OtherWise Bill Schneider - Why Good Management Ideas Fail - Understanding Your Corporate Culture
OtherWise Bill Schneider - Why Good Management Ideas Fail - Understanding Your Corporate Culture
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Editor's Note: If you're at all interested in organizational change, whether it's to fix a specific problem or thrive
in perpetual motion, here is something that should actually help you. Full of insight and wisdom, Bill's
perspectives and tools have that ring of common sense, and the beauty of simplicity. He recognizes that
companies may in fact have many cultures, but in effective organizations these subcultures are aligned and
supportive of a central core culture. Here he shares a framework of four types of core cultures characterized as
control, competency, collaborative, and cultivative. The four cultures are delineated by a horizontal and a vertical
axis. The vertical axis reflects what a culture pays attention to - the content - and ranges from what-is to what-
might-be. The horizontal axis reflects how a culture makes decisions and forms judgments - the process - and
ranges from impersonal-analysis to personal/interpersonal-involvement. He argues that reengineering works
when the underlying principles of new management practices are extracted and then translated into concepts
compatible with the underlying culture - and that they generally fail otherwise.
The following story is true. XYZ company is a multi-billion dollar manufacturer of products that are very
powerful, potentially harmful, and very expensive. When a customer utilizes these products they must work the
first time. There is no margin for error.
XYZ company is organized in a highly structured manner. People within the company operate with strict policies
and procedures. Planning, engineering design and strict implementation are critical to success. Leadership and
management are quite authoritative, directive, and systematic. The nature of work is strongly functional in nature.
Decision-making is very methodical, objective, data-based, and careful. Issues of certainty, predictability,
systematism, and safety pervade most of what happens every day. It is imperative that this organization stay in
control.
In 1987 an internal Organizational Development department was established to help increase organizational
effectiveness. The number of staff in this department grew to ten professionals plus a Director-level manager.
During the next eight years this internal group and numerous external consultants enlisted by this group brought
in a series of new management ideas that they believed critically important for this company to adopt. These
internal and external professionals insisted that the existing culture present within this client organization was
ineffective, outdated, outmoded, harmful to people, and anachronistic. This was the "old way" of leading and
managing, they said. They insisted that the following management ideas were the proper and more effective way
for this company to go:
By the end of 1996, all of these professionals had been asked to leave. None of the external consultants were still
involved with the company. The company had spent $30 million on the above interventions. The only initiatives
from this list that have been accepted and adopted by this company are statistical process control and
manufacturing-requirements planning systems. Both of these remaining initiatives were embedded in a much
larger Total Quality Management (TQM) program that was initiated during the years 1990-1992. The company
did its best to adopt all of these "better" management ideas, but by far the majority of them didn’t work.
Senior and middle management in this company have reached consensus on one thing: they will never allow
something like this to occur again. All of those internal and external consultants were good-willed, bright and
highly capable professionals. They did everything they could to make a significant contribution. Company
executives and personnel did everything they could to make all these interventions work. Why did this happen?
What went wrong?
Why do some management ideas take root and remain viable while others wither and die? Our research indicates
four fundamental reasons, listed in their order of importance. These four reasons are:
Organizations are "communities of people with a mission" (Putman, 1990), not machines. They have machine-
like characteristics, but these must serve the needs of the community and not vice versa (de Geus 1997).
Organizations exist to fulfill their mission and to contribute to the larger world around them, including their
marketplace. They do not exist just for shareholders. They exist for the communities they serve, the society within
which they are embedded, their employees, their customers, and their shareholders. They exist for all of these
stakeholders, all together, all the time. Profits are important because they allow the organization to survive,
reinvest, and grow. They are analogous to air and water. They are necessary for survival and growth, but they are
not the purpose or the mission of the organization. "Good management means doing the decent thing by both
workers and consumers, not just amassing profits for bosses. ‘An organization is a human, a social, indeed a
moral phenomenon,’ [Peter] Drucker notes, in a phrase that today’s reengineers ought to be forced to learn.
Drucker has argued that the best managers are driven by the desire to create value for customers, and that the best
way to do this is to treat workers not just as costs of production, but as resources, capable of making a sustained
and valued contribution" (Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 1996, p.78).
