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25 April 2006
Unusually, during this mindstretch®, no notes were taken from the discussion with participants. This is no reflection on the contribution they made to the event – just that we were too busy talking to take notes!
The following people were present at this mindstretch®:
After introductions, Karen began the session with a rough agenda and explained that there wouldn’t be time to discuss all the listed symbols in relation to change – but that in the first part of the session we’d talk about myth and sagas, ceremonies and rituals and physical surroundings. The case study in the second session would cover some elements of behavioural norms, language and symbolism in uniforms.
She then went on to define a few of the terms which she was going to use in the session. She noted that while symbolism in corporate life enabled the organisation to say something about itself…..there was a risk. She pointed out that modification was something which brands dealt with all the time – and sometimes it wasn’t in their favour. Karen cited the Fred Perry (where the image was of clean cut, college and professional sportsmen but where the clothing was adopted by skinheads) and Tommy Hillfiger (where the brand has been appropriated from its original target market by young black urban males).
In the next few slides, Karen invited the audience to share its view of the meanings of the objects and pictures she presented. She suggested that this was an image which carried all the hallmarks of an iconic symbol, certainly in terms of the support it receives to make it an iconic symbol. The American flag consists of 13 horizontal stripes, 7 red alternating with 6 white. The upper corner near the staff is a rectangular blue field that contains 50 five-pointed white stars. The thirteen stripes symbolize the 13 original colonies of the United States of America and the stars represent the 50 states of the Union. However, the government website which told the history of the flag began layering meaning to the image – “White is said to symbolize purity and innocence; Red, hardiness and valor, and Blue, vigilance, perseverance and justice” was one of the “facts” presented on the site.
But there were others, for example, the following: “Traditionally a symbol of liberty, the American flag has carried the message of freedom to many parts of the world. Sometimes the same flag that was flying at a crucial moment in our history has been flown again in another place to symbolize continuity in our struggles for the cause of liberty. One of the most memorable is the flag that flew over the Capitol in Washington on December 7th 1941 when Pearl Harbour was attacked. This same flag was raised again on December 8 when war was declared on Japan, and three days later at the time of the declaration of war against Germany and Italy. President Roosevelt called it the "flag of liberation" and carried it with him to the Casablanca Conference and on other historic occasions. It flew from the mast of the U.S.S. Missouri during the formal Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945.”
Karen noted that the website abounds with stories which pack meaning behind the idea of the flag. In addition, she noted that there are many rules which monitor the meanings given to the flag – rules (some enshrined in statute) about when it is to be displayed (20 days in the US calendar, including its own day, Flag Day on 14th June), how it should be stored, saluted, displayed, carried, folded…. Not to mention the pledge of allegiance, which starts to add meaning as well.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands: one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
She then put up the next flag, a symbol that has significantly changed its meaning over the years. The word "swastika" comes from the Sanskrit svastika - "su" meaning "good," "asti" meaning "to be," and "ka" as a suffix. Until the Nazis used this symbol, the swastika was used by many cultures throughout the past 3,000 years to represent life, sun, power, strength, and good luck.
Commenting on the interpretation of the colours in the American flag, Karen gave the description of the Nazis’ flag by Hitler in Mein Kampf: "In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work, which as such always has been and always will be anti-Semitic." (pg. 496-497)
Some cultures in the past had differentiated between the clockwise swastika and the counter-clockwise sauvastika. In these cultures the swastika symbolized health and life while the sauvastika took on a mystical meaning of bad-luck or misfortune.
But since the Nazis use of the swastika, some people are trying to differentiate the two meanings of the swastika by varying its direction - trying to make the clockwise, Nazi version of the swastika mean hate and death while the counter-clockwise version would hold the ancient meaning of the symbol, life and good-luck.
When asked what this meant, views around the table varied – some thought it was to get away with lying, others thought it was about luck.
This symbol has been traced back to pre-Christian times, when the cross was a symbol of unity and benign spirits dwelt at the intersection point. A wish made on a cross was a way of "anchoring" the wish at the intersection of the cross until the wish was fulfilled.
Charles Panati says this superstition was popular among many early European cultures. It originally took two people. A comrade or well-wisher placing his index finger over the index finger of the person making the wish, the two fingers forming a cross. The one person makes the wish, the other empathizes and supports. Over centuries, the custom was simplified, so that a person could wish on his own, by crossing his index and middle fingers to form an X. But traces remain--two people hooking index fingers as a sign of greeting or agreement is still common in some circles today.
