List
Print This Post Print This Post

Yesterday’s Daily Thought introduced the formula:

(1) Space in the World (Purpose) + (2) Core Beliefs + (3) Non negotiable Behaviours + (4) Organization Logic (Basic People Algorithms) = (5) Company Constitution

What is the Organizational Logic? It is the set of People Algorithms that constitute the basic Code under which the company needs to operate.

Example of the algorithm: ‘If there is problem in A, it is solved in A and not escalated to B, unless X happens’. Rule: an algorithm needs to fit into a maximum of two lines. These are like the code of the operating system. Rule 2: you must have a maximum of 10 algorithms in the company. In a large set up you may need some extra for specific areas, but you should never go beyond 10-15 basic algorithms. If you find yourself going that way, you are writing literature, not grammar.

No, this is not the complex ‘governance’ structure usually reserved to describe ‘who does what’ and who is allowed or expected to make particular decisions, a Rights System. The algorithms sit lower than that, underneath it all, at DNA (values, non negotiable behaviour) level. Organizational logic is to Grammar what Governance is to Literature.

To reiterate, ‘If there is problem in A, it is solved in A and not escalated to B, unless X happens’ is an algorithm. ‘All projects in Product Development are reviewed every month at a Product Review Committee, whose members are F,G,H’, is governance.

What is the connection between beliefs and the logic? In the example above, the belief is that people should be empowered (and that people will accept the empowerment) to deal with ‘A problems’. An opposite belief is, ‘we don’t trust people to do that, so we promote escalation’.

In an escalation system of beliefs, everything goes up and ends up with the Board. Or it does not. Interestingly, escalation cultures create their own unintended consequences of self-defence. Knowing that everything escalates, secrecy and ‘protected bubbles’ appear, and subtle (or not that subtle) conspiracies of silence are generated. Example: the banks. Ok, some banks. Despite their monolithic appearance to mortals like myself, many banks are organised in tribes: ‘the traders desk’, ‘the retail group’ etc. Many recent big fiascos have taken place at ‘trading desks’ that self-protected themselves (as good tribes do, after all, it may be you next time) and they ‘did not escalate’ issues or dealings in ‘grey areas’.

Spending time and investing serious leadership efforts in establishing ‘The (Organizational) Logic’, shortcuts months of alignment in the maturity curve. Usually it all starts with ‘it will be impossible to write the Logic down’, or ‘there will be dozens, if not hundreds, of algorithms’. Once a bit of settling in has taken place, this upfront panicking reduces and people progress, with joy, to the discovery of the very few lines of ‘code’ that should inform everything.

Next is ‘Non Negotiable Behaviours’.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

What are your culture challenges?

Let us help you build the culture you want.
Culture is the new workplace.

 

Conversations about the future of work, don’t start with hybrid vs. non-hybrid, flexible vs. non-flexible, work from home vs. work from anywhere. It’s the wrong start!

The real conversation is about the culture you want or need. Company culture is the petri dish where everything grows. The culture has workplaces. Focus on culture. This is the real driver. This is the true conversation.

We want to hear from you!

What current culture challenge is your team/department/organization facing?  Send your number one challenge to us and we will come back to you individually with some expert resources from our extensive experience in behavioural and cultural change. Email your challenge to: [email protected]

For more complex challenges, we would be more than happy to discuss these with you. Email us at: [email protected] and one of our team will be in touch.

 

Keep up with the Daily Thoughts

Twitter Email

Would you like to comment?

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To search my website, please use the form below.

  Daily Thoughts

September 27th, 2023

Redefining Talent Wealth

The war on talent McKinsey consultants started it with a book of the same title. By focusing on what it […]

September 8th, 2023

What I Learnt From The Monks: A Little Anthropology Of Leadership And Space On One Page

My friends, monks of a Benedictine monastery in the Highlands, Scotland, spend most of the time in silence. I mean, […]

August 23rd, 2023

Can We Rescue DEI From Its Trap (The Label)?

Most of the problems and challenges in organizations, together with most of the solutions, are behavioural in nature. It’s about […]

August 10th, 2023

Restructuring to force collaboration, is likely to create more anxiety than collaboration. Structural solutions for behavioural problems hardly work.

Sometimes restructuring is done with the intention of solving a collaboration problem. ´A people´ don’t talk to ´B people´; if […]

July 18th, 2023

The ‘Impossible To Disagree With’ School Of Management

‘Good leaders have empathy, respect employees and set the example. If you want to change things, you need to have […]

June 29th, 2023

Large scale change is not small scale change repeated many times. Small wins repeated are lots of small wins.

