We've featured the value of virtual teams in the past. Once seen as the poorer cousing to real teams, as technologies adapt, companies become more diverse and cultures merge, we see the real value that can be derived from virtual team. This article from HBR blog network, gives a great overview of how to do virtual teams well.
via blogs.hbr.org
We have just completed a two-parter on personality types (Myers Briggs and the Four Temperaments, and as if to complement that, Forbes have just published this article on the five personalities of innovators.
The Forbes Insights study surveyed more than 1,200 executives in Europe across a range of topics and themes. Using a series of questions about their attitudes, beliefs, priorities and behaviors, coupled with a look at the external forces that can either foster – or desiccate – an innovative environment, a picture emerged of five key personality types the play a role in the innovation cycle.
Are you a:
Movers & Shakers;
Controllers;
Star Pupil;
Experimenter;
Or a
Hanger on?
Read More here: via www.forbes.com
About us
Agents2change works with some of the world's largest companies on change and implementation issues. We regularly use personality frameworks for leadership, team and organisational development. If you’d like to know more contact us at: feedback@agents2change.com
In our previous blog we explored the four temperaments, perhaps one of the oldest personality type models on the planet. But to this, we now add a good all-rounder that has proved a helpful framework in which to consider why you work the way you do.
No psychometric model predicts behaviour, but they can go a long way to explaining the motives behind our actions. The Myers Briggs model is particularly robust, since it has been developed through over 60 years of research and has shown a high degree of reliability.
Where does the model come from?
The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was developed by Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers Briggs, building on the work of Carl Jung. It was Jung that first coined the Psychological Types in 1921, and his work was taken up by Katherine Brigg and her daughter post World War II to develop into a model of psychological preferences.
Jung based his original theory on observations of many hundreds of patients and colleagues, whom he found displayed distinct differences in how they responded to the demands of everyday life and arrived at decisions.
What are the Types?
The MBTI is based on four opposing pairs, or dichotomies, that are related to how we interact with the world around us and arrive at our own decisions.
A questionnaire helps to define the preferences for each individual, which are always at the heart of our psychological make-up, but may not be immediately obvious to us, as we have learnt to adapt and change our responses based on work and life experiences.
The MBTI model helps to explain why some people :
How can you use MBTI?
The framework like all self-assessment tools helps to raise your awareness of how you work and think and how this may impact on your work with others. The Type indicators can also be informative when thinking of your career and life choices, by helping you to better understand the work roles and organisational settings that will suit you.
For teams and organisations, it provides a common framework and language from which to explore the many differences in how team members, managers and leaders operate and can lead to a better understanding of the benefits of a diverse workforce.
About us
Agents2change works with some of the world's largest companies on change and implementation issues. We regularly use MBTI as a developmental framework for leadership, team and organisational development. If you’d like to know more contact us at: feedback@agents2change.com
Earlier this week we talked about challenges at the Leading edge of change. But what about at the other end of the spectrum? It’s a salutary reminder of the unrelenting pace of change, when you hear that Eastman Kodak have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It is a mighty fall from grace, given the near monopoly status that Kodak held in the world of photography for over 125 years. Yet it is also a stark reminder of the dramatic changes that our digital based economy has wrought.
Kodak was once viewed amongst the world’s most innovative companies, providing innovation not only in the camera but also in the development and print field of photography. Yet in the last 30 years it has gradually slipped further and further from the mainstream, as smaller more agile competitors, better able to respond to the rising tide of digital technology started to take its place, alongside that of the multi-media smartphone.
Management arrogance is one of the accusations for its demise. Yet perhaps its biggest failing was not realizing that the moment to change had arrived and passed it by; quietly and swiflty. It is one of life’s truisms that the moment to change, is just when everything seems to be going swimmingly. It is at the point of our greatest successes when we have to consider its demise and therefore the need to innovate and change.
The Danger of resting on one’s laurels
Whilst Kodak fades to black, we can see a similar struggle occurring with Research in Motion's (RIMs) Blackberry. Once the smartphone of choice for Executives around the world, it has become more and more obscured by the rise of Apple products and the demand for tablet-based technologies.
Blackberry like Kodak is accused of failing to read the market conditions and consumer choices. Being unclear where its core market base lies – ‘are we the smartphone for executives, or the consumer product for young people?’. This fuzzy marketing focus has led to inconsistent R&D (such as the disastrous launch of the Storm and Playbook and the lack of a single OS platform for software development).
