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Approaching it, I thought, “I should stop,” especially since there was a car waiting to cross a somewhat busy street.

There were no cars especially close in the rear view mirror, so it would have been safe to stop.

I glanced around for a police car, because surely it was against the law not to stop.  (There wasn’t one.)

But everyone else in front of me was running it.  I kept on driving right through the intersection as if it were green.

In the few seconds that I had to make the decision of whether or not to stop, I observed that I should stop, and I assessed that I could stop.  In the end, the priority factor that influenced my decision was that everyone else kept going.

This phenomenon of human behavior was documented in the classic Asch Conformity Experiments, in which most subjects provided an obviously wrong answer to a question if everyone who answered before him answered it incorrectly.

The power of conformity, even in the anonymous scenario of driving down the street, is very strong.  It’s the primary force that builds and maintains organizational culture and locks us in the status quo.

In follow-up studies to the Asch Experiments, it was found that if even one person in the group provides a different answer than the rest of the crowd, the subjects were much more likely to provide the answer they knew was right.

One person, by doing something different than what everyone else is doing, has the power to free everyone else from conformity.

What might you do?

On Sunday, Andy Stanley at North Point Community Church defined Culture as the collective conscience of a group: The ought to’s and the ought not’s.  In other words, the culture is the collection of behaviors that the members of a group generally believe you should and shouldn’t do.

The new definition provides a way to measure a culture as the aggregation of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors.  When you can measure something, then you are able to deliberately change it.

Consider whether the following behaviors are acceptable or unacceptable (or ought to or ought not) within your organization:

• Sharing ideas or feedback outside the “chain of command”
• Holding peers accountable to deadlines or performance
• Celebrating team successes
• Bringing your kids to work when no one can watch them
• Playing practical jokes
• Working on a team outside your area of expertise
• Texting or typing during meetings
• Letting a female coworker have the last seat at the table
• Hosting competitions between employees
• Deference to titles
• Lending a helping hand when a coworker suffers a hardship
• Showing up late to meetings
• Working independently on a project

Of course, these are just the tip of the iceberg.  Each organization has its own quirks and implied necessary behaviors.

Inquiry:  What ought members of your organization do or not do?

For a useful assessment, check out the Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI).  I haven’t used it in practice, but I remember using it for an exercise during my MBA program years ago.

According to Ramsey, the Five Enemies of Unity are:

1. Poor communication
2. Gossip
3. Unresolved disagreements
4. Lack of a shared purpose
5. Sanctioned incompetence

The concept of unity strikes me as more than teamwork.  It’s about being a cohesive group with shared objectives and mutual respect.  Unity is something to strive for as the foundation for organizational change.  Can you imagine the laser focus your organization could have if these five items were eliminated?

Inquiry:  What are the enemies of unity in your organization?

I would love to hear your thoughts.  Please add a comment to this post.

I still have it.  Here are a few excerpts:

CULTURE

Lack of follow through.  We are good at identifying problems but frequently push them aside to focus on other things.  Sometimes we even know the solution and don’t follow through.

INCENTIVES

Sales managers are given a bonus based on accuracy of the total number of cases.  The customer of the forecast is the planning department.  Total number of cases does not help them plan better.  Reward the desired behavior – some measure of SKU or category forecast accuracy.

LEADERSHIP

No one can say anything in front of [name].  He should not be the end of the line final decision maker.  Does he know people are closed-mouthed around him?  His decisions sometimes are reversed at meetings he doesn’t attend.

STRATEGY

What is our strategy?  To sell to anyone who will buy?  Why are we not more discriminating in what we sell?  What is the process that makes us continue to try to sell every combination of goods?

The notebook served a few purposes.

1. A record – it’s easy to lose sight of things that need to be fixed when you either get used to them or move on to something else.  Writing it down preserves the memory, and you can go back and count the number of instances something is mentioned to measure its importance (forecast accuracy was a big deal).
2. An outlet – you can tell by the tone of some of the comments that I was mad or annoyed.  Writing was a way to vent the negative emotion.  It can also help clarify what is the crux of the problem.
3. An integrity-keeper – writing down your thoughts privately can help you refrain from complaining to others.  According to The Transparency Edge, one of the books in my reading list, one way to destroy your integrity is with unproductive criticism or complaining.  (Of course, if someone had found the little blue notebook, that would have been another story.)

Granted, I was not able to fix everything on the list, but I was able to take a stab at some of it.  And that’s really my point.  Don’t keep a journal like this just to document the list of everything you don’t like about your company.  Write with the best intentions to take action and improve the important things.

Inquiry:  What’s in your little blue notebook?  What are you going to do about it?