after the first few months of the pilot. They insisted upon a year. to develop the data. And so for me, it was a little exasperating. Fine. They needed to do that to make their decision. They wanted to definitely go with the empowering leader, but data-driven as a cultural dynamic. Here's another one. Keep George or keep Kathy happy. Whoever the individual is that everyone needs to dance around, do whatever they say, Do whatever they need. They say jump, you say how high. Whatever manipulations under the rugs, whatever has to happen to make sure they stay happy. You don't want them mad at you. And so the keep so and so happy syndrome. has a cost, hugely, because we can't address the fact that it creates all kinds of dysfunction. Here's another one I've seen that's really costly. I call it schedule is king. I worked with one utility organization, did training of hundreds of people in conscious change leadership. And what kept surfacing in the trainings was, we can't do this because it'll alter the schedule. Schedule is king. We have to meet the schedule. And I always said, what did you base the schedule on? What data did you have? What insights? What did you actually, how did you formulate this that you are so predetermined to deliver on? And it was such a challenge to me. I actually called the president and said, I'm seeing this dynamic throughout the organization, and I think it's really costly. I want to know what your stance is on schedule is king. obviously, versus successful results, sustainable results. His answer was obvious. He said, of course, I want results. I don't want it to take forever. But no, it's not about meet the schedule or die on trying. So that one, I still see a lot of it. The angst created over not meeting a predetermined schedule. The reality is change will take the time it takes. People need the time they need. to go through the transformations, the behavioral changes, the relationship and cultural changes. So schedule is king as a driver, very costly. Another one that I see a lot of is territoriality. My turf, my people, my budget, don't tinker with my reality, my empire here. And so obviously, there's a lot of politicking, there's a lot of relationship issues, there's a lot of ego at play in the territory, cultural dynamic. And so the challenge there is when the larger organization needs something different, needs to rearrange those people or use that budget differently, or alter how many people report to you and what functions, those changes need to happen. And addressing the my turf, the territoriality is absolutely essential because it will block the organization's ability to make the adjustments it needs to make to move ahead. One other I see a lot of is an underlying dynamic of we're operators, we know how to operate, we've been doing it forever, leave us alone to operate versus strategic thinking versus looking into the future, looking at what may need to happen differently than how we're currently doing things. And so the conflict between the operator mindset and a strategic mindset is a challenging one. And it's not easy to develop strategic thinking in the operator mind. And so that one is challenging and definitely requires mindset transformation, as well as skill building in what it takes to be a strategic thinker above and beyond excellence in operations. So that's another one that has significant impact. So I'm hoping that you can see from these examples that the underlying cultural dynamics are absolutely essential, that we can identify them, find out how they came to be, because that's important. What's holding them in place? How are we colluding with them? And especially based upon the transformations that the organization needs to undergo. How do we go about addressing and altering them? How can we actually, no blame, no shame, put name to them, contain them, and find out how to alter them? So I would ask you from these examples, some of these may fit. I imagine you have other underlying dynamics that if you give yourself and your colleagues permission to name them, you'll come up with some pretty, sometimes hairy dynamics that have direct influence on what it is that you're attempting to do. So a series of questions for you to consider. This really requires some reflection and planning time. What are the cultural underlying dynamics? What impact are they having on the organization's ability to transform, on leadership behavior, on management behavior, on decision making? on course correcting, on development, all kinds of implications of these things. How did they come to be? How did they actually manifest? Was it a past leader that insisted that this is the way it needs to be? Was it just a prolonged period of time where something, the pattern made sense, but it no longer does, given the changing reality we have? So how did it come to be? How could you go about creating the conditions to address these cultural dynamics? Beyond the values-based assessment, beyond the cultural assessment we're accustomed to, to actually get underneath, go deeper, to see what really is driving from the inside out, from a deep mindset and emotional state, what's driving various kinds of behavior in the organization. How could you actually raise the issue so that you can go to work, not individually, but collectively with leadership? to address some of these particular dynamics. I know in one organization, I was again getting prepared for a training and a consultation. And I said to the leader, I want to know your undiscussables. I want to know the red flags. I want to know territory that we, you know, time bombs that we shouldn't step on as we do this program. And so he named a couple of dynamics. And then we went into the program. And what surfaced to me was a dynamic in the leadership team that was kind of astonishing. And I named it. And the leader went white. And at that moment, I realized there are undiscussable undiscussables. It took a bunch of backpedaling. and softening of the particular issue. Everybody saw it and you'll find this. Everybody sees it. They just need permission and safety to address it. So how do you go about doing that? I have encouraged a number of the clients and stories that I've mentioned. We need to deal with this particular dynamic. Sometimes they find a way to, rarely. Usually, they find a way to squirm out of addressing it. These are challenging things, and we need to create safe space to be able to name them, contain them, and find out how to address them. And so I'm encouraging you to reflect on what are the deeper underlying dynamics that are driving the culture, the behavior, the mindset, the decisions, the results, and performance. in the organizations that you serve? How could you go about addressing them? Do you have the courage? It takes courage and bravery to do this work because suddenly we are, you know, naming, addressing the hot potato or whatever you want to call it that people have been dancing around or burdened by for long periods of time. So know that this is a very sensitive topic. but a very important one for us to be able to break free from our history and move into the new reality that we're being confronted with. I hope you'll give this some thought. I hope that you have the conditions that you'll be able to actually address some of this work in your client organizations. And I hope that you'll be successful in doing so. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for spending some time with me today. I hope you gained some valuable insights for your work. Please send me your questions and challenges by going to AskDrChange.com.