Fuzzy leadership and poor engagement are also cited for Blackberry's demise. As we fully embed ourselves in the digital age, companies that fail to provide a figurehead to tell their story, or those that don't engage their customers through the infinite options of social media are at risk of being ignored, overlooked and eventually shunned completely by their once loyal customers.
Engagement & responsive-ness, the new watchwords
How can you ensure that you are listening to and engaging your customers as you develop your products and services?
About us
Agents2change works with some of the world's largest companies on change and implementation issues. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this blog, innovation or change in general. Share your comments here or email us on feedback@agents2change.com
As Facebook readies itself for floatation, the debate centres around what leadership is required to take it forward and whether Mark Zuckerburg is the right person for the job. At the heart of the issues are concerns about how much power and influence he will have to veto shareholders post IPA. But are they valid and does history suggest that they are right to be concerned?
Why does the Founder CEO make us so nervous?
We have in this blog looked at other founder CEO’s and the impact that they can have on an organisation. The love/hate relationship that emerges because of founders controlling and some might say over-bearing influence often causes frictions with shareholders, who are not used to playing second fiddle to a CEO.
The front-runners in the category are obvious: Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and Bill Gates. It’s also interesting to note that a recent study by Wharton Business School, concluded that founder CEOs outperformed professional CEOs. Their decisions tended to be longer-term, linked to a deeper understanding of core products and strategy; and less influenced by the whims and demands of shareholders.
But there is the other equally tricky aspects of the founder CEO. As can be seen in the biographies of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others; the archetype founder CEO often takes on a maverick role in how they run their organisation, and this is what makes investors and analysts most nervous about the Facebook floatation.
An unswerving focus on the future
But what Founder CEO’s particularly in the technology field have proven again and again, is that there vision is beyond our grasp until it comes to fruition. Apple were about to go down the ‘me too’ PC strategy until Steve Jobs returned in 1997 and took the radically different step of complete vertical integration. A model that was seen as totally outdated at that time (Amstrad anyone?).
Zuckerburg has also shown such courage, fighting off many law suits and rejecting many lucrative offers in Facebook’s history. But he has also show an awareness of the need to bring in operators, who will spend time thinking about strategy and core operations, such as the appointment of Sheryl Sandberg.
As Facebook moves closer to becoming a founder-led public company many will feel ambivilant about whether the leader that brought Facebook to here, is the one that will lead it on to profitability in the future. A profitability that is still relatively untested and in its infancy.
Certainly some of the pitfalls of the Founder CEO, are the tendency toward the Maverick. A tendency to view one’s own opinion as superior and an intolerance to dissent. But we have seen how even these poorly viewed leadership practices have brought out the best in some organisation’s performance, so we wait to see how well Facebook lives up to its early promise under Zuckerburg’s control.
In this mini-series, we have looked at the challenges of managing across a diverse range of geographic and cultural boundaries. We have taken a look at the theories on national culture and organisational culture. In this, our final instalment, we explain our approach to developing a cultural map in organisations.
The major growth strategy for multi-nationals has been heavily reliant on Mergers & Acquisitions in recent years. These have often been in key markets and geographic locations; for example there has been significant increase in Eastern Europe and South and Central America. This brings access to new and growing markets for companies who have plateaued in their home countries, but it also brings cultural challenges in how best to integrate and align these target companies into the established corporate culture.
The reason that integration and value creation is so difficult in the post-merger organisation is multi-fold. Many reports and research papers conclude that the reasons for poor results are often down to poorly targeted acquisitions, unclear goals, unrealistic valuation of the target company and more often than not, an incompatible company culture.
However culture is not an indefinable or unchangeable concept. On the contrary, it can be defined, measured and with concerted effort, changed. To do that, requires accurate diagnosis and practical ideas on how to address cultural needs.
Our View of Culture
Over the years, the Agents2change team have been brought in to address many issues around performance, improvement and integration in some of the world’s biggest companies. Our combined expertise spans over 90 years of organisational change and understanding the key levers towards integration. Indeed our founder, Mary McGuire has undertaken extensive research in the area of multi-cultural management at Masters level and is linked with a number of business schools.
We apply our knowledge and understanding of the most influential models and theorists on culture (from Hofstede to Schein) and have developed our own unique Cultural mapping model. We take the view that there are certain cultural ‘flags’ that allow us to interpret, measure and intervene in culture to achieve integration.
