Chapter 5: Cultivate Culture and Pluralize your Mind Parts of the Reptilian Brain

Parts of the Reptilian Brain: ---Brainstem: Regulates seemingly automatic functions like breathing, blood pre ssure etc ----Cerebellum: Keeps the body in balance and is responsible for hardwired behav iors like skills. The word culture comes from the German word Kultur which means to cultivate. Cultu re is something which does not happen on its own but require a focused effort on the part of Leaders;it needs to be consciously cultivated. Our culture is relat ed to our genes and is rooted in the deep recesses of our Reptilian brain and mo st of its effect is automatic without conscious thought. After a while, most cul tures become insular and unaccepting of fresh energy and information. The rise of social media is giving leaders unparallel opportunity to seek out fresh infor mation , solutions and perspectives from diverse sources and leverage the power of culture in initiating constant change. PAST=> You take great pride in your traditions and you do not let yourself or ot hers in your group or organization question any of the shared practices. PRESENT=>You have gone out of your way to verbally communicate with members of y our group; you have fostered a culture where anyone can speak up without fear. B ut still things are not what they should. Perhaps your focus so far has been on verbal language and you have been unconsciously ignoring the need to focus atten tion on seeing and feeling, which are much bigger component of culture than lang uage. FUTURE=>You have learnt how to visualize the kind of empowering culture you want to cultivate. You pay strong attention on how you want your group or organizati on to collectively feel and Value. Seeing and Feeling infused concepts give rise to empowering questions by your followers which in turn becomes the bedrock of your new culture of constant change. TOPICS IN THIS CHAPTER: Uproot the roots of Culture and empower your instinctual Drives Realize the limitations of language Expand your concepts to include non-verbal elements Communicate holistically by engaging all the senses Create social capital out of Groups and foster teamwork Make Redesign the basis for your Organizational design Make a questioning culture the basis of your collective action The Tower of Babel represents culture. Men dream of building a tower of stone "whose top may reach unto heaven", of creating an ideal life on Earth. The y believe in intellectual methods, in technical means, in formal institutions. F or a long time the tower rises higher and higher above the Earth. But the moment infallibly arrives when men cease to understand each other or, rather, realise that they have never done so. Each of them understands the ideal life on Earth i n his own way. Each of them wants to carry out his own ideas. Each of them wants to fulfil his own ideal. This is the moment when the confusion of tongues begin s. Men cease to understand one another even in the simplest things; lack of unde

rstanding provokes discord, hostility, struggle. The men who built the tower sta rt killing one another and destroying what they have built. The tower falls in r uins. -----P.D. Oespensky, The New Model of the Universe At the sound of the first droning of the shells, we rush back, in one part of ou r being, a thousand years, by the animal instinct that is awakened in us, we are lead and protected. It is not conscious: it is so far quicker, much more sure a nd less fallible than consciousness, one cannot explain it ------Erich Maria Remarque, All quiet on the Western Front As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, s o the mind without culture can never produce good fruit. ---Seneca Don't Make Assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid mis understandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can complet ely transform your life. Don Miguel Ruiz man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take c ulture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimen tal science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning -------Clifford Geertz The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into cultur e, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into soci al creativity. Lewis Mumford A. Uproot the roots of Culture and empower your instinctual Drives Our culture is rooted in our Reptilian Brain, the common part of our heritage wh ich we share with reptiles. The Reptilian brain is only concerned with survival and sex, hence our culture often limits us to just survival. We share 96% of our genome with apes. The Alpha Male Theory of Leadership is something which a g roup of humans share with a pack of wolves or chimpanzees. For all these species , both sexual privileges and serotonin level goes up with the increase in hierar chy and status. According to Freudian theory, our instinctual drives are rooted in our unconscio us mind. Freud is probably the biggest leadership guru. The following are some of his prophetic sayings about Leadership: 1.A group requires leaders, functional or dysfunctional, for Identity and Purpos e (Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego). 2. Our need to follow arises from when we were children and we needed care and protection (Civilization and its discontents). 3. Our need to seek out people who, in our minds, are great men even though they may not necessarily be so, comes from our longing for our father in childhood (Moses and Montheism). According to Freud, civilizations progress by repressing instinctual drives. How ever, we dont have to use repress our unconscious drives; as a Leader, you need t o make your drives conscious and then transmute them for higher purposes. For i nstance, in certain spiritual tradition, people fast and create desire for hun ger and then transmute this desire into desire for God. Even though our culture is rooted in our genes, good leadership can make us tr anscend the determinism of our genes. Genetic changes leading to change in DNA and forming of new traits is a hallmark of our Adaptive Order. However, good le adership, through effective cultural changes, can create Ecological Order and ca n influence genetic changes. For instance, the discovery of fur, a cultural chan ge, lead to blue eyes, a genetic change. The task of Leadership is to cultivate culture and organize the experiences of his followers, and create rapid change , without waiting for the trial and error methods of mutation and natural select

