Organizational change

Organizational change is, or should be, just one of the processes within the strategy’s frame and company vision. Why then companies have to “struggle” when introducing changes? Why do they need to change? Ever changing environment, markets, products are just pushing the limits of a current stability of the companies and provoke never ending chain of changes.

In his blog Bernard Marr says “a good mission statement articulates the purpose of the company, basically why it exists, what it does and for whom. It should serve as an ongoing guide that spells out what the company is all about. The mission should focus on the here and now.” And where do we see a necessity for a change that a company should follow? In “a vision statement where the goals and aspirations for the future are outlined. It creates a mental picture of a specific medium-term target and should serve as a source of inspiration.”

But are these definitions enough to smoothly drive a change? Company’s organizational culture, as described in the previous blog: “Organizational culture and martial arts,” is the sum of values and rituals defined by rules. It is also a part of a “bigger picture” that surrounds an organization and each of us, as I explained in my TedxTalk. And these substances present difficulties or even block a change. Employees of a company, as others, are perceiving stability as security therefore opposing changes. Consequently, a permanent conflict prevents a peaceful process of change.

Leadership catch: Adjustment and listening

Imagine walking through the woods. You carefully move and step slowly on the uneven ground where even the exposed tree roots are all covered by leaves. We adapt to environment. Although trees might seem static and unmovable they are still flexible and adaptive. They adjust to the surrounding environment and therefore become even more stable. They do not consume extra energy to rise straight up. It is natural for them to adapt to the floor declination when they grow.

We all have to adjust to our environment, or in martial arts to opponent, and to the mistakes you make during the fight. You can do this only by being flexible. In everyday life there is an abundance of events and issues that require our adaptation. But are we able to adapt quickly? How do we know what to do? When someone trips and is just about to fall, his brain starts to function at high speed. When we are very young or very drunk, we just let it go and fall down. Kids roll with it or just fall loosely, and because of this reaction, they are not severely injured most of the time. What about the rest of us? Our first reaction is violent; we start to gesticulate wildly with our hands. We start to contradict the obvious that happens all the same. Most of the time, instead of bending our knees, we stop our fall with our arms and quite a lot of times break our wrists. We forget how to fall and do not know how to adjust to this event that has happened to us many times before in our lives. We react in panic.

Steering and leadership

In live situations, and similarly in martial arts, we learn by repetition and mileage, repeating the task again and again. Try to recall how difficult the first attempt to ride a bicycle was. 

More than a decade ago I was introduced to Tai Chi. How difficult it was to understand the concepts that are so far away from our (Western) ones. On top of it my body coordination ability was proving difficult, remembering the sequences was even harder. Grasping the idea took some time, and so on. But, just like the process of learning to drive a car, where at the beginning simultaneously completing the tasks seems so difficult, patience is the key. The improvement is gradual and within time the steps are deeply ingrained in you. With no effort you drive a car, ride a bike or perform Tai Chi with calm and relaxed mind.

The beginner of one of five major styles of Tai Chi, the Yang style, was Yang Lu Chan (end of the 18th century - 1872). In his youth he had learned another Tai Chi style still in use today from the Chen family. At those times, the knowledge of the art was kept in the families not to be revealed to others and carefully transferred only within family. Yang was an outside apprentice, for which he was treated unfairly. But, being persistent he stayed and persevered in his practice. A story tells that one night, he was awakened by the sounds of hen and ha in the distance. He got up and traced the sound to an ancient house. Peeking through the broken wall, he saw his master Chen teaching the techniques of grasp, control, and emitting jīng to his sons in coordination with the sounds hen and ha. This knowledge gave young Yang a new perspective to control and to steer the opponent with great success.

Internet games and Leadership

Most people argue that games are just for fun and to kill time. How would you consider gaming experience in person’s curriculum vitae asking for a leadership position vacancy? An asset?

Nick Yee surveyed MMORPG players for the first time at the end of the previous millennium. Since then, he has surveyed over 35.000 MMORPG players of the most popular USA MMORPG games. Near 280 respondents wrote about their guild leadership experience. Yee’s findings about leadership can be described in the same terms as in the real world.

First, most novice guild leaders fall into the trap of trying to be everyone’s friend and making sure that everyone in the guild is happy. The most common lesson learned was that it’s simply impossible to please everyone. Second, in any situation where people have different needs and motivations, conflicts will arise. These conflicts tend to be particularly stressful because of the existing friendships and ties within the guild. Inevitably, the guild leader will be asked to become the mediator. Third, many respondents noted that laying down a firm hand was important and that sometimes you have to be tough and say no. Because many guilds start off as small, casual, and friendly guilds, guild leaders often feel conflicted when it comes to disciplining guild members. The next finding was the difficulty in picking the right people for the guild, as well as the difficulty in kicking people out of the guild. In the game and in the real life, the duality of being a leader is well perceived. It is not easy to be a friend and a leader at the same time. The guild leaders highlighted the importance of having ground rules, making people aware of them and being consistent with those rules, which is equal to real-life leadership.