A central premise of our model, is the view that integration must come from a shared understanding of the direction and goals of the organisation. This is impacted by a number of areas, including how motivated people feel, how equipped they are to do their job (knowledge) and whether they believe this is a company that they want to be associated with (commitment).
Building A Cultural Map
We have developed an exclusive internet survey that allows for the collation of data from small or large populations. The survey takes only 15 minutes to complete and has the advantage of being customisable for an organisation’s own requirements. Using sophisticated survey design, which allows for a mixture of response types, the questionnaire is intuitive to use and eminently user-friendly, as reflected in the very good completion rates we typically achieve.
What we deliver is understandable management reports, split by function or country and giving a thorough analysis and explanation of what the data is saying. We also supply recommendations, based on our experience of what makes change stick and how to make it happen in geographically spread organisations.
Cultural mapping can be done for any size of organisation to suit any budget. We can do a small review for a team of 20 staff, or provide a global review covering several thousand staff in multiple languages. Our approach is completely flexible and designed around your needs. If you feel you could benefit from this service, contact Mary McGuire: mary@agents2change.com, for a confidential, no obligation discussion.
What experiences have you had with cross cultural conflicts? Does this model help explain the reasons for those conflicts? Please share your thoughts or experiences on cross cultural management here, or email us if you would like to find out more about our work in this area at feedback@agents2change.com
In this mini-series, we are looking at the challenges of managing across a diverse range of geographic and cultural boundaries. We have already looked at the key writers on National Culture. Today we turn to organisational culture theory.
Probably one of the most extensive writers of recent years is Edgar Schein of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MiT) who has over the years provided much insight into the complexities of understanding and managing cultures within organisations. He introduced the concept of Culture as an iceberg, in that those things that are observable on the surface are but a small percentage of the issues that are occurring underneath the surface.
Schein describes culture as multi-layered. At the visible layer we see artifacts and symbols that represent culture, which in turn come from beliefs and attitudes. These all stem from basic assumptions that are deep-rooted and often held at the sub-conscious level. We don’t often think about how culture is expressed in organisations, and yet its influence is everywhere. From the organisational structures, to the brand identity to the communications and visual art observable within the office. It all speaks to the values and underlying assumptions of what this culture represents. Apple and Google are probably the best proponents of culture as a tangible asset to be encouraged and encompassed by all employees. Other headquarters such as banking and insurance, exude power and status messages to maintain status quo. One sector is about game-changing and the other is about the old order. Both are valid, just different.
Schein went on to describe Three Cultures that arise in distinct occupational communities. The Executive culture is about hierarchy and control. The Engineering culture is concerned with design and process. The Operators culture is concerned with the hands-on day-job, whether that be manufacturing or service based.
When we look at how global companies today are often a made up of many legacy companies that have come together through acquisitions, each with their own distinct history and culture, this therefore poses some challenges for the post-merger integration efforts.
What we at Agents2Change have found useful is some a cultural mapping exercise to help explain the key differences that occur across organisations. We will look at this in more detail in our next and final instalment in this Culture series.
What experiences have you had with cross cultural conflicts? Does this model help explain the reasons for those conflicts? Please share your thoughts or experiences on cross cultural management here, or email us if you would like to find out more about our work in this area at feedback@agents2change.com
In this mini-series, we are looking at the challenges of managing across a diverse range of geographic and cultural boundaries. We have already presented the findings of Hofstede, Trompenaar & GLOBE. Today we are looking at the last of the National Cultural theorist, Edward Hall.
In his book ‘Beyond Culture’ Hall took an anthropological approach to considering cultural differences. In his book he looks at the various ways that societies deal with conflict, justice, truth and relationships. He considers cultural differences from the perspective of how much meaning is interpreted through the context of the situation or how much relies on explicit messaging. He introduces the concept of two main types of culture. High Context – those which have meaning embedded in the fabric of life – through symbolism, rituals and relationships leading to short-hand or understated communication. Low Context, by contrast, is more rule-bound, concerned with regulations and expectations, leading to explicit forms of communication. See examples (below):
Hall’s model offers us insights into why some cultures spend more time codifying human behaviour and rules (Germany, America) and those that spend more time on relationships (Southern Europe). We then see these differences manifest themselves through the way we, for example, develop statutes, run justice systems, appoint leaders etc.