There is a natural hierarchy of living systems. The basic nature of a living social organism is naturally more
fundamental, deeper in the hierarchy, and therefore much more powerful than business work processes, financial
systems, business strategy, vision, supply chains, information technology, lean manufacturing, marketing plans,
team behavior, corporate governance, Wall Street’s investor reports, and so on. All of these phenomena are
important. But they are less fundamentally important than the basic nature of organizations as living social
organisms. This critically important reality must be where any intervention starts. When this occurs, the
intervention has a chance of working. When this does not occur, the probability of failure is high. It may look like
an intervention is working in the short term, but what is usually happening is the living system is yielding short-
term financial cost savings which start creeping back over the intermediate and long term. This is most evident in
the example of ‘surgical’ interventions, such as reengineering, de-layering, and downsizing. There are times when
‘surgery’ is necessary; but ‘surgery’ is not the solution all the time, with every organization, everywhere. Yet,
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quite a few recent management thinkers would lead one to believe that ‘surgery’ is the only treatment that will
work for all organizations.
All living systems, including organizations, grow and develop from the inside out. They start from their core and
grow and evolve over time from that core. They operate for a purpose. That purpose is always greater than the
self-interests of the organism itself. People, organizations, communities, societies exist in relationship with one
another. Each establishes its own unique pattern. Self-sufficiency is a myth. All living organisms operate in a non-
linear manner, in a core and periphery manner. That core is central to any one living system’s nature.
Organizations follow the same laws of natural living systems that all other kinds of living systems follow (e.g.,
sub-atomic cells; biological systems; ecological systems; societal systems; inter-planetary systems; etc.).
One central reason that management ideas work or don’t work has to do with whether or not they are based on
non-linear, natural paradigms. The more an idea operates from the paradigm of organization as machine the
greater the likelihood that the management idea will not work. The more machine-like the idea, the more the
living system will take the hit and, as soon as possible, start the process of reconstituting itself, just the way the
human body operates when it has been damaged or injured. Indeed, all the evidence is that system-attack,
machine-paradigm-based, interventions (i.e., reengineering, downsizing) do not last. Every time, the living
system reconstitutes itself, heals itself. The organization’s "immune system" begins developing ways to neutralize
its "attackers."
Conversely, the more a management idea builds on the nature and strengths of a particular living social organism
and honors the integrity of that organism, the greater the likelihood that the idea will be adopted and integrated
into the fabric of that organism.
For any consulting organization to claim that they are in the "organizational transformation" business is
unrealistic and bordering on grandiose. All any one, inside or outside the organization, can do is identify the
nature, integrity, beauty, identity, and strengths of an organization and do their best to develop, refine, and work to
make things more efficient and effective. Living systems are dynamic. Change is the constant. Like the human
body, the solar system or microscopic cells, the organization is already in its own unique process of patterned
change and development. Whether a particular management idea works or not is related to the extent to which
that idea takes this constant process of patterned change into account.
Determining where an organization has been, where it is currently, and where it is primarily poised to go next is
critically important before any "change" is attempted. Indeed, what organizational consultants can do is help their
client organization discover its own unique patterns and processes - and then work to influence it in a manner that
helps the organization to help itself function more efficiently and effectively.
The pattern of dynamic relationships at the organization level is culture, which explains why organizational
culture is so powerful. So powerful, in fact, that its impact supersedes all other factors when it comes to
organizational economic performance (Kotter & Heskett, 1992). When examining the research of Collins and
Porras (1994), it is strikingly evident that organizational culture lies at the center of what differentiates
"visionary" companies from comparison companies (and significantly greater economic performance over the
long-term).
Culture, "how we do things around here in order to succeed" (Schneider, 1994, 1997), is an organization’s way,
identity, pattern of dynamic relationships, "reality". It has everything to do with implementation and how success
is actually achieved. No management idea, no matter how good, will work in practice (implementation) if it does
not fit the culture. An organization can have the most superb strategy, but if its culture is not aligned with and
promotive of that strategy, the strategy will either stall or fail. Culture establishes and underpins order, structure,
membership criteria, conditions for judging effective performance, communication patterns, expectations and
priorities, the nature of reward and punishment, the nature and use of power, decision making practices, and
management practices.
While no one organization has a pure culture throughout, every successful organization has a core culture. The
core culture is central to the functioning of the organization, forming the nuclear core for how that organization
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operates in order to succeed. It is critical that this core or lead culture is aligned with the organization’s strategy
and core leadership practices. This alignment is, in our research, central to any organization’s effectiveness.
Without it, focus is lost and energy wasted, as people, systems and processes work at cross-purposes with one
another. See Collins and Porras (1994) for independent and confirming research.
