Organizational cultures should, depending on their
mission, have an organizational culture that reconciles professionalism and
pragmatism with inspiration. This means that purpose, system and
economic results must be developed without suppressing the qualitative and
human-social side, rather the contrary. Business success is more sustainable if it
is produced by people who can realize not only their well-being, but also their personal growth. Both aspects must
not only be reconciled, but integrated. This dynamic balance should be reflected
in all structures, decisions, actions, evaluations, etc. Truly a difficult exercise. This is especially difficult because
employees, including management, have a personality that in most cases focusses
predominantly on one of both aspects: pragmatism (facts and results) and
emotional welfare.
People differ, and especially in the area of content vs
relationship; goals vs people. It is an aspect of personality that for
many is an expression of one-sided giftedness, because specific competences
match this personal preference. But it also determines expectations and
needs, judgments about what is good and what is not. Strongly relationship-oriented people find
it hard to fit in a very pragmatic DO- culture where goals, speed and
measurement are central. Business-oriented people, in turn, will often find an
overly soft culture with a lot of communication, relatedness, attention for
emotions and experience a non-productive and frustrating environment to work in.
Finding the right balance to optimally support the
mission often means that the dominance of one side must be supplemented with
sufficient emphasis on the other angle. In practice, cultures are often determined
by one of the two accents, depending on the history of the organization, and
certainly also on the type of leadership they have had in the past. Changing the existing culture to a more
balance one is an intensive process, and it differs depending on the direction. It will take a completely different
dynamic to complement a relationship culture with more pragmatism than to make the reverse movement.
If pragmatism should be supplemented with more attention to the human aspect, we are working on an aspect that is often felt as a need by the staff. Due to the one-sided approach from management,
one has usually experienced the weaker focus on the human dimension as a serious lack. The great resistance then often comes from
the doubt whether it is genuine, especially from the management. Secondly, there is also a strong sense of unfamiliarity
with making all those issues discussable that were previously ignored. This unfamiliarity has to do with mutual
trust: one does not want to be experienced as a 'softie' if more explicit
attention is paid to the human side. And won't others abuse the fact that I am
vulnerable? Example behavior will be crucial for overcoming both
resistances. Both management and pioneers play a crucial role in
this. Making agreements is certainly part of that; introduce new rules and protect the first implementer
against criticism, so that their example is copied. A small minority will probably continue to
have difficulties with the 'soft' side, but over time their number will become insignificantly
small and without much impact on the core processes in the organization.
In the reverse cultural movement there is usually a
different type of resistance. Allowing people-oriented employees to pay
attention to goals, systems, speed, budgets, resources, etc. often appears to
them as an undesirable evolution. One should indeed take on the view of the management position to see the
need for it, look at daily practice from some distance and use the future as a
reference. In strongly people-oriented cultures, this is almost by definition
experienced as strange or even
threatening. Looking ahead and incorporating practical matters into
decisions and priorities indeed requires distance (to a certain extent) from
what people expect, like or think is important. It is indeed only one aspect of
the operation, in addition to sustainability, limitations, possibilities and
business arguments. It requires taking responsibility for that other
dimension, one for which they naturally have no affinity for it, and have often
left, with pleasure, to those in charge, for whatever reason. Personality
(emotional needs) usually has a big impact on this preference.
Neurologically it also means a very different movement. Taking responsibility for the end result, all
aspects, including the human aspect, requires strong pre-frontal cortex
activity.(2) This also implies that one's own needs and
emotions are subordinated to a goal. Self-knowledge and in general maturity
will play a role here. A one-sided focus on human relationships is at the
level of social consciousness, where coordination between two or more people is
central, often at the expense of the other (practical) dimensions. Either people are good at that, depending
on their one-sided giftedness, or they are handicapped in that area, possibly
due to damage to their personality, which then leads to persistent one-sided
business. (3)
So in both movements, a minority will always find it
difficult to integrate the additional dimension into the work. The majority of people involved is faced
with a very different assignment: to catch up on something that is felt to be
necessary, or to take on something that often goes against an emotionally felt
priority. Striving for more autonomous teams means, in the first
case, a strong focus on rules and respecting them, drawn by examples that increase
trust. In the second case, imparting business sense, it is
more about embracing systems, numbers, goals, responsibilities, against the
natural tendency. To accomplish this, there is definitely a need to pay attention to the outside world and to results, and to establish an urgency from benchmarking (comparing with
other similar teams or organizations), evaluation from the audience, feedback
from clients ... so that one sets goals, evaluates them and takes action to adjust the
results.
The influence of emotions on behavior cannot be
underestimated. The positive effects in terms of motivation and
connection often go hand in hand with limitations in purpose and
self-management. Patience and support will have to fuel the learning
process in both cases, but especially for the introduction of more pragmatism.
Hugo Der Kinderen (January 2018)
(1) Many thanks to Lenette Schuijt for this wonderful term. (Lenette Schuijt , De kracht
van bezieling, Lannoo , Tielt, 1999
(2) See the detailed analysis of this by
Daniel Kahneman , Thinking fast and slow, Penguin Books, 2012
(3) Based on insights on ‘black pedagogy’
(Alice Miller) summarized in the work of Jean Van der Biest, http://www.waaromtoch.be/
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