Panati comments, "Customs once formal, religious, and ritualistic have a way of evolving with time to become informal, secular, and commonplace." Thus, friends crossing fingers evolved to crossing one's own fingers, and ultimately to the stock phrase, "Keep your fingers crossed," with no actual finger-crossing at all.
Comments on this ranged from feeling that the office was a place where employees were valued to a cynical interpretation that this car space used to be reserved for the Chairman, and the words “Employee of the quarter” have been added as a sop to a management fad. causes us to laugh because the ostensible message is not what the message really IS – as can so often be the case in cultural change.
Having indicated that meaning can be very flexible and change over time, Karen went on to talk about how meaning is derived in the mind of the individual, and introduced the subject of sensemaking, developed by academic Karl Weick.
Literally, the making of sense, sensemaking is not a linear process, but iterative - sensemaking addresses how cues in an organisation are constructed as well as how they are read – what cues are noticed as well as the meaning given to them. To illustrate, Karen gave an example, quoted by Weick in his book Sensemaking in organisations (1995).
Sensemaking is tested to the extreme when people encounter an event whose occurrence is so implausible that they hesitate to report it for fear they will not be believed – i.e. it can’t be, so it isn’t. An example of this is Battered Child Syndrome. It is represented by multiple fractures in different states of healing. The fractures occur at different times in children too young to have received the fractures as a result of an accident.
Batter Child Syndrome was first suggested in 1946 by John Caffey, a paediatric radiologist, in an article based on six cases where parents gave “histories” that didn’t explain how the injuries seen in X rays had occurred. The author speculated that the accidents may have been due to parents not fully appreciating the injuries, or “intentional ill treatment”. Other articles appeared in 1953 (3 cases), 1955 (12 cases) and 1957.
Weick tells us that nothing much happened until 1961 when a panel called the Battered Child Syndrome was chaired at the American Academy of Paediatrics when data from 77 district attorneys and 71 hospitals was reported (nearly 750 cases). These and an editorial were then published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. By 1967, estimated that there were 7,000 cases, climbing to 60,000 by 1972 and to 500,000 by 1976
Karen went on to list the elements which characterise sensemaking:
Cues - Noticing something which doesn’t “fit” – a form of surprise or discrepant set of cues
Retrospect - Discrepant cues are spotted when someone looks back over elapsed experience
Plausibility - A plausible explanation is offered to explain the cues and their relative rarity (i.e. parents fail to recognise severity of the injuries)
Enactment - Person speculating makes their views concrete/makes an “object” that wasn’t there before – i.e. puts them into the environment (in this case, publishes them in a medical journal)
Ongoing events – a further exploration and evaluation of cues/events
Social contact - which eventually generates attention (the article was published in a radiology journal, not medical journal at first. Attention became more widespread when the discussion was published in a medical journal)
Identity - It involves issues of identity and reputation – “One might well argue that part of the resistance of paediatricians to a diagnosis of parent-caused trauma was an inability to believe that their own evaluation of parents could be seriously in error.”
One of the elements central to sensemaking is that one sees what one believes and does not see what one cannot believe. As a result, Sensemaking takes a relative approach to truth, predicting that people will believe what can account for their sensory experience but what is also interesting, attractive, emotionally appealing and goal-relevant.
Evidence in the literature that sensemaking starts when there is some kind of “shock” that stimulated people’s action to pay attention and initiate novel action. People frequently see things differently when they are shocked into attention, whether the shock is on necessity, opportunity or threat. However, greater complexity makes people search harder and further for and rely more on habitual, routine cues.
In addition, Karen noted, there is also the impact of identity – or self-concept - to be considered. Most individuals have some part of their identity grounded in the organisation in which they work – self concept answers three needs;
That of self enhancements as reflected in seeking and maintaining a positive cognition and affective state about the self
The self-efficacy motive, which is the desire to perceive oneself as competent and efficacious
The need for self consistency, which is the desire to sense and experience coherence and continuity
Individuals’ self concepts and personal identities are formed and modified in part by how they believe others view the organisation in which they work; if an organisation takes action externally, the meaning which is socially sustained from this action is the one which reflects favourably on the organisation and also promotes self-enhancement, efficacy and consistency. If it doesn’t, and the representations of self are threatened, people may alter the sense they make of those images or they may distance themselves from the action.
Karen said that she felt some elements of sensemaking, particularly when considered alongside change, were familiar. For example, much change often needs a “shock” to catapult people into seeing things differently – and so it is with sensemaking.
