FAQ's from Managers
The list below contains some of the more immediate reactions by managers, drawn from many years' experience of introducing and explaining this framework.
Q: Many years, even five, is just too long. If each mode is important, surely the sensible thing is to take the best values from each and put that culture in right away?
A: Most managers want to extract the goodies. But experience suggests that the «best values», once extracted from the modes, quickly disappear or degenerate. Any new value is part of a value-system and needs to be bolstered by its associated values.
Q: Some management consultants suggest we should immediately turn ourselves into «learning organizations». Do we have to go through all seven stages to achieve this?
A: Attempts to go directly to the most complex culture deny the distinctive and necessary contributions by the more basic modes. They also ignore practical and psychological constraints.
Q:Don't management tools like Total Quality Management and Business Process Re-engineering aim to introduce more advanced modes directly?
A: That is one reason why TQM, BPR and similar endeavours often fail, or result at best in limited gains and disconnected projects.
Q: Why can't we decide a set of our own values, including some from your lists, and install those?
A: The trouble is that such lists are invariably too biased, incoherent or limited. Few managers promote all modes. In any case, because the seven modes retain some logico-emotional incompatibilities, haphazard combinations cannot be successfully installed.
Q: Must we follow your sequence of stages slavishly? What if we have already partly installed several values from the later modes?
A: Fragments of all modes are usually present in any organization, but it is intrinsically unlikely for later modes to become more solidly established than earlier ones. The proposed sequencing seems to be the natural order for dealing with management weakness in most cases.
Q: Can we speed things up by working on several stages simultaneously?
A: A small group of managers might do so. Rapidly developing large numbers of managers is impossible.
Q: But we need all the modes immediately, don't we? How can we manage with an incomplete culture?
A: You do need to be able to use all decision approaches within an organization, but you do not need to have all the achievement modes in the culture. Many organizations function satisfactorily, but sub-optimally, with a low-level ethos.
Q: Your step-by-step account seems too mechanical. Reality is fluid and changing. Even if your modes are valid, can't we feel our way forward intuitively?
A: You must. Explaining the process must be done in a neat orderly way so it can be understood. However, cultural development is never neat, orderly or mechanical. Once the ideas are mastered, you can overlap installations sensibly and handle regressions under stress. Exactly how to move forward, and how fast or intensively, is up to the leadership.
Q: Can we really expect everyone to become expert in each of the decision approaches?
A: Absolutely not. That would be impossible and undesirable. A culture is not identical to decision-making. So adapting to new cultural values is not equivalent to using a decision approach expertly. Anyone can hold values underpinning an approach whose methods they disapprove or even dislike intensely.
Q: How will we know when a new mode with its values has been successfully adopted?
A: You have made it when this question seems irrelevant. The most overt sign is a growing pressure and wish to move to the next Stage. This occurs as you discover the mode's limitations or notice degeneration after a period of solid achievement.
Q: It sounds risky. Does a strong management culture guarantee success?
A: No. Culture is just a context for management. Success depends on the quality of the decisions, the work effort, state of the markets and many other factors. Let's be honest: nothing guarantees success.
Originally posted: 17-Jun-2011