Large scale change, as a series of cascading small scale interventions (often under the philosophy of ‘small wins’) has dominated […]

June 6th, 2023

Culture change is not long and difficult. But we make it so…

I suppose the question is how long is long and how difficult is difficult? In general, business and organizational consulting have […]

May 19th, 2023

Value is an overused term in business and, as such, it’s becoming meaningless

Value, as usually used, means transactional monetary value. Usually it doesn’t mean intrinsic value, or value per se. For example, […]

May 4th, 2023

The importance of ‘critical thinking.’ Your own critical thinking is more effective at making your workplace better than any generic employee survey.

Build your own Employee Engagement argument for free. You can’t go wrong. Here are three baskets full of concepts: Basket […]

April 21st, 2023

´Busy-Ness’ Is A Trap

I went to a big conference where I was introduced by the chairman like this: “Welcome everybody. Lovely to have […]

April 14th, 2023

Training and culture change. The love affair that ends in tears.

It seems to be very hard for people to get away from the idea that if we just put individuals […]

April 11th, 2023

Teamocracies and Networkracies have different citizens: in-Habitants in team-work, riders in net-work

The old view of the organization is something close to the old concept of a medieval city, where citizenship was […]

April 5th, 2023

3 Ways To Get Approval From Your CEO Or Your Leadership Team

Way number 1: My team has developed these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you want us […]

March 29th, 2023

A Cheat Sheet To Create A Social Movement Tip = to shape organizational culture since both are the same.

Mobilizing people. This is another of the Holy Grails (how many have I said we have?) in management. Whether you […]

March 16th, 2023

Critical Thinking Self-Test: A 10 Point Health Check For Your Organization And Yourself. If any of these are a good picture of your organization, you need to put ‘critical thinking’ in the water supply.

Test yourself, and your organization. Do any of these apply? Doing lots, too fast without thinking. High adrenaline, not sure […]

March 9th, 2023

A culture of safety or a culture of training in safety?

Cultures are created by behaviours becoming the norm. Safety is at the core of many industries. Significant budgets are allocated […]

March 2nd, 2023

Empowerment is an output. If you can visualize it, you can craft it.

The real question is, what do you want to see happening so that you can say ‘people are empowered’? Employee […]

February 24th, 2023

A simple question will jumpstart your organization into change. It will also save you from months of pain spent reorganizing your people and teams.

The following line will short-cut months of (building) ‘alignment’, integration, reorganization, team building, coalition building, and any situation in which Peter, […]

February 20th, 2023

Lead Via Peer-To-Peer Networks – If you don’t lead via peer-to-peer networks, you’re only driving your car in first gear.

Peer-to-peer work, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is the […]

February 7th, 2023

Write a script, not a strategic plan

If you care about the journey and the place, you need a story. If you have a good, compelling one, […]

January 26th, 2023

3 self-sabotaging mechanisms in organizations

Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage. These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]

January 10th, 2023

Who should be involved in culture change? All inclusive versus going where the energy is.

Many times, in my consulting work, I find myself facing a dilemma: Do I involve many people on the client’s […]

December 23rd, 2022

Tell what won’t change – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

In any change programme that any organization wants to start, they will start by thinking of the things that they […]

December 16th, 2022

Scale It – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

When creating effective change in any organization, there are 40 rules that, in my experience, are the key between success […]

December 5th, 2022

Assets & Strengths Base – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

For more than 30 years I have been involved in ‘change’ in organizations. Again and again, some fundamental principles, and often […]

November 25th, 2022

Campaign It… is 1 of my 40 rules of change

When you filter out the noise, when you try to extract the core, the fundamentals, those ‘universal rules’ of change […]

October 31st, 2022

Hybrid or not hybrid? That’s not the question…

Culture is the new workplace If you want to have a conversation about the future of work, the nature of […]

October 24th, 2022

‘Powered by Viral Change™’: A Social Transformation Platform for the organization of the 21st Century

When we started to work on Viral Change™, as a way to create large scale behavioural and cultural change, and […]

October 14th, 2022

Corporate tribes, intellectual ghettos and open window policies

We talk a lot about silos in organizations usually in the context of Business Units or divisions. But these are not […]

October 7th, 2022

Peer Networks are the strongest force of action inside the organization

Peer-to-peer works, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is […]