🤛🏼 💈 📓 Red corporate culture is the main problem of Russian business. (Part 4) 💩 🙏🏾 🎦

for an optimal understanding of this article, it is better to start acquaintance with Part 1 here

Animal to human movement

In the scientific community, there is a biosocial hypothesis of the origin of culture - the biosocial theory of cultural genesis, which consists in the fact that a person is primarily a part of nature and lives according to certain biological laws, and culture is a purely human way of adapting to the environment. A person creates a certain system of values, traditions and symbols, where the social follows from the biological.

This theory explains the individual tension associated with the upward movement of the spiral dynamics ladder - the lower the culture level, the more “natural” the person’s behavior closer to our animal principle and any upward movement in this sense is a complication that requires effort.

On an individual level, you can accept high levels of culture organically, if your personal cultural level is high, that is, formed independently by virtue of upbringing, the influence of the environment and those around you.

If your personal level of culture is “red,” then to become a “leader of the future” you will first have to work on yourself, and how to do this is probably a topic in itself for a separate large article.

Moreover, even if a person is accustomed to behaving according to the rules of a “green” culture, at times of fatigue, irritation, and in a critical situation, he very quickly slides into “red” simply because it is the least energy-consuming mode.

On the ladder of spiral dynamics after the “red” culture follows the “blue” culture of rules. And this is no accident - it is precisely the clearly formulated, shared and supported by society rules that are a way to keep a person from sliding into a natural, primitive state. The rules, values and tools that support them create a culture of behavior in the organization, and therefore directly affect its effectiveness.

In this article we will talk about the evolution of rules, and we will also tell you exactly which rules will allow your organization to achieve a high "green" level of efficiency, on what principles they should be based, what tools should be used for this, and which methodology will allow you to not just copy the ones mentioned in This article approaches and tools, but also through the prism of values to understand their essence, and to be able to adapt them to your unique business context and create your own tools and business solutions.

The goal is a flexible, self-developing organization.

The best way to understand "What exactly is to be done?" - This is a movement from the formation of a goal and future vision to the development of a strategy and the decomposition of this strategy into tools and tasks.

As a vision and goal, I propose the following wording: “Building an effective, motivated and involved, responsive to changes, team self-organized around ideal processes on the principles of continuous improvement.”

This wording seems to me optimal from the point of view of the current state of Russian business and is, on the minimum necessary foundation for the transition to "organizations of the future", where the goal of you and your employees (colleagues) will not be financial success, but exclusively self-realization and serving high ideals or any other goals you want to achieve. Any attempts to jump from the “red” level immediately to a brighter future, failing to achieve the stage of efficiency and, accordingly, financial success, according to my observations, result in the worst form of cultural schizophrenia.

On an individual level, this is a leader who acts by “red” methods, but considers himself “green” or, God forbid, “turquoise”.

At the organization level, this is a “company that has declared itself“ green ”,“ turquoise ”, Agile-transformed, etc., but continues to be managed by“ red ”methods.
We have already mentioned such a psychological phenomenon as psychoprotection. Often it is called a “crown” or “pink glasses”. A situation where the human psyche, having experienced discomfort when confronted with reality, begins to form a “pseudo-reality” where the problem does not exist, is either successfully resolved, or is not significant enough to draw attention to it and, even more so, deal with it. We have already mentioned alcoholics who justify their dependence in articles on the benefits of alcohol, but I think you yourself can give numerous examples of such self-fooling "to save" your own psyche. Both at the level of one person and at the level of organization, the mechanism is simple - reality strikes self-esteem, hurts the Ego painfully, but there is not enough strength and determination to change reality, and then illusions come to the rescue.

The tragedy here is that because of the belief in such illusions, this person or organization deprives himself of even the hypothetical opportunity to solve his problems and change his position in reality for the better. The second part of the problem is that reality, in any case, sooner or later, time after time, will break through such a psychological defense, delivering even more painful and destructive blows. For, according to boxers, the most terrible blow is a blow that you have not seen.

At the organization level, the effect of such psycho-protection is even more destructive. Unlike the usual “red” organization, where employees understand the rules of the game (“and whoever does not praise the boss, the worker will die and become his grave factory” (c) a free quote from the classics), then in the “red” organization, which inspired itself that it is “green”, the rules of the game become as incomprehensible as possible, and the level of stress, absurdity and chaos for employees becomes prohibitive.

Want to find out if your organization is sick with “cultural” schizophrenia? First of all, pay attention to the coefficient of unwanted staff turnover. If he is tall, then most likely your organization is an alcoholic who assures himself that he knows the best; glutton, telling everyone about the "wide bone" and the loser, broadcasting from the couch that he would have achieved everything, but simply does not want to.

Bad picture? Well then, you have two conclusions, either to set up another psychoprotection that “people just don’t want to work, that’s why they’re running,” or to admit that your organization is seriously ill and needs urgent treatment.

What to be treated with?

Let's take a look at the world’s first-aid kit and see what the business community has come up with in terms of building a “healthy” effective organization.

The picture below shows the evolution of approaches and tools as scientific and technological progress advances and the complexity of relationships within organizations.

Theoretically, the surest solution for the “red” organizations will be a progressive upward movement, through a culture of rules, towards the education of leaders who will create a culture of success. This is an evolutionary path. Pros - minimal stress and shock, maximum survival. Cons is just a long time. Sometimes from a few years to a decade. Given the speed of market development and high competition, your organization may never live to see a green culture of efficiency.

