Today as I walked to my office (passing palm trees, blue skies, flowing fountains--somebody pinch me; I can't believe Arizona is so awesome) my thoughts turned to resistance to organizational change in the corporate setting. Clearly there is a lot of thought that has gone into this topic because we have change management experts out there, so I'm sure my ideas won't be anything new. However, I don't time to do background research on the area so I'll jot down some quick thoughts.
Jim Collins in his book Good to Great talked about a flywheel concept, which is a lot like the idea of a train. It is the idea that something that weighs a whole lot moves very slowly in the beginning, and then someday it is a juggernaut of force and nobody can believe the inertia that it has. This perspective applied to business describes many businesses that seem to grow very slowly, but one day are huge and unstoppable. One of the key ideas is that there were not abrupt changes in what the businesses did as they reached their crescendo. In contrast, businesses which have a lot of momentum can lose it when they make changes.
One thing that jumps out to me is how the element of culture is relevant to maintianing a momentum building business. The other day I spoke about Steve Jobs and John Sculley. Could it be that although Steve Jobs was initially characterized as a tyrant, his business had become so culturally attuned to functioning that way that it could not function otherwise?
Culture seems to get ingrained in people wherever they work. I have found that AT&T people in Utah are characterized by high ethics. They take that with them wherever they go. I have found that people involved with Computer Associates (CA) are frequently dishonest, regardless of the level of management that they are found at. I have found that people at Arthur Anderson were stiff and rigid in their thinking about problems. I found that people at Ernst & Young were more adaptive in thinking about the same problems. I have found that people from Cerner are brash.
One question that comes to mind is how these cultural inculcations affect leaders--or even employes--from one organization as it relates to their succeeding in another. I once heard it said that there was a rule on the street that you should never hire a person out of IBM until they had failed at their first job outside of IBM. The idea being that although they were highly capable, they generally unable to succeed culturally at other organizations as they left IBM with a preconceived notion about how things work in the world. With some self reflection and self awareness caused by failure, however, they became better positioned to share their skills in future endeavors (without failing or destroying the company that they went to).
Culture in the corporate world is a hard habit to break. My father worked at a building materials super store called YardBird. YardBird competed with Home Depot. They built their whole ethos around being whatever Home Depot was not. If Home Depot didn't let their people move from their stations to help others, YardBird would let people go everywhere in the store to help a customer and stay with them as long as needed. If HomeDepot didn't help people out to their cars, YardBird would go out of its way to do so. If HomeDepot ignored a strained looked on a customer's face, YardBird would commit to look for unhappiness in any customer and resolve to do whatever it took to help them. As a result of decades of cummulative cultural habits, YardBird statistically dominated HomeDepot in the markets in which they competed in Northern California. When the owner of YardBird fell sick, however, they sold out to Home Depot. Initially, YardBird employees were told by HomeDepot management that they wanted to learn the special sauce that YardBird had created whcih made them much more effective than HomeDepot. But when the rubber hit the road, lower level managers were unable and unwilling to assimilate anything from former YardBird employees. The same behaviors that helped YardBird succeed against HomeDepot were discouraged at HomeDepot, and ultimately the ideas being YardBird were lost as their former employees left HomeDeport or gave up.
I believe that even when unhealthy habits are promoted within a culture, it is difficult to set that business on the idealized track even when a new boss comes in. If Microsoft or Apple do things in their culture that become proven through research to be inefficient or even destructive, it may be difficult to change directions. I'm not saying that little things can't be changed, but I am saying that major overhauls of culture could be nearly impossible in most businesses. Take Google for example. Like YardBird was the anti-HomeDepot, they seem to be the anti-Microsoft. Imagine if a boss came in and they took away the free lunches because that wasn't efficient. Imagine if they took away the 20% of time to work on personal projects because that wasn't efficient. Imagine if strict schedules were enforced because that is what worked somewhere else. Imagine if working with the government and handing over data about customers was insisted upon. I think that what would happen is that there would be a major loss of inertia as people either left or lost their ability to function effectively in the new environment.
In a future post I'll diagram how this concept impacts businesses.
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