She apologised about the inverted commas in the slide, but excused this on the basis that if we understand sensemaking as something entirely personal, “knowing” the meaning of things is reduced to, at best, a very broad idea of what people might think - to a large extent, these things ARE unknowable. Each person may see symbols and cues differently, so meaning is constructed and flexible – it changes with each additional piece of information. She said that to at least be aware of the power of symbols and cues may enable organisations to support their spoken message, rather than contradicting it.
As an introduction to Myths and Sagas, Karen suggested that the force of organisational stories depend, at least in part, on their ability to evoke and encapsulate simultaneously the value system that implicitly underlies organisational practices.
To illustrate, she outlined two stories, the first from IBM:
Martin et al (1983) document a story in which a female supervisor at IBM challenges Thomas Watson Jnr, the chairman of the Board. The story is related as follows:
The supervisor was a 22 year old bride weighing 90 pounds whose husband had been sent overseas and who, in consequence, had been given a job until his return. The young woman, Lucile Berger, was obliged to make certain that people entering security areas wore the correct identification.
Surrounded by his usual entourage of white-shirted men, Watson approached the doorway to an area where she was on guard, wearing an orange badge acceptable elsewhere in the plant, but not a green badge, which alone permitted entrance at her door. “I was trembling in my uniform, which was far too big,” she recalled. “It hid my shakes, but not my voice. “I’m sorry,” I said to him. I knew who he was, alright. “You cannot enter. You admittance is not recognised.” That’s what we were supposed to say.
The men accompanying Watson were stricken; the moment held unpredictable possibilities. “Don’t you know who he is?” some one hissed. Watson raised his hand for silence, while one of the party strode off and returned with an appropriate badge.
Martin et al interpret the moral behind this story by suggesting that for higher status employees the message is “Even Watson obeys the rules, so you certainly should” while lower status employees should “uphold the rules no matter who is disobeying. The implication is that while other corporate heads may flout regulations, Watson sets an example for all his employees.
The group raised a number of potential issues – the first being of truth. Karen agreed that often stories like this were told with no-one checking that they were true – and certainly, few people would contradict this sort of story in the telling. She added that it made Watson into a God and that she felt the power of the story depends on Watson NOT being subject to the same rules as everyone else.
The second story was about the birth of Virgin Brides:
Ailsa Petchey, flight attendant on Virgin Atlantic, helping a friend organise her wedding. She reasoned that it would be much easier if there was a one stop shop where you could organise and buy everything. She took the idea to Branson and the result is Virgin Brides – Petchey became its European head of marketing.
As Gary Hamel, writing in Fortune says: “Could this happen in your company? Could a twentysomething first-line employee buttonhole the chairman and get permission to start a new business?” In the long term, Virgin Brides might or might not be a success, but the important aspects are that Virgin was prepared to take the risk and give its name to it
Virgin Brides has retrenched to just one store, in Manchester – but the “facts” as the writer points out, are not important – it’s the essence of it that matters. As a story, it has some support in the way the company presents itself now – if you go on to Virgin.com there’s a page which tells you how to submit your ideas for businesses, with the proviso that ideas should be in line with the six Virgin values.
The implications for change are that if the stories are inconsistent with the way you want the organisation to be seen, you either find new stories, or you alter the meaning of the stories that are currently circulating.
Turning to ceremonies and rituals , Karen pointed out that rituals had a positive and a dark side – the positive side is that rituals of all sorts can provide a sense of unity and perceived character and are sometimes among the most satisfying and rewarding events for members of an organisation. The dark side is encapsulated through sometimes humiliating and sometimes brutal initiation ceremonies for newcomers to the organisation.
Rituals provide – for those in charge of them – an opportunity to define as authoritative certain ways of seeing the world and offer managers a mode of exercising power along the cognitive and affective planes; to influence how other members are to think and feel.
However, when alternative ways of thinking and feeling are perceived, rituals of resistance may be observed to express those alternatives – strikes, operating norms done away with by the night shift, initiatives called alternative – and not very complimentary – names. Just having a ritual doesn’t imply that the same meaning is applied to it by all members who observe it.
Managers may define what is given, but the managed define what is taken.
Rituals might be examined by asking:
Asking these questions may broaden understanding sufficiently for those engaged in change to realise what they might try and alter – and also to understand what employees lose when certain rituals are stopped or changed, which in itself may prevent change.
Moving to a discussion of physical surroundings with some examples, Karen briefly outlined some of the elements which characterised these buildings.
The Chrysler Building is one of the best examples of art deco architecture – it celebrates the rise of commerce, technology, and speed. The building has a variety of stories connected with it.
The design, originally drawn up for building contractor William H. Reynolds, was finally sold to Walter P. Chrysler, who wanted a provocative building which would not merely scrape the sky but “positively pierce” it.