Our research indicates that there are four core cultures: control, collaboration, competence and cultivation.
Leaders create one of these four core cultures, consciously and/or unconsciously, from their own personal history,
nature, socialization experiences, and perception of what it takes to succeed in their marketplace. Each of the four
core cultures emerges from the following social organization archetypes:
There is a strong connection between strategy, culture, and leadership. The fundamental connections are shown in
Figure 1. The four ‘epistemologies’ that correspond to each of the four core cultures are also listed. By
‘epistemology’ I mean the primary or central way that each core culture knows and understands. This notion of
epistemology for each core culture is particularly important for any kind of intervention or practice. The more that
an intervention adapts to the epistemology appropriate to the core culture in question, the more probable that
intervention will take hold and significantly impact the organization.
Control: This culture is all about certainty. It fundamentally exists to ensure certainty, predictability,
safety, accuracy, and dependability. Organizational systematism means that the fundamental issue in a
control culture is to preserve, grow, and ensure the well-being and success of the organization per se. The
organization as a system comes first. Accordingly, the design and framework for information and
knowledge in the control culture is built essentially around the goals of the organization, and the extent to
which those goals are met. This culture is centered on organizational goal attainment.
Collaboration: This culture is all about synergy. It fundamentally exists to ensure unity, close connection
with the customer, intense dedication to the customer. Experiential knowing means that the fundamental
issue in a collaboration culture is the connection between people’s experience and reality. The
organization moves ahead through the diverse collective experience of people from inside and outside the
organization. Collaboration culture people know something when diverse collective experience has been
fully utilized. This culture is centered on unique customer goal attainment.
Competence: This culture is all about distinction. It fundamentally exists to ensure the accomplishment of
unparalleled, unmatched products or services. This is the culture of uniqueness per se, of one-of-a-kind
products or services. Conceptual systematism means that the fundamental issue in a competence culture is
the realization of conceptual goals, particularly superior, distinctive conceptual goals. The framework for
information and knowledge is built essentially around the conceptual system goals of the organization and
the extent to which those goals are met. This culture is centered on conceptual goal attainment.
Cultivation: This culture is all about enrichment. It fundamentally exists to ensure the fullest growth of
the customer, fulfillment of the customer’s potential, the raising up of the customer. This culture is all
about the further realization of ideals, values, and higher order purposes. Evaluational knowing means
that the fundamental issue in the cultivation culture is the connection between the values and ideals of the
organization and the extent to which those values and ideals are being operationalized. The key emphasis
in this culture is the connection between what is espoused and what is put into operation. This culture is
focused on value-centered goal attainment.
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o Incremental, step-by-step, customer o Integrator
relationship o Trust builder
The vertical axis considers what an organization pays primary attention to, or the content of the culture. The
horizontal axis considers how an organization primarily makes decisions or forms judgements, or the process of
the culture. The content axis is bounded by actuality and possibility; the process axis is bounded by impersonal
and personal. Please see Table 1.
Collaboration and control are actuality cultures; cultivation and competence are possibility cultures. Collaboration
and cultivation are personal cultures; and control and competence are impersonal cultures. Each core culture is a
unique blend of one content element and one process element. Control is an actuality-impersonal culture;
competence is a possibility-impersonal culture; cultivation is a possibility-personal culture; and collaboration is
an actuality-personal culture.
At the most basic level, every organization focuses either on what is actual or what is possible. Actuality has to do
with what is; possibility has to do with what might be. The content of an actuality culture has to do with concrete,
tangible reality; facts; what has occurred in the past and is occurring in the present; actual experience and actual
occurrence; practicality; utility; what can be seen, heard, touched, weighed or measured. The content of a
possibility culture has to do with insights; imagined alternatives; what might occur in the future; ideals; beliefs;
aspirations; inspirations; novelty; innovations; creative options; theoretical concepts or frameworks; underlying
meanings or relationships.
The other basic dimension that underlies organizational culture is how the organization forms judgements. Every
organization emphasizes either impersonal analysis or personal/interpersonal involvement. Impersonal analysis
entails the use of detached reasoning. Personal and interpersonal involvement entails the use of people actively
judging, deciding, and acting.
The process of an impersonal culture is: detached, system, policy, and procedure oriented; formula oriented;
scientific; objective; principle and law oriented; formal; emotionless; prescriptive. The process of a personal
culture is people driven; organic; evolutionary; dynamic; participative; subjective; informal; open-ended;
important-to-people oriented; emotional.
