By Myles Sweeney BA (Psychol.), MBS (Finance), Ph.D (Business/Economic Psychol.)
New Just Published, New Research, Full Paper “Organizational Culture: Demystified, Modelled and Operationalized for Normative Diagnosis and Development”
"Culture is the collective equivalent of mindset and determines how the collective behave in recognised patterns" Dr. Myles Sweeney
“Culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value” Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., Former CEO of IBM.
DSMT shows that for an organization, the “collective capacity of its people to create value” can be normatively assessed, changed and developed as a function of an organization’s Maturity but not its Culture, because Organizational Culture, which can now be defined as a habituated Stage of Functional Maturity along the DSMT Levels, can only be shifted through development of the Maturity of an organization’s Critical Capabilities along that hierarchy.
This brief paper, which is a synopsis of a scientific paper referenced above, along with some of its explanatory Tables, explains in simple terms the futility of prevailing approaches to changing Organizational Culture, and presents a more valid change process which is through Maturity Levels as normatively modelled by DSMT.
Even though Culture is regularly cited as the primary cause of the high Failure Rates in Change Management, M&As, etc., it has avoided definition, modelling, operationalization, etc., until now. It is loosely defined as “the way we do things around here” so any surveys that offer descriptions of prevailing processes, behaviors, etc., are measuring Culture. The most comprehensive modelling was done by Linan who differentiated 10 Cultures and ordered them as they correlated to increasing GDP, but that’s as good as it gets until now.
DSMT is a science-based, operationalizable, normative model of development for all human systems and activities. As shown in Tables 1 to 3, it comprises of 7 Levels from the lowest Sociopathic form of Immaturity to its highest Regenerative form of Maturity. It encompasses 15 Phases and Linan’s Cultures map onto the habituation patterns for DSMT Phases in correct order.
So, DSMT facilitates the following definition: Culture is the Maturational Phase at which a socio-economic system has habituated.
The insights and opportunities that flow from this new positioning are game-changing. DSMT allows the maturational diagnosis of people, organizations and economies as micro, meso and macro socio-economic systems and prescribes developmental steps from prevailing levels to raise effectiveness, e.g., for increasing Agility, which is newly understood to arise through the 3 higher Levels of Maturity, with its average 300% premium returns relative to Bureaucratic averages associated with Level 4. Conversely, the lowest 2 Levels are shown to average 500% discount to the same Bureaucratic average, and the model not only newly shows the process of Inversion through which organizations degrade to these Levels, but also provides inoculation against such degradation through the newly devised Self-Regenerative process.
The first insight from DSMT is that you are wasting your time in Management and Change Management if you focus on Culture – the real focus has to be on Maturity. For instance, Early Apple (pre-1997) had a Culture that was at the second-highest Level of the Model. However, its Maturity was at the second-lowest Level, because all of the intervening Levels of Maturation were missing, and of them, particularly, it was actually ignoring what the marketplace wanted. Little surprise then that it lost its R&D lead to an organization called Microsoft that had these Levels in spades – especially that first basic Agility Level marked by Dynamic Learning that learned from the marketplace what the customer actually wanted and also responded effectively to that need. It is interesting that Later Apple (post-1997) is again seemingly failing again to mature as it is now reportedly reluctant to move to the ultimate Regenerative-Leadership Phase by e.g., buying growth beyond its own product.
So, famous maxims like “Culture eats Strategy for breakfast” are wide of the mark – it is always Immaturity that undermines Strategy. A leader would survey a company like Apple I and wonder why change would not take hold, but if they knew the real Maturity Level, they would understand, and they would engage Strategic and Change initiatives quite differently.
Until now, diagnostics when describing the activities of an organization have really been diagnosing Culture and acting on a false basis. What is needed as the basis for action is the prevailing Maturity of the organization as revealed in its Critical Capabilities.
DSMT measures the Maturity of Critical Capabilities in an organization, prescribing development from prevailing Levels to whatever Level is required. It is operationalised online by leveraging the Organisation Capability Maturity Framework's (OrgCMF™), Capability Maturity Assessment Tools for Creating Culture Advantage.
To Sum: Actuarial Analyses, Results and Cultural Analysis represent the types of data that are typically used for Change or Developmental Initiatives, but neither offer a route to a developmental process. That is why Failure Rates for Change average 75%. DSMT Maturity is the key to realising the potential of any such intervention because it provides a starting point for Traction and science-based system-wide normative process for Sustainability.
References
Burgelman, R. A. (2004). Strategy as Vector and the Inertia of Coevolutionary Lock-in. In M. J. Tushman and Anderson, P. (Eds.), Managing Strategic Innovation and Change: A collection of readings. Oxford. pp. 577-604.
Liñán, F. and Fernandez-Serranno, J. (2014). National Culture, Entrepreneurship and Economic Development: Different Patterns across the European Union. Small Business Economics, 42, (4), 685-701. doi:10.1007/s11187-013-9520-x
Sweeney, M. (2020). Organizational Culture: Demystified, Modelled and Operationalized for Normative Diagnosis and Development through Dynamic Systems Maturity Theory (DSMT). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Myles_Sweeney.
Sweeney, M. (2020 peer-reviewed book in preparation for publication). Dynamic Systems Maturity Theory and Organization Development.