Its 77 floors briefly making it the highest building in the world—at least until the Empire State Building was completed—it became the star of the New York skyline, thanks above all to its crowning peak. “In a deliberate strategy of myth generation (Karen’s italics), Van Alen planned a dramatic moment of revelation: the entire seven-storey pinnacle, complete with special-steel facing, was first assembled inside the building, and then hoisted into position through the roof opening and anchored on top in just one and a half hours. All of a sudden it was there—a sensational fait accompli."
At 321 meters high, the Burj Al Arab hotel, is taller than the Eiffel Tower and only 60 meters shorter than the Empire State Building. It is reputedly the first (and the only?) seven star hotel in the world. Its exclusivity and “other world” luxuriousness are highlighted by its position 280 meters offshore, linked to the mainland by a slender. It costs $75 just to look around.
The building was designed to resemble the sails of an Arabian Dhow – mixing modern and ancient.
Bedzed (Beddington Zero Energy Development) is Britain’s first carbon-neutral neighbourhood – it contributes nothing to global warming. It has all the energy saving characteristics you’d expect – triple glazing, south facing, solar panels, rainwater recyclers, but also has an electric car pool, which runs off the excess energy generated by the development. It has been built of renewable or recycled materials sourced within a 35-mile radius to save petrol.
So – Karen said. This is a building with a mission. Here’s a mission with a building .
Volvo was well recognized in the industry for its employee-friendly policies ever since its inception. Guided by the 'Volvo Way,' the company had made conscious efforts to implement job enrichment concepts such as job rotation, job enlargement and employee work groups in its manufacturing facilities (Refer Exhibit I for the Volvo Way). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the company faced the problem of increasing employee turnover and absenteeism, it introduced these concepts and obtained positive results.
Volvo was inspired to build a new facility keeping this work design as a basis. This reiterated the company's belief that industry needed to adapt itself to the people's requirements and not vice-versa. This concept was implemented successfully in other plants of the company too in the 1970s. The best practices in Human Relations (HR) tried and tested in these plants were passed on to new plants established in the 1980s.
Volvo made a valiant effort to dispense with the assembly line. They had groups of 15-20 people and it was organised like this so that all employees had the impression of working in individual workgroups in which they were allowed to vary the speed of their car body carrier from 3 metres a minute to 30 metres a minute. Production was split into three primary areas – body, chassis and final assembly. Assembly personnel were given the opportunity to work as a team on one of these sections and teams were allowed to rotate jobs among themselves and to set, within limits, their own work speed.
Work groups also attempted to have each team do a major job so that they perceived the completion of a meaningful unit of work – for example, installing all the electrical wiring and equipment. Instead of work cycles being one to two minutes, as they are in many car manufacturing plants, they are 20-30 minutes.
This was certainly putting their money where their mouth was – the Volvo plant had capital expenditure of 11% more than the same type of facility built in a more traditional manner, and it occupied almost twice as much floor space.
It was a very public risk taking:
Acknowledging this, Peer Gyllenhammar, the then CEO wrote in Harvard Business Review, "Volvo's Kalmar plant, for example, is designed for a specific purpose: car assembly in working groups of about 20 people. If it didn't work, it would be a costly and visible failure, in both financial and social terms. We would lose credibility with our people and those who are watching from outside."
The plant closed, despite enormous protest, in 1994, when it became clear that the level of production was uncompetitive. Since that time, Volvo has, curiously, rewritten its own history. Despite this being one of the most famous experiments in organisational engineering, Volvo has reduced it to about a dozen lines of text in the history on its website, demonstrating that stories can be altered by management, weakened through lack of reference material (photographs of the site were at first impossible to find and finally sourced through newspaper and academic articles).
Case study – Living with Tinkerbell
Karen introduced the case study which was written by John Van Maanen and Gideon Kunda some years ago, and focused on ride operators who were part-time, summer labour, almost exclusively taken from colleges.
The norms in this case were not just behavioural, but also standards of almost everything – as outlined.
Each successful applicant must conform to standards of appearance – complexion, height and weight, straightness and colour of teeth or disfigurement of any sort are all grounds for flunking the Disneyland “bodytest”. (Other appearance standards, according to the study, used to include race, sex, nationality, age and accent until affirmative action and equality legislation). According to Van Maanen and Kunda, there are representative minorities on the payroll but ethnicity displays were sternly discouraged by management, ensuring that “minority employees are close copies of the standard model, albeit in different colours.”
The ride operator reports to ride foreman, who determines the working schedule for the ride. Disneyland rides were notoriously overstaffed, giving considerable leeway and power to foremen – and much insecurity to the ride operators.