Another significant observation from Hall is relationship to Time. Monochromic and Polychromic societies display differences in how they respond to and use time. Monochromic being those groups that take time as a finite resource, where punctuality is expected – ‘time is money’. Polychromic groups view time as a flexible resource that can be juggled around the needs and priorities of relationships and tasks at hand. We can easily imagine how business leaders from one group, negotiating and working with a leader from the other dimension, might well lead to frustration and conflict, merely because their approach to tasks and punctuality might vary. Hall’s booked helped to highlight these difference and what might be the basis to them.
Hall’s insights and models were developed from an anthropological perspective. This means that his lens was both US based, but also concerned with human behaviour and rituals in the context of their unique evolution. It was not developed with the business world in mind, unlike the other models, but it does provide a useful frame of reference in which to consider the manifestation of conflict and tensions across different national cultures.
What experiences have you had with cross cultural conflicts? Does this model help explain the reasons for those conflicts? Please share your thoughts or experiences on cross cultural management here, or email us if you would like to find out more about our work in this area at feedback@agents2change.com
In this mini-series, we are looking at the challenges of managing across a diverse range of geographic and cultural boundaries.
We have already presented the findings of Hofstede and today we look at Fons Trompenaar & tomorrow we will review GLOBE, both very influential and insightful studies into Culture.
Fons Trompenaars, who over 15 years and with 50,000 managers across the world has developed a model to describe cultural differences. Often authored with Hampden-Turner whom together wrote their seminal work ‘Riding the Waves of Culture; in 1997, he built a model around three key principles illustrated in below:
From this they developed a series of scenario based questions to test out how individuals react in these three areas, which led to 7 pairs of dichotomies described as dimensions, outlined in Figure 5 below:
At first glance, Trompenaars can be seen to make the picture of culture even more complex, when added to the picture that already emerges from Hofstede. However on closer inspection, what we see is a re-framing of many areas that Hofstede termed slight differently. For example what Hofstede terms High and Low power distance can map on to the Achievement ‘v’ Ascription scale here. Similarly the Individualism and Collectivism scale from Hofstede has similar themes with Trompenaars. Where they differ, is perhaps more attention in Trompenaars model to time (sequential ‘v’ Synchronic) and environment (Inner directed ‘v’ outer-directed), although even this, one could argue has some synergies with the masculine /feminism scale from Hofstede.
Trompenaars, like Hofstede has had his critics. His research which looked more at behaviour responses to scenarios to test out his concepts. Based on a US model of relationship or task-based management, it is exclusively testing out management behaviour. Hofstede (1996) questions the reliability of the data “A serious shortcoming of Trompenaars’ data bank which no professional analysis can correct is its evident lack of content validity”(P.197). Others question the cultural biases and base assumptions ( Minko (2011 p.48) & St Claire-Ostwald (2007)).
However, even with these shortcomings, Trompenaars research helps us to consider culture both in the context of the organisation and the individual and attempts to link it to management behaviour. Even a rudimentary audit of a global company, using Trompenaars framework would be insightful in identifying the cause of some of the differences and conflicts that might be present.
Please share your thoughts or experiences on cross cultural management here, or email us if you would like to find out more about our work in this area at feedback@agents2change.com
References
Hofstede G (1996) A serious shortcoming of Trompenaars’ data bank which no professional analysis can correct is its evident lack of content validity International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 20.(2) 189-198.
Minko M, (2011) Cultural Differences in a Globalizing World , Bingley, Emerald Publishing
St Claire-Ostwald B (2007) Carrying Cultural Baggage: the contribution of socio-cultural anthropology to cross-cultural coaching, International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring 5(2), 45-52
Trompenaars F and Hampden-Turner C (1997)Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business, NB Publishing
Hofstede is seen as one of the key writers and proponents of cultural theory, through his research in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s and to which he has continued to add. His research was based on employees within one organisation – IBM and covered over 116,000 responses, 72 national subsidiaries and 20 language, taking the data at two points in time over a four year period. When first published, over 20 years ago, it was one of the most extensive pieces of research in the area of culture and lead to some critical thinking of what characteristics are observable in different national cultures.
The central premise to Hofstede’s work is that Culture and cultural identity are learned attributes developed over time and he coined the process ‘mental programming’.