Leadership and stability

Old Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi quoted Confucius: ‘Men do not use running water as a mirror; they only use the still water.’ Only things that are still in themselves can still other things.”

Why the power of stability is so important? The ground on which we stand can hold up tall buildings, high trees, and us as well. Gravity pulls us to the center of our planet. The ground pushes back with precisely the same force, effortlessly in the opposite direction of gravity, and is therefore called the ground reaction force. No wonder grounding is considered so important in martial arts. It resists power and accepts energies. A stability lies within what one knows and how one lives his live each day.

Stability is not equal to rigidity. It is fundamental to all fighting techniques. The ability to control your movements, to develop, and to receive power originates in stability. Losing stability means losing control. Without control you cannot win.  A good fighter knows that during the battle, the sun should be in the eyes of your opponent and not facing yours. Secondly, stability is being able to float safely on each wave of change. Lower a fighter’s position is and the lowest his center of gravity is, the better stability he has. But, while increasing stability lowering a center of gravity lessens mobility. There are always trade-offs but you should balance them into win-win situation.

Leadership and “happy” organization

Have you ever wondered what the ultimate goal of an organization is?

Today’s management will conclusively respond that organization strives to achieve only one ultimate goal: to become a profit oriented “machine”. That is why the key device of modern management is in lowering costs: pushing on suppliers’ side, on employees, on product development and production, to name just some. But is this “ceteris paribus” solution, focusing only on one parameter and all other things being equal or held constant, sustainable in long term? Or it spirally aims down and not up? Cost reduction – instead of cost optimizing in an economic system causes the only possible outcome – less money in circulation. The customers are also reducing and optimizing their costs according to their income.

How often have we heard that people are the biggest asset of a company? They, on the other hand, are costs. If they work, they produce cost, if they attain a training program it is again cost, if they visit a customer ... costs. How differently people are treated from tools that for us represent the investment. But the smallest football club in the league knows that buying a player is not a cost – it is an asset, an investment. And they treat him accordingly. Not so in many modern companies. By, among other things, ignoring this, leads us to risky situations far away from the business objectives. There is a Gallup-poll of a 1.5 million sampling, and the result is: 30% of employees are happy with their managers, 20% are not, and 50% have disengaged themselves in having any feelings at all.

“The Way” of Leadership

Dào – the Way and Confucianism

Although Dào literally means ‘a way’ or one of its synonyms, the meaning was extended to mean ‘the Way.’ And this term, variously used by many Chinese philosophers such as Confucius, Mencius, Mò Zǐ, and Han Fei Zǐ, has a special meaning within the context of Daoism, where it implies the essential, unnamable process of the universe.

Daoism is traditionally traced to the mythical philosopher Lǎo Zǐ , the ‘Old Master’ to whom the text Dào Dé Jīng has been attributed. Dào Dé Jīng is translated as ‘The Classic/Canon of the Way/Path and the Power/Virtue,’ the title was generally used from the Tang dynasty period (618–905).

And the Daoism philosophy owes more to Zhuāng Zǐ (4^th century BE) the author of the core texts of the Chinese way of thinking known as ‘Daoism.’ Zhuāng Zǐ is traditionally credited as the author of at least part of the work, the one bearing his name, the Zhuāng Zǐ.

English: Analects, by Confucius. Östasiatiska Museet, Stockholm. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Confucianism principles are based on the written work The Confucian Analects (Lún Yǔ) ‘found’ by Confucius who lived two thousand and five hundred years ago.  The Chinese language does not use the word Confucianism, instead it is called Rú Jiāo meaning ‘scholar’ and ‘teach.’

Cause and consequence / Urgent and important

In psychology cause and consequence refers to the concept of causality. An action or event will produce a certain response to the action in the form of another event. People tend to have first reaction as a doubt. Doubt is defined as a safeguard, as the demarcation of truth and untruth, as well as the delimitation of the credible and incredible.

English: A doctor examines a female patient. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The basic “misunderstanding” of the concept of cause and consequence - two different parts of the same coin - is revealed time and again when visiting a medicine doctor in basically any country of the Western hemisphere. Based on your complaints a physician determines what is “wrong” with you and then prescribes a medicine. Normally, they don’t bother themselves with the cause of your problem. Why? Is it ignored due to insufficient and incomplete knowledge or are there other reasons? In ancient China there was a different practice when dealing with illness and medical doctor earnings. People gave payments to a doctor not when ill but when they were healthy. When sick they were invited by a doctor to live with him and a doctor had to treat them free of charge. And how do our “Western” physicians earn their living?