ion. In order to create an empowering culture which taps latent energy from our ecosy stem, we may have to uproot the metaphor of culture as a tree with roots and st art thinking of culture as a rhizome(imagine an onion).In a rhizome model of cul ture, we are no longer limited by our roots and traditions. Instead, in our new paradigm of culture, we tap multiple ideas of diverse people and make change and unity our medium of cultural transmission. Then only, we will have true freedom and be able to make conscious choices and create a cohesive culture. One day the brothers who had been driven out came together, killed and devoured t heir father.The violent primal father had doubtless been the feared and envied mo del of each one of the company of brothers: and in the act of devouring him they accomplished their identification with him, and each one of them acquired a por tion of his strength. The totem meal, which is perhaps mankinds earliest festival , would thus be a repetition and a commemoration of this memorable and criminal deed, which was the beginning of so many things --- of social organization, of m oral restrictions and of religion. ----Freud, Totem and Taboo if we follow Harold Laswells famous definition of politics as a social process de termining who gets what, when and how there is no doubt that chimpanzees engage i n it -------Frans De Waal , Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among apes Culture is created by the communal mind, and each mind in turn is the product of the genetically structured human brain. Genes and culture are therefore insever ably linked. But the linkage is flexible, to a degree still mostly unmeasured. T he linkage is also tortuous: Genes prescribe epigenetic rules, which are the neu ral pathways and regularities in cognitive development by which the individual m ind assembles itself. The mind grows from birth to death by absorbing parts of t he existing culture available to it, with selections guided through epigenetic r ules inherited by the individual brain ------E.O. Wilson, Consilence When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct wit h boldness and effort, it is ready to climb.---Patanjali In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pas s on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attemp t always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not DNA.-----Gregory Bateson No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking. Ruth Benedict If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recog nize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary soci al fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place. Margaret Mead: In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. Andy Warhol B. Realize the limitations of language Initially, our ancestors shared lot of common traits with apes but gradually, th ey started making better tools for cutting etc as well as symbolically represent ing some of their experiences through drawings in caves. Gradually, their brains started evolving faster and, they slowly started sharing some common experience s in the form of pre-language. This gave birth to a culture of team work and language arose as an adaptation to facilitate better hunting and gathering and hence survival. To begin with, language was a means of improving the tasks of hunting and gather ing for the early humans. It was no more than a series of grunts and growls. Gra dually, the process of evolution gave us increasingly better control over speech with the refinement of our various muscles like larynx and tongue. Finally, a s