Is it possible to change quickly without building a cargo cult and without falling into cultural schizophrenia?

I think this is the most acceptable option, and we will talk about this “quick” version of the “cure” today.

Value Management

Many, I think, have heard of such a tool as OKR (Objectives and Key Results). Without going into a detailed discussion of the variety of his interpretations, we can say that he is called to deal with the problem of distorting business tasks when transferring them from top to bottom along the pyramid of the hierarchy, as well as to ensure the consistency of KPI of different departments to the general goals of the company.

Example: “The Board of Directors decided to double the volume of production by expanding existing facilities. The procurement department organized the supply of necessary equipment to the plots, but when purchasing, it was guided by its KPI to reduce the purchase price as the main criterion. As a result, I bought a cheap Chinese counterpart that failed in a short time and caused long downtime, losses and disruption to the company's strategy. ”

Here OKR ideally provides a comparison and elimination of contradictions in such KPI units and levels. “Ideally” - because, as you and I already know, if the level of culture of your organization is low, then tools of a higher culture (and OKR is just such a tool) will simply not work for you.

In this regard, the management model with the help of values, which we recommend as the main tool for fast and efficient transformation, is built on the same principle, but solves the problem much more efficiently since it is primarily aimed at building a highly effective culture in which any efficiency tools will work in this way As they rely on

only three Values, you can use them both for diagnosis and for the transformation and development of your organization.

The idea, in general, is simple - you look at each business decision, at each process and regulations in your organization regarding whether these three values are implemented in it and, if not, take measures to ensure that it is provided.

In general, these very ...

Three vaccines against "redness".

Value: Continuous improvement.

I am writing these lines now, and you will read them only because in its time, very far from us, Nature laid down the Principle of continuous improvement in all living things. He is also known to us under the name Evolution.

The idea is simple - it is impossible to provide an ideal solution for every context and turn events millions of years ahead. But you can put in the design a mechanism for continuous consideration of the current status and making an immediate decision on the change, based on the available information and experience at this particular moment. If the decision was made incorrectly - it doesn’t matter, it will be revealed in the next improvement cycle and will be corrected.

Examples of the benefits of this value for business:

Cost reduction - more efficient and economical use of resources.
Improving retention - people are more satisfied, because they have a direct impact on the implementation of the business and are satisfied with their importance at work.
Increasing competitiveness - improving the quality of the company's products and services.
Improved Teams - Collaborating on problem solving helps create and strengthen existing teams.

Continuous improvement is, among other things, increasing personal competence, constant self-esteem and cross-assessment of employees with the identification of areas for development and drawing up clear and strict schedules for the implementation of these plans with the delivery of the results of the commission to more competent colleagues in this field.

Value: Psychological Safety

No improvement is possible if people are afraid to voice their ideas or criticize the current state of affairs.

You can consider that Psychological safety in your company is at a high level if:

The employees of your team thank each other and praise for their good work and other achievements without being indicated from above.
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Psychological safety is fertile soil for any effectiveness. Let people be themselves, save them from fear and excessive stress, and you will be surprised at the jump in their productivity.

Value: Free Communication

Like the two values above, Free communication does not live without the rest, intersects and supports them.

Tools for maintaining and implementing these values.

The main advantage of managing with values is the ability to take any of the existing performance tools and apply them both selectively and in combination, changing, adapting and hybridizing them depending on your business context.

An example of combining and hybridizing well-known tools to maintain three core values may be the following:

Agile – , ;
Lean – ;
Agilean – , Lean Agile , 3 Agilean.

Some hybrid Agilean tools were mentioned in this article. You can read about examples of other hybrid adaptations at this link: www.agilean.ru/gemba

"Agilean - employees" or that not only managers will have to change.

And last but not least, what we would like to mention in this article is the transformation of the employees of such a highly efficient Agilean enterprise.

We already spoke in the previous parts of this article about the main problem of all cultural transformations, when management orders consultants to transform their enterprise, formulating a request as "transform our employees, and we, top management, are already good."

However, this problem has another side. It manifests itself in a rarer situation, when the management has realized the need for changes, is ready to change itself, but meets with misunderstanding and resistance from employees who are not used to making independent decisions, taking initiative and developing.

Such employees accept Psychological safety as permissiveness and the ability to evade responsibility and criticism. Continuous improvement as the right to demand constant improvement of their conditions from management regardless of personal achievements, and Free communication as an opportunity to demand more privileges for themselves simply because it turns out that other employees have it.

Yes, there are many such inert employees who are quite comfortable in “red” organizations, who are not used to think, make decisions and bear responsibility, and who concentrate on the core competence - unconditional loyalty to any decision of the head. And I must say bluntly - in the Agilean organization, they will have the choice only to transform with the company or leave. It will be impossible to remain in the status of an incompetent inert ballast in a continuously improving organization with transparent processes and constant cross-evaluation.

Those employees who decide to stay will have to apply the three core Agilean values, first of all, to themselves.

And that means ...

in the spirit of Continuous Improvement, you will have to constantly learn, grow above yourself and increase your competence
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What do you get for all these efforts in the end?

Satisfaction with your rapid development as a professional and with the overall success of your team. A rush of dopamine energy in the morning at the thought that you need to go to work and the seratonin sense of completeness and safety from valuable and useful work done per day. Reduced stress and absurdity. A sense of meaning in your life.

Well, or, if you combine all of the above, then you get the same Happiness-at-work.