Conclusion--Working Toward Resiliency

OVERVIEW

The people here come and go so quickly.

—DOROTHY, IN THE WIZARD OF OZ

In today's culturally complex, technically intricate global marketplace, organization leaders can no longer depend on governance models based on twentieth-century management architectures—hierarchies designed more to disconnect than to connect. People survive and grow by propagating connections to each other and to the world around us. Like our nomadic ancestors who banded together to hunt and gather, we must relearn the art, the skills, and the power of connectivity. Successful leaders must understand and appreciate the profound marketplace implications of the human journey from connections to disconnections to reconnections. Businesses are becoming organic networks, neural webs. Networks grow by propagating connections. Connectivity happens when businesses form strategic alliances and partnerships within and between themselves. Alliances produce astonishing results only when information flows freely and people trust each other and are loyal to each other.

Bottom-line business results are rooted in culture. How executives, managers, and employees regard shareholders, how they treat customers, and how they esteem each other all echo cultural rules. How members of an organization go about determining what kind of culture they need to accelerate company growth is itself a cultural gauntlet. Culture springs mainly from how leaders behave: what they say and do, and how they say and do it. Culture is forged and communicated in the messages they send about what is important and what is not important, what is acceptable and not acceptable, and who is valued and who is not valued. Culture plays such a vital role in the success of an organization that leaders can no longer afford to leave it to chance. Yet, as crucial as culture is to bottom-line results, most leaders spend little time reflecting on the constructs or consequences of their culture.

In the twenty-first century, in the Dual Age of Information and Connections, business leaders who want their enterprises to survive, and thrive, must learn the lessons of a designed culture. Culture by design happens when leaders sit down and formulate a culture and then rigorously communicate and live by its tenets. Cultures that have been designed to champion a powerful purpose stand the test of time. Few businesses have consciously taken this purposeful path, though some have had the advantage of having leaders with an unconscious competency in this area. Leaders must think resolutely and thoughtfully about the atmosphere, environment, and customs that they want to permeate their organizational environs. In their gut, they must "get" the connection of their organization's purpose and the culture required to sustain that purpose. Moreover, they must take stock of their own abilities and willingness to model the attitudes and behaviors they are seeking and realistically assess if they are truly behaving as they want others to behave. Just think of the CEO who says he wants to establish a culture of openness and trust but who then summons the vice president of marketing and sales to his office and berates her for falling sales.