tage came when language gradually became the carrier of the common culture of t he group and became an end in itself. The elegance in our language gave birth to our Ego. Our Ego in turn has made us refine our language as much as possible as we have equated refinement and cultu re with the way we speak. In this way, we have lost the original purpose of our language which was to improve survival by refining our action.. The time has com e to put language in place and demote its status to that of a means. If we can achieve that, then only we can start incorporating what we see and feel into our thoughts and enhance our actions. Our language is shrouded in ambiguity. The same thing have a different meaning for different people. Lot of understanding of language is based on our interpret ation and the culture and conditioning we come from. There is an entire body of philosophy championed by Jacques Derrida among others called Post-Modernism, whi ch challenges the assumption that language is a means to arrive at truth. The reason behind such differences in language is rooted in the structure of ou r language itself. According to Norm Chomsky, the greatest linguist of the our t imes, each sentence in a language has a deep structure and a surface structure. Even though the deep structure is universal among all languages and is rooted in the language modules of our brain which enables a child to learn language innat ely, the process of transformation which maps deep structures into the surface s tructure creates severe distortions. Read the quotation from Einstein in the next page. Einstein very clearly says th at language did not play any part in his thinking. His path breaking thinking, w hich produced some of the greatest advancement in Science in the 20th century wa s dependent on images which he learnt to very skillfully recombine. Einstein is not alone in using such techniques. Other scientists who have made major breakth rough, like Michael Faraday, inventor of the electric motor, or Watson and Cric k, discoverer of the Double Helix structure of our DNA also extensively used vis ualization techniques to overcome the limitations of language. These same techn iques can be at your disposal once you break the chains of language which is hol ding you prisoner and start embracing the freedom of your imagination. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tra dition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people s experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awarene ss and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take hi s concepts for data, his words for actual things. aldous Huxley: The more narrowly we examine the actual language, the sharper becomes the confli ct between it and our requirement. ...The conflict becomes intolerable; the requ irement is now in danger of becoming empty. We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but al so, just owing to that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need frict ion. Back to the rough ground! ----Ludwig Wittgenstein , Philosophical investigations We must do away with all explanation and allow only description in its place ---- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical investigations The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play an y role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be voluntarily reproduced and combined.. the above mentioned elements are, in my ca se, of visual and some muscular type. Conventional words or signs have to be sou ght fo laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative pla y is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will --- Einstein The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them Stephen King But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

George Orwell Guillaume Apollinaire s poem written in the form of the Eiffel Tower

The calligram makes use of this double property of letters to function as linear elements which can be arranged in space and as signs which must be read accordi ng to a single chain of phonic substance. As sign, the letter permits us to esta blish words; as line it permits us to establish letters. Hence the calligram pla yfully seeks to erase the oldest oppositions to our alphabetical civilization: t o show and to read. Pursuing twice over the thing of which it speaks, it sets an ideal trap; its double access guarantees a capture of which mere discourse or p ure drawing is not capable. It undermines the invisible absence over which words never quite prevail by imposing on them the visible form of their reference.The si gns summon from elsewhere the very thing of which they speak.. A double trap, an inevitable snare -----Michel Foucault On the basis of the best information now available, it seems reasonable to suppo se that a child cannot help constructing a particular kind of transformational g rammar to account for the data presented to him, any more than he can control hi s perception of solid objects or to his attention to line and angle. Thus it may well be that the general features of language structure reflect, not so uch the course of ones experience, but rather the general character of ones capacity to a cquire knowledge---- in the traditional sense, ones innate ideas and innate princ iples. ----Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap George Bernard Shaw One great use of words is to hide our thoughts. Voltaire We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves. John Locke language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique ------Derrida, On Grammatology Is thought dependent on words?..... Or are our thoughts couched in some silent m edium of the brain ---- a language of thought or mentalese ----- and merely couche d in words whenever we need to communicate them to a listener? .. The idea that t hought is the same thing as language is an example of what can be called a conve ntional absurdity There is no scientific evidence that languages dramatically sha pe their speakers way of thinking -----Steven Pinker, The language instinct C.Expand your concepts to include non-verbal elements Human Beings have concepts about everything. Thinking itself can be argued as ge nerating concepts; ability to form concepts is often taken as the hallmark of in telligence. However, when our concepts become prisoners of our language and cea se to include what we see and feel, our success gets stunted causing us unhappin ess and dissatisfaction. Read the quote from Helen Keller in the next page. She was a blind and deaf girl who overcame tremendous adversities in life and became a famous educationist. T he moment, she managed to identify that w-a-t-e-r stood for something so cool and

