Chapter 1: Coming Full Circle with Organization Culture

OVERVIEW

In America: "Time is money."

In Belarus: "Time costs nothing."

Western culture traces a path of survival from hunter-gatherers through agrarian societies, city-states, nation-states, the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Age, and the beckoning Dual Age of Information and Connections. Our nomadic ancestors understood the value of working in partnership with each other for the tribe's survival. As people settled down, we became less concerned with our neighbors' survival and more concerned about ourselves. This trend toward disconnection was reinforced through scientific methodologies. In effect, "me" became more important than "we." However, as we move into a new organic economic structure, remembering past survival lessons—such as the importance of connectivity, alignment, loyalty, and trust—will ensure smart organizations a long, prosperous life in the twenty-first century.

Organizations experience the same needs, threats, and life cycles as other species. Organizations are born, grow, wither, and die. They frequently produce offspring, sometimes on purpose and more often by accident. Organizations are more like you and I than not. And conversely, in many ways we are what we organize. An organization's environment plays a vital role in nourishing it—or menacing it. When environmental conditions change dramatically, triggering a climate hostile to life, the inhabitants need to adapt, flee, or die. During the last ice age, many people died as the northern populations of Europe retreated to the warmer environs of Iberia, the Balkans, and Ukraine. The harsh environment to the north no longer fostered human life, and the remaining inhabitants fled to survive.

In addition to influencing the well-being of individuals, the environment shapes the nuances of the cultures that develop within it. People who live in tropical ecosystems, for example, have cultures different from residents of subarctic environs. They dress differently, view time differently, eat differently, and play differently. These behavioral adaptations result from the natural laws that influence how people interact with each other. People are fettered by these natural laws in extraordinary and complex ways. In some African cultures along the equator, for example, food-gathering strategies were based on what was ripe during a particular season and harvested as needed. In northern European tribes, where winter wreaked havoc on native food-bearing plants, organized groups of people sowed, collected, and stored food for the winter. These different strategies, driven by dissimilar environmental conditions, molded the development of cultures in those places. But regardless of the set of strategies employed, each tribal group wove itself intricately into the natural fabric around them, observed and learned how to maneuver within that microenvironment, and created or adapted strategies for survival. The environment helps define almost every aspect of our personal, family, and community lives—and our formal organizations.

It may not appear that ancestral survival habits have much to do with organizations in the twenty-first century, but we can and need to learn from them. The environments that exist around and within an organization—whether it is a little league team, a monastic community, or a Fortune 500 corporation—govern how successful it is likely to be. How the members of an organization behave, the norms within which they function, and how they link to one another all flow out of its environment. Organizations that understand the connectivity of their success to internal and external environments will have competitive advantages over those that do not make the connection.