Profiling and Adjusting an Organisation’s Culture (New Insights for Next Generation Organisations’)
Author Dr. Myles Sweeney (Profile)
Culture is cited as the single cause of high change-failure rates (75%, McKinsey), M&A underperformance (48%, Mercer); as well as differentiating financial returns from Bureaucratic Vs Agile systems (300%, Hamel); and similarly, returns from Authoritarian Vs Integrative Leadership (500%, Spain); etc., etc.; and yet it has been the bogeyman of Organizational Science because nobody has defined it scientifically beyond some nebulous concept related to “how we do things around here”, and nobody has designed developmental approach to changing it. It is sad to think that these points capture the state of play whereby 50% of all firms are actually auditing Culture (CIIA) because they see it as critical, even though such approaches are recognised as “lacking depth and richness” (PWC)!
Dynamic Systems Maturity Theory (DSMT) changes all that because it comprehensively achieves the following:
1 Defines Culture as a Habituated Stage along a scientific Maturity Scale;
2 Provides clinical and engaging assessment & diagnosis;
3 Operationalizes targeted change interventions to optimise Traction;
4 Provides normative guidance to develop Culture to the required level;
5 Guides Personnel Selection and HR-Strategy fit; and
6 Inoculates against the DSMT-defined process underlying Cultural/Mindset Degradation in all human systems.
The most comprehensive previous detailing of Cultural types was done by Schwartz, Cameron, etc. However, they simply supply collections of differentiated cultural types without any developmental guidance. However, each single type maps directly to one of DSMT’s maturity Stages, and in order of contribution to success, while DSMT adds some more, making DSMT the leading theory of Culture for all human systems, and all of this is operationalized in the Organisation Capability Maturity Framework (OrgCMF™) applications for Cultural and Organization Development.
Also, DSMT draws on correlation to the multi-level validation of the leading theories, to attest validity for its analysis of the micro equivalent of Culture which is Mindset. DSMT makes it clear that people have natural tendencies to fit with each Stage in congruence with the leading Personality Theory MBTI, so that e.g., the ESFJ person is naturally attracted to the Socio-Emotive Level called the Equilibria Level as are Socialist Macro-systems, which are not Integrative of Growth and Development, Capacity for increased Complexity, etc.
However, Integrative people grow beyond their personal attractor schemas, especially with the aid of DSMT modelling, but the fundamental focus for HRM screening must be to determine Integrative from Disintegrative types, and especially those who have matured to the higher Levels of the model which captures definitively, and in operationalizable manner, what Maslow described loosely within the concept of Self-Actualization.
On Disintegrative types of people, DSMT is very clear – people and systems that habituate in lower levels are potentially degradative for modern organizations, or as DSMT terms it, they are Inversive because if you hire a person of Linear-Inversive Mindset, they will degrade the Agility of the organization to increasingly limiting Bureaucracy and Power-based – rather than Integrative – influence. Clive Boddy has gained credibility with his accounting of Corporate Psychopathy, describing how seemingly-convincing people actually wreck organizations; and now, DSMT brings absolute clarity to the Psychology of this degradation. The opposite to Integrative is Disintegrative and that describes such systems very well, and how – especially when there is uncertainty – these people with Linear and Sociopathic mindset, direct the system straight for the iceberg fuelled by delusions as is clearly evidenced with Brexit, where such leaders sociopathically dismiss warnings of the future from the very Business leaders who drive the Economy, the concurrent exiting of large employers and financial assets, etc.
In a complex world, Agility is strategically important for any organization to some degree, while Inversion is to be avoided at all costs. These mark the critical delineations of Culture, and only DSMT shows the way to sustainable Cultural Development, building at all levels of the system.
-
To gain a greater understanding of Culture Assessment and Changing Culture and an elaboration of the underpinning Organisation Psychology and Theory that underpins the emerging techniques ‘Click Here’