made her feel so good, she understood the concept of water. Note that, she mappe d language with her feelings. As a Leader, you need to make sure that the concep ts of your followers and stakeholders go beyond mere verbal abstraction and incl ude inputs from all their senses. Then only you will start realizing the potenti al of your talents and abilities. Our words and vocabulary often symbolize the importance of a concept in a partic ular society. For instance, snow is a very key part of the culture of Eskimos; h ence, they have five words for snow. Since, concepts are integral to our existen ce, we need to have more words to denote various kinds of concepts. I use the wo rd concept to denote those of a pure verbal in nature while the word category to denote those verbal concepts to which inputs from the senses like sight and tas te have been added to. Concepts are like boxes in our Mind. Often, we need to think out of the box in o rder to make progress. It is however difficult to find techniques which let us do so in a systemic manner. In our introduction, we talked about thinking being our software and perception our hardware. Till now, our concepts reside mostly in our software . You need to modify your concepts and add the hardware part als o, so that our mental categories lead to our success. Do you think you are smarter than people who has made more money and accumulated more wealth than you? You maybe more intelligent than most of them, intelligenc e being the ability to generate concepts. However, some of the less intelligent people have become smarter as they have learned to add the hardware of perceptio n to the software of their thoughts and create more empowering categories and yo u need to learn to do that to so that you can catch up with them and eventually surpass them. The inability to make our concepts fluid and include what we see and feel in the m is at the root of most problems in life. If you are a habitual latecomer, you probably are not being able to expand the abstract concept of time to include vi sual memory or emotional tags even though you understand the verbal logic of the basic concept why I should not be late very well. Similarly, if you are disorgani zed, you are not being able to draw visual-spatial boundaries around your verba l concepts and create skill enabling visual motor categories. Your concepts are embedded in your experiences and, when you start questioning your representation s in your memory, you start melting the rigidity of your concepts and re-castin g them into success enabling categories. We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water and my te acher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand sh e spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood sti ll, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r " meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barrier s still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away ------- HELEN Keller, The story of my Life Can you hear the sound of one hand clapping? ----Zen koan When tradition thus becomes master, it does so in such a way that what it trans mits is made so inaccessible, proximally and for the most part, that it rather becomes concealed. Tradition takes what has come down to us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those primordial sources from which the categories and concepts handed down to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn. Indeed it makes us forget that they have had such an origin, and makes u s suppose that the necessity of going back to these sources is something which w e need not even understand. ------ Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, "To perceive is to categorize, to conceptualize is to categorize, to learn is to form categories, to make decisions is to categorize."

--------- Jerome Seymour Bruner, American psychologist There s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body. William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

D.Communicate holistically with all your senses Communication is a process of transferring information. Often, we tend to equate communication with speaking; in fact, people who speak well are often said to h ave great communication skills. Perhaps, the ability to speak well can help you a ttract attention in the initial phases of a situation or your career but, ultima tely, your reputation and your power becomes the dominant factor. A powerful per son can get his message across to the audience whether he speaks or not. Communications is a sub-set of the subject called semiotics, or the study of sig ns. Verbal communication is just one of the means by which we can read signs; ot her means, like body language etc are equally important. As a leader, you need to be a very effective communication. What makes an effect ive communicator? One word, RESULTS. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Exercise of formal authority will only carry you so far especially when you are dealing with knowledge workers. You need to persuade your followers to buy into your vision and influence them to go beyond their normal course of duty. In orde r to do so, you need to understand that some people are verbal person, some are visual while still others are feeling based. Theoretically, our verbal, visual and feeling parts should be equally developed and create unity in us. However, w e become more comfortable with one medium. When you are communicating with your followers, you need to alter your pitch to suit your audience. For instance, if you feel someone is a visual person, saying I see your point Will have a bigger impact than saying I hear you So, develop mutual empathy when you are communicating. Make sure you project a c onfident body language that conveys self assurance . Work on your posture and le arn to see meaning in that of others. Be conscious of deeper meanings of the me taphors and the words you are using. For instance, if you use the metaphor of bu siness as war, you will foster a zero sum game(win lose) with your partners wher e as, if you use an alternate metaphor of business as play, you will initiate a different course of action, one which fosters teamwork, for your followers. When you are communicating to a large group of people, you need to ensure that there is no ambiguity in your words, and more important, your words and statemen ts are backed by your actions. As a leader, you need to reduce uncertainty and m ake your followers confident about the future. People have an inherent need to communicate, so if you dont pay much attention to communicating and giving peri odic updates, especially when there is bad news, rumors and grapevines will bec ome dominant. So, formulate your communication strategy and Lead with convictio n. The whole difficulty of speech lies in knowing the mind ressing so as to make our words equate to his thoughts ---- Han Feizi, 2nd century Chinese author and the most Legalism school of politics. The single biggest problem in communication is aken place. ---George Bernard Shaw That which we are capable of feeling, we are capable of Cervantes of the person we are add brilliant thinker of the the illusion that it has t saying.