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These two dimensions are critical when working with each of these four core cultures. An intervention will work
much more effectively if the content and process of the organization’s culture are carefully taken into account
before and during implementation.
Diagonally opposite cultures on the grid (i.e., control and cultivation; collaboration and competence) are
diametrically opposite cultures from one another. Trying to adopt the management ideas from one culture into the
opposite diagonal culture is almost guaranteed to fail. Trying to adopt the management ideas from an adjacent
culture has at best a fifty-percent chance of working.
This framework for understanding and measuring organizational culture is a kind of unified field theory for this
critically important organizational phenomenon. It gives us a way of understanding and a paradigm from which
we can interpret why any management idea works or doesn’t work in any one organization. If the management
idea fits the nature of the organizational culture it will most likely work. If not, it will most likely fail.
The two essential areas of core culture that must be prioritized and understood before undertaking any
intervention are the epistemology of the core culture and the content and process of the core culture. Culture is
deeper in the hierarchy of natural living social systems and usually should be given first priority before any
intervention is attempted. Culture is not just another variable to consider, among many. Remember that culture is
any one living social system’s pattern of dynamic relationships. Or, put another way, culture is any one living
social system’s fundamental reality. Consultants and managers ignore culture at their own risk and wasted
expense.
The second reason, then, that management ideas succeed or fail has to do with the extent to which consultants and
managers honor the power of organizational culture and whether or not they practice any management idea in a
manner congruent with the organization’s core culture.
By far the majority of management ideas heralded at one time or another during the past 40 years can be shown to
be a natural fit with one (at times, two) of the four core cultures discussed above. And, the majority of them can
be shown to not fit the other core cultures. Please see Figure 3. Most of the management ideas listed below were
taken from Harvard Business Review’s recent supplement (September-October 1997). This writer added a few.
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Component-centered ideas that do not fit the core culture of the organization in question only pull the
organization off center. In the intermediate, and certainly the long, term they just fade away or run out of energy
and commitment from others. Unfortunately, they also waste time, energy, and money and leave employees
confused and often less respectful of management.
An important distinction here is the distinction between practices and principles. The principles of many
component-focused interventions are usually valuable for any one organization and core culture to consider. The
practices of that component-centered intervention are a different matter. For example, take "empowerment."
Empowerment is a component-centered idea that will work (in practice) most naturally in a cultivation culture.
Empowerment is, in many ways, what the cultivation culture is all about. But, the practice of empowerment
programs will not work in a control culture, which is premised upon the exact opposite epistemology and content
and process of the cultivation culture. But, the principles embedded in empowerment are relevant to the control
culture. All one has to do is to simply ask "what does ‘empowerment’ mean in a control culture?’ The answer is to
actively get input about implementation matters and to actively encourage employees to come up with as many
ideas as they can when it comes to implementing things more efficiently and effectively. This same line of
reasoning can be applied to each of the four core cultures regarding many of the management ideas listed in
Figure 3.
Any intervention must fit the system, the core culture, the nature of the living system. If it does not, the chances
of it beneficially impacting that system are 50-50 at best. "After all, it is much easier to sell a medicine with a
label saying ‘This will cure you, no matter what your complaint,’ than it is to sell one with a label saying ‘This
treatment may or may not succeed, depending upon your circumstances. It is likely to be painful and could well
have unintended side effects’" (Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 1996. P. 41).
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When it comes to adding value to an organization the decider is strategy, not consultant’s or manager’s personal
theories about "the right way" to lead, manage, operate, produce, or win. Unless and until any management idea
can be clearly linked to the strategy of the organization in question it needs to be viewed with skepticism at the
very least. If the clear link between the idea and the organization’s strategy cannot be made, the idea is very likely
more tied to what the purveyor of the idea can do or to the personal value and belief system of the purveyor and
nothing more. Implementing such an idea runs great risk of pulling the client organization off center in order to
accomplish the purpose(s) of the consultant or the manager, not the purpose (strategy) of the organization being
impacted.
Alignment between strategy, culture and leadership is critical. It is, indeed, the central definition of organizational
effectiveness (Goll & Sambharya, 1995; Barney, 1986; Lorsch, 1986; Schwartz & Davis, 1981; Shrivastava,
1985). Effective and long-term financially successful organizations are focused and aligned. They establish clear
ideologies, strong and clear cultures, and methods for selecting and developing people that encourage people to
work in concert with the strategy and leadership of the organization (Collins and Porras, 1994). When Collins and
Porras synthesized their results regarding visionary companies they concluded that the most distinguishing feature
of the visionary companies was that they constantly emphasized alignment.