There were only a very few rides which required skills to operate; and therefore generalised skills such as getting along with others, unruffled demeanour, cheerfulness and the ability to forge mutual regard with foreman become the criteria for increasing one’s hourly work.
Close supervision is part of working at Disneyland – because most rides are designed to minimise operator judgement and risk, much of the monitoring is directed at what might be viewed as trivial issues – wearing incorrect uniform, rushing the ride, slowing the ride, fraternizing with guests beyond the call of duty, talking back to customers etc. All misdemeanours covered in great detail in a hefty handbook with which employees were supposed to be familiar; violations dealt with harshly and instantly.
According to the research, there is a ride operator myth that you have to know someone already working in Disneyland to be hired. (combination of who you know as well as attributes)
Great efforts are spent trying to bring employee emotional responses into line with such standards; if employees happy at work, so the story goes, then guests will be so at play. Van Maanen and Kunda note the use of family imagery, inspirational films - all part of strong symbolism used in training.
Some oft repeated stories – for example, it’s highly competitive to be in Disneyland – hordes of potential replacements for the role ; any misdemeanours instantly punished with dismissal.
There was also talk of legendary bastard supervisors who hide behind vegetation to spy on operators, time the rides, have “spots” where they can see several rides at once to catch the unwary.
The language was (and still is) particular to Disneyland. Customers are “guests” (and even now, the website points you to Guest Relations); Workers are “hosts”; Policemen are “security hosts”; Rides are attractions.
The language of the theatre is prevalent. There is reference to backstage, staging and onstage regions, employee uniforms are “costumes” from “wardrobe”. There are no accidents at Disneyland, only “incidents”.
Themes of Disneyland as family entertainment gradually became incorporated into employees’ perceptions of the organisation so that the role of employee became one of family member. When Disneyland hit a financial crisis, prompting cuts in employee wages and benefits, many employees were shocked at the business orientation of management. For them, being part of the family was not just a metaphor, but the way they experienced the organisation. Management tried to circumvent this clash of perspectives by trying to co-opt the family metaphor in explaining the cutbacks – family life was sometimes hard and really close families must make sacrifices if they are to survive.
Hardly surprisingly, this never really caught on, particularly as it became clear to management that some permanent changes would need to happen in the park. (1994).
There was an indication of hierarchy in some of the language used, particularly in the names for the concession stands (soda jerks, pancake ladies, peanut pushers, coke blokes).
Van Maanen and Kunda note the very lengthy hiring process (sometimes up to six months) – a ritual in itself, followed as it was by attendance at the University of Disneyland – 1 day’s training and ongoing classes through 40 hours apprenticeship.
Firing was common and removal from the pay roll was public and humiliating – departing staff pulled off the ride in full view of their cohorts followed by a force march to the administration building where identity cards were turned in and a short statement given by personnel officer as to the cause of dismissal; security officers then walked the employee to the locker room where the uniform was returned, personal effects collected and where locker inspection took place. Next stop was at the time shed where employee’s card was removed from the slot, marked “terminated” in red ink across the top and then replaced in original position; the dismissed was then escorted to parking lot where two security officers scraped the parking pass from the employee’s car.
Uniforms provided instant communication about the status of an employee; the male ride operators on Autopia wear untailored jumpsuits akin to mechanics; ill fitting and homogenous whites worn by sweepers like those worn by hospital orderlies. On the other hand, monorail operators wear officer-like uniforms, swash buckling Pirate of the Carribean has a certain cachet from the uniform. For the girls, the tour guides wore above the knee kilts and black berets – and here, sexiness establishes status according to the authors, which tells its own story.
Socialising was viewed as a group benefit – and went with the college status of many of the employees.
There were some thoughtful looks when participants were asked if the Disneyland culture was a success. Karen said that she felt whatever you thought of it morally, this is a highly successful culture – pay is low, working conditions are chaotic, jobs require only minimal intelligence and hardly any judgement, and supervision is “skin close” and arbitrary (“the sheer number of rules and regulations make dismissal a matter of multiple choice”). Yet employees display significant adherence to their roles as guest hosts; despite the great unwashed public, summer heat and never-ending crowds, adherence to the Disney Way is remarkable.
Van Maanen and Kunda consider that culture is managed through four elements:
While Van Maanen and Kunda certainly don’t promise success, they at least point us towards some aspects of change management that are generally left untouched.
But will all these suggestions of “a corporate culture” and conformity help us towards a better workplace? Is it even possible to encourage everyone to think the same?
Only to a degree.