The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associate s have to say. It s terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best id eas come from clerks and stockboys. Sam Walton Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to sa y something. --Plato One of the tragedies of modern times is that people have come to believe that so mething said by someone in the past, perhaps for illustrative or provocation pur poses, actually represents that person s beliefs at the time. Idries Shah "The medium is the message." ---- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, Rhetoric rests less on rules, which are useful only if they have become second n ature, than on practice and experience ----Erasmus Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, fee l what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audi ence. Dale Carnegie I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most peo ple never listen. Ernest Hemingway A map is not the territory it represents but, if correct, it has a similar struc ture to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness ----A. Korzybski, Science and Sanity E.Create social capital out of Groups and foster teamwork Social scientist Robert Putnam, studied regional governments in Italy in the 1980s and wrote his findings in his book, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Prior to that, the Italian Govt had carried out lot of refor ms leading to decentralization and making the regions very powerful. Putnam and his team found a sharp difference between the regions in the Northern and South ern part of Italy. The North was one of the most prosperous regions in Europe wh ereas the South was almost like a Third World country. A key conclusion of Putn ams study was that the people of Northern Italy was very networked and there was lot of trust and solidarity within them. However, Southern Italy was very fr agmented and trust and co-operation totally lacking among its people. In fact, t he rise of the Mafia in Southern Italy has been attributed to need for protectio n stemming from the lack of trust. Hence, the relatively strong Social Capital i n the form of myriad groups, clubs, civic organizations etc has given rise to Ec onomic Capital and prosperity in Northern Italy. As a Leader, your work is to make sure that you create social capital out of you r followers so that, the whole is much more than the sum of the parts. With the increasing complexity of business, you need to increase the productivity of team s scattered all over the world. When, a group of people come together, it is not necessary that, they will automatically start performing as a team. Sometimes, distrust and conflicts might arise leading to the group output becoming lesser t han individual outputs. In that case, the social capital can become negative. Y ou need to make a conscious effort to build social capital and increase team wor k among your followers. This may be in forms of team building exercises and also from the culture you create for your group. Human beings made major advancements over primates when they started pooling the ir cognitive resources. Such rudimentary team work, among our ancient ancestors

when they could not even speak properly, evolved our language, social structure , tool complexity etc and has brought us to where we are now. As a Leader, you need to consciously direct the evolution of your family, your group and your or ganization and harness the collective potential of your followers. Social Capital in the Chinese context is called Guanxi and refers to the extensi ve networks of influence backed by an informal moral code of conduct where peopl e in these networks help each other out.You need to tap into these amazingly pow erful, though informal networks if you want to do business in China. Ability to network and make contacts with people is considered to be one of the most important skills for success. However, to be really successful through netw orking, you not only have to get to know your contacts, you should try to become part of their groups and an extension of their family; in short, you need to be able to create social capital out of your association with such people. Once th ey feel that your success is their success, then, they will go out of their way to facilitate introductions and translate the Social Capital into Economical Cap ital for you. Tremendous opportunities of creating social capital is being unlea shed by the power of social media. The rules of engagements are still unclear an d emerging. So keep your eyes open to new possibilities and alternate points of view and you may be able to build tremendous social capital in a very short tim e using the scalable model of the internet. Our civilization...has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth - the transition from the tribal or closed society , with its submission to magical forces, to the open society which sets free the critical powers of man. Karl Popper The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not mer ely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Karl Marx Achieving control over change, in respect to lifestyle, demands an engagement wi th the outer social world rather than a retreat from it. Anthony Giddens , Modernity and self-identity In the Chinese worldview, the harmonius cooperation of all beings arose, not fro m the orders of a superior authority external to themselves, but from the fact t hat they were all parts in a hierarchy of wholes forming a cosmic pattern, and w hat they obeyed were the internal dictates of their own natures Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our futur e. Alex Haley: Social capital refers to features of social organization,such as trust,norms, an d networks that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinate d actions ---Robert Putnam, Making democracy work: Civic traditions in Modern I taly Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all type of disposition are for ever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associat ions in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types religious, moral, serious,futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute ---- Alexis de Tocqueville We find the true man only through group organization. The potentialities of the individual remain potentialities until they are released by group life. Man disc overs his true nature, gains his true freedom only through the group. --------Ma ry Parker Follett Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team wo rk, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. Vince Lombardi Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together i s success. Henry Ford

