Edgar Schein

If you are to lead a successful cultural change initiative, then you require a basic understanding of change dynamics, including the nature of resistance to change. Without this knowledge, most change projects are doomed from the start. In this topic, you have the opportunity to use a “force-field analysis” to clarify the forces presently maintaining the status quo in your organization. You will understand how you can best decrease these forces and strengthen those that are already working toward the changes you want to achieve.

The objectives for this session are to:

• Specify a cultural change goal.
• Understand what forces are already working towards this change and which are restraining it.
• Decide the next action steps to start the change process.

People often talk about changing their corporate culture and building a “new culture” within their organizations but can you imagine trying to change the culture of the United States or France? Whether your organization’s history is long and stable or short and intense, its culture is complex and deeply ingrained in its people and operations. In order to successfully effect change, corporate culture must be taken seriously. Examining it at all levels uncovers the assumptions that determine the organization’s goals, strategies, and means of action. This knowledge is the stepping stone to promoting change within your organization.

In this session, we explore culture by looking first at the symbols or “artifacts” of culture, then at the claimed or “espoused values” of culture, and finally, probing beneath these layers into the “basic underlying assumptions” of an organization’s culture.

In this topic you will:

• Probe successively more in depth into the three aspects of organizational culture.
• Better understand the culture of your own organization.

Today’s complex work challenges require a new approach to leadership based on a certain adaptive here-and-now humility. Leading with humility involves admitting your dependency on team mates and reports who may be more knowledgeable than you and maintaining this humility when confronted with multifaceted problems.

In order to effectively manage such situations, managers and leaders must go beyond traditional transactional work relationships to more “personized” relationships. (Yes, we really do mean this new word by which we mean that managers and leaders have to get to know their team mates and reports as persons.) This provides the foundation for an environment where employees trust they can speak out about what is really going on. In the face of complex issues, leaders and employees of all levels can then partner to explore “adaptive moves” to more effectively move the organization forward.

In this session you will:

• Understand the importance of going beyond formal work relationships towards more personized, open ones.
• Practice here-and-now humility while jointly exploring each other’s organizational issues.

Honest, transparent discussions about career goals and motives contribute to the ability of organizations to match individual and business aspirations. But this requires that employees have a clear concept of what they are good at, what motivates them, and what they value. This self-image is their “career anchor”.

Working with an awareness of career anchors, managers can increase their team outputs and facilitate an open dialogue with reports on their different skills and needs. When employees feel valued, engaged, and are aligned with strategic business goals, their organizations will better endure and thrive in today’s complex world.

The objectives of this session are to:

• Understand how the different career anchors relate to job situations.
• Determine your personal career anchors and how they match with your current position and tasks.
• Appreciate how this concept can inform the way you work with others.

Helping is not about what you think would be good for the other person and not necessarily the advice that you want to give to them, but figuring out what is really needed and supplying that.

This session invites you to explore the dynamics of helping in order to contribute to a climate of mutual help so your organization can flourish. Today’s work challenges can be complex. Teams are working within a multicultural context sometimes across great distances. Team leaders must rely more on their reports in areas where they lack expertise especially in regards to safety issues. Additionally, as organizations become more socially responsible they will need help from other sectors such as government or the community to better thrive in a newly structured world. This topic guides you through the pitfalls of the helping process.

In this topic we will:

• Nurture a climate of trust in which coworkers feel they can come to you to both offer and receive help.

• Appreciate the roles a helper can play and when each is appropriate.

• Practice an inquiry process to learn how best to help.