Once an organization’s strategy is established, then the appropriate core culture and set of core leadership
practices are already preordained. The mission or strategy of the organization sets the stage for what that
organization is all about. There is an aligned core culture and set of core leadership practices for every singular
strategy. The key is to measurably link the three together and to, then, pinpoint where the organization needs to be
more aligned.
Summary Implications
Management ideas designed to improve organizational effectiveness will succeed the more they:
Start with, and honor, the premise that organizations are living social organisms.
Identify, adapt to, work with, and align with the organization’s core culture.
Are designed on the front end from a system-focused perspective and implemented in a manner congruent
with that design.
Are clearly tied to the organization’s strategy.
Additional implications:
Identifying and building on an organization’s strengths is an important and constant emphasis to take.
Any intervention must be customized to the unique organizational nature and business.
Organizational effectiveness is fundamentally a matter of alignment between strategy, culture and
leadership.
The relationship between strategy, culture and leadership is synergistic and non-linear. All three must be
kept in mind, all the time.
All organizations have core or lead cultures and sub-cultures. The key is that the sub-cultures must
function in service to the core or lead culture.
References
Barney, J.B. "Organizational culture: Can it be a source of sustained competitive advantage?" Academy of Management Review, 1986,
11: 656-665.
Capra, F., The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. New York: Anchor Books. 1996
Collins, J.C. & Porras, J.I., Built To Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. 1994
Conger, J.A. & Associates, Spirit at Work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, Inc. 1994
Covey, S.R., Principle-Centered Leadership. New York: Fireside. 1992
Covey, S.R., The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc. 1989
DePree, M., Leadership is an Art. New York: Dell Publishing. 1989
Grove, A.S., High Output Management. New York: Vintage Books. 1995
Kotter, J.P. & Heskett, J.L., Corporate Culture and Performance. New York: The Free Press, Inc. 1992
De Geus, A., The Living Company. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. 1997
Donnithorne, L.R., The West Point Way of Leadership. New York: Currency/Doubleday. 1993
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Goll, I. & Sambharya, R.B. "Corporate Ideology, diversification and firm performance." Organization Studies, Winter 1995, v. 16, n. 5,
823-847.
Lorsch, J.W. "Managing culture: The invisible barrier to strategic change." California Management Review, 1986, 28/2: 95-109
Micklethwait, J. & Wooldridge, A., The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus. New York: Times Books. 1996
Oakley, E. & Krug, D., Enlightened Leadership. Denver, CO: StoneTree Publishing. 1991
Peters, T.J. and Waterman, R.H., Jr.. In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies. New York: Harper & Row
Publishers, Inc. 1982
Putman, A.O., "Organizations." Advances in Descriptive Psychology, 1990, v.5, 11-46.
Schneider, W.E., The Reengineering Alternative: A Plan for Making Your Current Culture Work. Burr Ridge, IL: Irwin Professional
Publishing, Inc. 1994
Schneider, W.E., "Aligning strategy, culture and leadership." In Neumann, J.E.; Kellner, K.; & Dawson-Shepherd, A. (Eds.), Developing
Organisational Consultancy. London: Routledge. 1997
Schwartz, H. & Davis, S. "Matching corporate culture and business strategy." Organizational Dynamics, 1981, 9(Summer): 30-48
Shrivastava, P. "Integrating strategy formulation with organizational culture." Journal of Business Strategy, 1985, 5/3: 103-111
Sibbet, D. and the Staff of HBR., 75 Years of Management Ideas and Practice 1922-1997: A Supplement to the Harvard Business Review.
Harvard Business Review, September-October 1997
Treacy, M & Wiersema, F., The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. 1995
Wheatley, M.J. & Dellner-Rogers, M., A Simpler Way. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. 1996
Would you like to offer some thoughts or add to the dialog? Responses of general interest may
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========= Reply =========================
From: [email protected] (Billy Gannon), Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999
Subject: Guest Speaker: Why Good Management Ideas Fail
Very useful essay, that highlights the importance of people in business. Afterall, that is what business is about.....
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We have also developed and validated two additional instruments: "Strategic Focus Indicator" (SFI) which
measure core value proposition and "Leadership Practices Indicator" (LPI) which measures core leadership
practice. All other attempts to measure "culture" that I know of are really measurements of organizational
effectiveness, not culture. Bill Schneider
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