F.Make Redesign the basis for your Organizational design The Catholic Church and the military are some of the sources from which most org anizations are modeled on.In fact, the way a military is organized and the syste ms of motivation of the troops are considered to be more important than weapons in order to win a war. Based on some of the same principles, Scientific Managem ent, propounded by Frederick Taylor and Max Weber(who wrote about bureaucracy an d sources of authority), became the dominant management principle for much of th e 20th century. Scientific Management was based around a high degree of control over employees by management often leading to de-humanization of the workforce. This notion of Scientific Management was first challenged by Mary Parker Follett , who talked about the changing nature of dynamic work environments and then by Elton Mayo, of the Harvard Business School, who conducted the famous Hawthorne e xperiments in the Western Electric Company where he found out that the workers pr oductivity improves when they are being given more attention to and also, when t hey can bond with other workers. This Social worldview of business was further e nforced by Chester Bernard, President of New Jersey Bell Telephone, who wrote hi s landmark book on management, The Functions of the Executive, in the 1930s. He w as of the opinion that an organizations goal can only be accomplished if the Lead ers realize and acknowledge the complex motivations of the employees and create an environment for these motivations to be met. The way organizations get structured and the dominant management and strategic p rinciples behind them keep changing with the macro trends and the structural shi fts in the economy. For instance, management thinking and organizational design in the 60s and 70s was very influenced by Alfred Sloans, My years with General Moto rs. Before Sloan had taken the helm at General Motors, it was a hodgepodge of lo t of brands and individual fiefdoms. However, Sloan managed to centralize the op erations and bring in great efficiency making General Motors a model organizati on. However, well after Sloan, General Motors kept stuck with the command and c ontrol legacy of Sloan, leading to failure, bankruptcy and reorganization into a shadow of its former self. For organizations to be successful across generations and eras, it has to be des igned for redesign and change. Organizations need to use Organizational Develop ment(OD) methods like Action Learning either by themselves or by taking help of external consultants. Action research was conceptualized by Kurt Lewin who beli eved that people are motivated to change if they are included in the decision ma king process. Action Research involves interventions or learning processes in the Action stage which enables to make the change process permanent. OD needs to be on going process of initiating systemic change and creating a nurturing and trus ting climate where employees can share their feelings and examine their beliefs, attitudes, values etc. Different people, whether part of a family, a group or a n organization, see a different snapshot of reality like the poem, The Blind Me n and the Elephant,( in the page overleaf). Hence, as a Leader, you need to show the employees or group members the big picture and enable them to understand the context of their actions. The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything. Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. former CEO IBM

I will argue that the term culture should be reserved for the deeper level of basi c assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that op erate unconsciously, and that define in a basic taken for granted fashion an organ izations view of itself and its environment. --- Ed Schein, Organization Culture and Leadership Sociology was born of the transformations that wrenched the industrializing soci al order of the West away from the ways of life characteristic of preceding soci eties. The world that was created by these changes is the primary object of conc