System thinking

Nature itself is a system with all parts entangled. Systems are like a human body: they are consisted of parts, and those same parts affect the performance of the whole. All the parts are interdependent. Just like a team of players during a game. But the team is not alone. They have the counter-party, there are judges, there are physical constraints engaged, and also spectators may be present. All of this forms a system. Times and circumstances may change, but systems tend to endure. If we don’t understanding this, wrong decisions, sometimes disastrous, can happen.

Also an organization is a system – a “living” system that performs by its own “will”. Rather than focusing on organizational goals and values, the management practice, when complying with the bureaucratic processes, sets the latter as the ultimate objective. Systems take on a life of their own and seem immune to common sense. When members of an organization feel as though, by circumventing established rules and procedures, they must constantly fight the system, the result can lead to cynicism, poor ethical climate, or forces them to jump from one urgent matter to another instead of worrying about important ones.

To trust the Capital?

You will all remember the oil spill across the Gulf of Mexico back in April 2010?

The oil spills are a classical ‘low probability -- high-impact events’ as the one in Santa Barbara, California, in 1969, when more than eleven million gallons were dumped into coastal waters. From there on, we’ve seen more than our share of these kinds of accidents.

If there are lessons to be learned from those catastrophes, among the first ones are that “pre-disaster assumptions tend to be dramatically off base” and that “the worst-case scenarios were downplayed or ignored”.

We could argue whether this attitude is driving us against all the basic principles of Nature. Uncontrollably destroying the natural environment and exploitation of resources beyond recovery are just some of the profit-oriented results. Is such a conduct responsible behaviour to future generations?

Virtue – Morality – Ethics and leadership

The three: virtue, morality and ethics are not new philosophical terms. To Aristotle the good for human beings must essentially involve the entire proper function of human life as a whole. And this must be an activity of the soul so that expresses genuine virtue or excellence.

Virtue, in short, is a desire for honourable things. Aristotle defined the virtue as habits of acting or dispositions to act in certain ways. In China the term Dé is probably the closest modern English equivalent that means ‘virtue’ in the sense of ‘personal character,’ ‘inner strength,’ ‘virtuosity,’ or ‘integrity.’ Chinese character Dé, written as 德, is composed of the radical彳followed by the number ‘fourteen’ or shí sì (十四) over ‘one’ or yī (一) ‘heart / mind’ or xīn (心). The simple meaning is that one has to have a big heart for fourteen people.

Leadership and Charisma

What makes a leader motivating others? The most common answer I have come across is "charisma." People want to hear what charismatic leaders have to say and do, what they advise. “Charismatic people always combine two messages,” says Fox Cabane. “They give the impression that they have a lot of power and also that they like you, or could like you, a lot. Humans are hard-wired to dislike uncertainty, so when they come across someone who shows none they tend very hard to resist.” Therefore, it is not surprising that in nowadays of crisis many organizations seek to hire those who exhibit charisma.

Today more than ever we are in need of inspiring employees to confront problems, the need of workers that focus on tasks, and voice their opinions. Here leaders and not managers are setting their organizations up for needed transformation. Leaders, which have virtue, vision and “internal” power to do it.

It is not about the definition of a bad or good leader, it is about how he or she should behave and what she or he should aim for to be a successful one.

Why this book (West vs. East) ...

There are hundreds of books addressing the yáng of outer leadership, complete with checklists, game plans, and first person accounts of how successful people exercised leadership. But I wanted to write a book about the yīn or an inner leadership.

Connected to those leadership issues, my other different views and thinking came from my martial arts practice and their philosophy toward life and fights.

I've learned that East wants to be in harmony with nature; the Western approach is to control nature also spurred by the Western way of life and religion. Martial arts in the East have a focus on the martial way and the mental culture united with body, while in the West their perspective is sportier and competitive, where winning becomes their main objective. We could say, using the concepts of Eastern is a ‘soft’ approach as in yīn, and Western is ‘hard’ as in yáng. Eastern mentality is like a bamboo tree which is quick to bend with wind, but in its absence becomes stronger. The West is like an oak tree unperturbed by the wind, only to be ‘unfortunately’ pulled out by a hurricane later on. There are other areas where similar contrasts can be made. The West talks about human rights, whereas the Far East understands collective rights or even more profound, rights for all living life-forms. The West is not economical with energy, whereas martial arts including Tai Chi, are good at preserving it and only call on it in an emergency.