it work. If they are as engaged as the people of the Bakerloo Line, they will pull the organization forward if they have to. But if they are like Tom—unexcited about the organization, uncaring, indifferent, even alienated from it—your competitive advantage will disappear. If they are not giving their best efforts to your strategy, you can forget the dazzling wording of your mission or the compelling reason the organization exists. If there are enough Toms on your team—and the evidence shows there are many Toms, despite what you may think and no matter how they smile at you as you pass—no matter how many times they nod their head in seeming agreement with your goal, your competitive advantage is over.
The sum of what everyone does every day is called “culture.” It is what the majority of the people do the majority of the time. It’s a reflection of an organization’s collective behaviors, the language and behaviors of its people, and the spoken and unspoken values, norms, and systems that exist. Another way to frame the top-of-mind issue in the Partnership for Public Sector’s efforts is, “How do I build a winning culture?” Clearly, it’s a crucial question: Dr. Stephen R. Covey once said,
“The only sustainable competitive advantage that will long endure is the core competency of a high-trust8, principle-centered organizational culture of committed people aligned to a common vision. Your competitors will copy your marketing, your product, your systems, your structure, your strategy, but they cannot duplicate the unique advantage of the trust, esprit de corps, and performance of your people.”
The leader’s main job is to build that kind of culture, and it is the behavior of the leader that determines the culture. Author and world-renowned business coach Ram Charan said, “The culture of any organization is simply the collective behavior of its leaders. If you want to change your culture, change the collective behavior of your leaders.
Culture is the reason a Bakerloo Line worker keeps things on track and gets the job done. Culture is the reason a nurse stops a medical procedure if she spots a quality problem. Culture is the reason military-aviation ground crews run to meet an arriving plane. Culture is the reason a nonprofit leader travels halfway around the world to meet with volunteers supporting the organization’s cause. These are the behaviors of highly engaged people in a high-trust culture: it’s just what they do.
But culture is also the reason a great potential contributor like Tom comes to work every day, smiles and nods, and contributes nothing.
According to Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, “It is common to describe culture as the visible elements of a working environment: casual Fridays, free sodas in the cafeteria, or whether you can bring your dog to the office…. Those things don’t define a culture. They’re just artifacts of it.”9 Culture is much deeper. It is the habitual, instinctive behaviors of people. They are rooted in the character of people.
That’s why to gain the mission essential that counts most—a great culture—you need to go deep. Human behavior is the product of human character and mindset. It’s the product of paradigms—the ways people see themselves and the world around them. To change the culture, you have to change people’s paradigms.
Here’s a simple example of what we mean by a paradigm that drives behavior. Shawn tells this story: “When my wife and I were newly married, we shared one car. She would drop me off at school in the morning before going to her job several miles in the other direction. Then she would drive back at noon to take me to my afternoon job and return to hers. At the end of the day, she would circle back and we would go home together. We put a lot of miles on our car that semester.
“One day, I needed to be at school early and had a lot of pressing projects at work in the afternoon, so we went carefully over the schedule that morning. I had no margin for error, so when I stepped into the parking lot, I knew she’d be there this time. She wasn’t—and my temperature rose. I waited and waited and waited. I worried that maybe something had happened to her. A crisis at work? But after an hour, I determined that if nothing had happened, something would happen once she finally showed up!
“Then, after two hours and fifteen minutes of pacing and fretting and fuming—a stunning insight! I had driven the car myself that day! My wife was waiting for me! I gulped hard, trying to think of something to say to her.
“We both chuckle about it now. The point is, I had perceived the situation in a way that didn’t fit with reality, and when my paradigm suddenly shifted, my behavior shifted too. I went from fuming and snarling to groveling and whimpering. That’s the power of a Paradigm Shift.”
Patrick shares a story about a public-sector leader who practiced a “kiss up, kick down” mentality. He said “yes” to everything his boss said without clarifying expectations and then would force his people to work on projects everyone knew were going nowhere. He had competent, capable people reporting to him, but he wasted their energy rewriting sentences on documents no one would read and building presentations no one would see. His unwillingness to ensure that he knew the desired outcomes of an effort caused his people to stop contributing. They stopped thinking; stopped acting without his specific direction. He had disengaged once-amazing contributors and had no idea his view of things was his downfall.
Paradigms drive practices. For example, if you’re part of a culture that believes in the value of activity over results, you’ll probably spend hours in conference rooms talking about all the work you are doing, but little about the outcomes you actually accomplished. In the end, a paradigm based on a false principle will fail you. Your practices or behaviors will bring you down.
Paradigms drive practices.
Clayton Christensen said, “A culture can be built consciously or evolve inadvertently.”10 Which do you prefer for your team or organization? You can consciously build a culture like the Bakerloo Line, or you can let it devolve into a disengaged team of Toms.
Is your organizational culture working for you or against you? We are inviting you to design your culture deliberately.
How to Effectively Change Behaviors
In many public-sector organizations, the typical approach to changing people’s behavior is to reward or threaten them. This is what Stephen R. Covey called “the great jackass theory of human motivation—carrot and stick.” The problem with this approach is that it treats people like animals, and it works only on the surface and only temporarily. Like Tom, people who are threatened develop a paradigm of fear, so they act out of fear. They will “work” for an organization, but they will never give their heart. They will never speak honestly, contribute freely, or do more than required. They will never, ever tell you what they really think.
They will be motivated all right (motivated to evade responsibility), but they will never be inspired. In today’s workplace, many workers are afraid, and they act like it. They take little initiative, they avoid responsibility, they keep their thoughts to themselves—they bring as little as possible to the table so they won’t get in trouble. This is the legacy of the Industrial Age. You will never capture people’s hearts by treating them like jackasses, but that’s how most managers lead.
You will never capture people’s hearts by treating them like jackasses, but that’s how most managers lead.
The secret to changing behavior is to change paradigms and enact highly effective practices built upon these new ways of thinking. That’s the purpose of this book: to replace unproductive paradigms with inspiring new paradigms and corresponding practices that will unleash new and extraordinarily productive behavior. That’s the job you must do now.
That’s the purpose of this book: to replace unproductive paradigms with inspiring new paradigms and corresponding practices that will unleash new and extraordinarily productive behavior.
The