ern of sociological analysis. The pace of social change has continued to acceler ate, and it is possible that we stand on the threshold of transitions as signifi cant as those that occurred in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Anthony Giddens, A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective eco nomist and evolutionary strategist ---R. Buckminister Fuller There can be no doubt that . Behind my arrest and todays interrogation, there is a great organization at work. An organization which not only employs corrupt war ders, oafish inspectors, and Examining Magistrates .. but which also has its dis posal a judicial hierarchy of high, indeed of the highest rank, with an indispen sable and numerous retinue of servants, clerks, police, and other assistants, pe rhaps even hangmen, I do not shrink from the word ---- Kafka, The Trial Organization Development is an effort (1) planned, (2) organization-wide, and (3 ) managed from the top, to (4) increase organization effectiveness and health th rough (5) planned interventions in the organizations processes, using behavioral sc ience knowledge. ---- Richard Beckhard,Organization Development: Strategies and Models: THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT John Godfrey Saxe s ( 1816-1887) version of the famous Indian legend, It was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. The First approach d the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl: "God bless me! but the Elephant Is very like a wall!" The Second, feeling of the tusk, Cried, -"Ho! what have we here So very round and smooth and sharp? To me tis mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant Is very like a spear!" The Third approached the animal, And happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, Thus boldly up and spake: "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant Is very like a snake!" The Fourth reached out his eager hand, And felt about the knee. "What most this wondrous beast is like Is mighty plain," quoth he, " Tis clear enough the Elephant Is very like a tree!" The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,

Said: "E en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an Elephant Is very like a fan!" The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Then, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant Is very like a rope!" And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong! MORAL. So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen! G.Make a questioning culture the basis of your collective action Schein s model of organizational culture Ed Schein is one of the pioneers in the field of organizational culture. In the above model, he defines 3 levels of organizational culture: 1. artifacts and behaviors: these include tangible elements like furniture, dress code etc. 2. espoused values: these are values like honesty or care for employees whi ch an organization explicitly states that they want to follow. 3. Assumptions: the actual values which a company follows and not merely es pouses. To better understand the first level, you need to train your eyes to SEE. In ord er to distinguish between espoused values and those values really practiced, you need to develop empathy and tap into hidden feelings and understand motivations behind actions. Then only you can challenge assumptions and cultivate a questio ning culture. Some of these hidden assumptions get crystallized into social norms of non-verba l behavior and conducting business. Some of the mores become stronger than compa ny by-laws. Understanding these implicit rules are key to effective functioning in organizations, groups and families. Implicit rules by itself may be good or bad. Sometimes, they facilitate and empower action while other times, they stifl e action. The key is to have a questioning culture so that nothing is taken for granted. Most cultures form worldviews of us versus them. We are supposed to be the good guys and we exclude the bad people(read those who dont subscribe to our views) fr om our group. When we aggregate people with similar views who wants to please e ach other, decision making disasters, in the form of Groupthink, is often a cons equence. A classic example of Groupthink in John Kennedys cabinet led to the disa strous, CIA sponsored Big of Pigs invasion in Cuba. However, JFK learnt from his mistakes and made sure he got alternative viewpoints during the Cuban Missile c

risis which followed soon after. As a Leader, if you go out of your way to court diversity and cultivate a culture of healthy conflict, you can avoid fatal deci sion flaws. Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not George Bernard Shaw "Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a pr oblem." Jiddu Krishnamurti The mere formulation of a problem is often far more essential than its solution.T o raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angl e requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science ---- Albert Ei nstein When a great question is first started, there are very few, even of the greatest minds, which suddenly and instinctively comprehend it in all its consequences ------ John Adams "The wise man doesnt give the right answers - he poses the right questions." Claude Levi Strauss When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, la ws are unenforceable ---- Emily Durkheim Groupthink is a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply invo lved in a cohesive in-group, when the members strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action ------Irving Janus Judge others by their questions rather than by their answers. Voltaire Things go wrong. There is lots of uncertainty, and there are times when you re u nsure of yourself. I ve found that the less people know, the more sure they are. It s this sort of schizophrenic divide between worrying that you re going out o f business and dreaming big that s needed. Sophisticated entrepreneurs know this . Less sophisticated entrepreneurs don t even know whom to ask for advice. They ll ask a marketing and a technology question to the same person. Ask different q uestions of different people, both those who have been successful and those who haven t. You learn a lot when you fail. It s a seemingly small nuance, but they can make a huge difference in a company s trajectory. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla To be or not to be, that is the question -----Shakespeare, hamlet