We can see how culture is ever-changing, in the ways that values and priorities change from one generation to another. For example, we can see if we look back at key decades in UK society, that values changed from: Being frugal and economical in the 1940’s (key themes: ‘War’ and ‘Rations’); being hard-working and strong family values in the 1950’s (key themes: Post-war Industrial growth); being expressive and freedom of speech in the 1960’s (key themes: Feminism, Free Love, Student Revolts); being politically aware and experiencing hardships in the 1970’s (Increased political unrest, widespread strikes and large scale unemployment). Thus we can say that culture is at the same time traditional yet ever changing. The shifts in cultural values are harder to view in the day-to-day, but evident when looked at through a longer lens.
This brings some interesting challenges to modern day multi-nationals, as it means that cultural identity and values needs to be understood and observed to a point, but that people are open to and willing to change their values and priorities if it makes sense for them to do so.
Culture can feel like an intangible and hard to grasp concept, yet it is both general – i.e. definable at a national or continental level; but also specific – i.e. definable at an organisational, team and even family level. And for each of these situations a new set of norms might be applied.
Hofstede originally defined four dimensions of culture as a way of mapping and explaining differences in national cultures. If we look at how European countries map out on these dimensions, we see some interesting patterns:
Each dimensions looks at a different aspect of human interactions:
1. Power Distance: Defining and prioritizing power in their environments – e.g.. how much are hierarchies respected and maintained
2. Uncertainty Avoidance: How important is it to know what is coming next and how much effort is invested into avoiding uncertainty
3. Individualism ‘v’ Collectivisim: What is more important – to be known and respected as an individual or to be part of and respected as part of a community (or group effort)
4. Masculine ‘v’ Feminine: “Masculinity pertains to societies in which social gender roles are clearly distinct and focused on material success; femininity pertains to societies in which social gender roles overlaps (i.e. both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender and concerned with quality of life)” (Hofstede P.82)
To these original dimensions, a fifth was added – Long Term’v’ Short Term Orientation.
The dimensions give us a frame of reference in which to consider and view culture, and it does allow us to perhaps explain differences that emerge across different countries, even in one geographic regions such as Europe. However Hofstede was at pains to point out that the purpose of his cultural landscape was not to allow us to fall in to the trap of stereotyping countries and national cultures. Far from it, Hofstede believed that by having a frame of reference, we could free ourselves up from our own cultural bias, to look at cultures with a more objective lens.
There are a number of issues with Hofstede’s study methods and conclusions, which remind us of the need to treat it critically. The first is that the data is focused around the respondents in one organisation – IBM. Whilst an organisation of sufficient size (well over 120,000 employees at the time of the research) to provide a statistically significant sample, but that does not mean it is representative on a national level.
Blodgett et al (2008) after examining Hofstede’s model conclude that “Hofstede’s cultural instrument lacks sufficient validity when applied at the individual unit of analysis”. McSweeney B (2002) goes further to systematically deconstruct and debunk his theories stating that “The scale problem of Hofstede’s research is radially compounded by the narrowness of the population surveyed” and that Hofstede oversimplified the importance of organisational culture as a component and a relevant factor when matching samples across countries. Yet despite this criticism, I think that St Claire-Ostwald (2007) offers wise words when she states “To reject totally Hofstede’s or similar functionalist models of national culture, before more satisfactory models have been developed, would be to throw away valuable insight.”
Hofstede’s model still has influence on our current thinking of Culture and its interpretation. One can see his influence in other important models, such as those of Trompenaars and GLOBE, which will be covered in the next section of this series.
Culture is ever-present and all-pervasive and however much we want to imagine that business as usual can continue without it, it cannot. However by becoming more aware of it, is the first step in managing its consequences.
Please share your thoughts or experiences on cross cultural management here, or email us if you would like to find out more about our work in this area at feedback@agents2change.com
Further Reading:
Blodgett J, Bakir A & Rose G (2008) A Test of the Validity of Hofstede’s Cultural Framework, Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 35)
Hofstede G (1994) Cultures and Organizations: Intercultural cooperation and its importance for survival; Software of the Mind, London: HarperCollins
McSweeney, B. (2000). Hofstede's model of national cultural differences and their consequences: A triumph of faith – a failure of analysis. Human Relations, 55(1), 89-118.
St Claire-Ostwald B (2007) Carrying Cultural Baggage: the contribution of socio-cultural anthropology to cross-cultural coaching, International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring 5(2), 45-52
Recent Comments