Tag Archives: culture

Why Play Is Essential to Results

Startup Stock Photos

Startup Stock Photos

Imagine yourself driving to someone’s house for a surprise birthday party.  Every guest has been asked to arrive at a certain time to keep the surprise a surprise. You left home late. You’re in a hurry. You’re now focused on the road in order not to be late. You don’t want to miss the face of your friend completely surprised, between tears and laughter. You’re completely absorbed in one goal:  to get there as soon as possible. You don’t have “time” to notice the surroundings.  You’re all about the destination. There’s no real journey, because you’re not taking in what’s around.  And if someone asked you whether on your way over you saw a house under construction a mile away from your friend’s house, chances are you’d say that you had not seen it because you were too focused on trying to be on time.

Now imagine yourself this time driving along the same road.   The road goes through the Colorado Rockies.  You’re here on vacation.  This is the first time you’ve ever been in Colorado. It’s Sunday.  You don’t have to be anywhere at a particular time.  No real plan for the day besides reaching your next destination at some point, whenever you get there.  You set out early.  You have plenty of time ahead of you.  Chances are this you will enjoy the spectacular scenery, very aware of what’s around you; you’ll notice the particular light on that day, the colors of the mountains, the vegetation, and many other minute details.

Same road, same person, two totally different attitudes; one is about the destination (result): the other is about the journey (play).  So if we accept that creativity is essential in life in order to adapt to change and to keep evolving (whether as individuals or organizations), then we need to allow for and cater to the journey, the playfulness that defines the creative process.  Being obsessed with results leaves out the playful, imaginative dimension of life.  Our tendency is to focus too much on results, because our rational mind tells us that focusing on results is the best way to make good decisions.  This focus also feels more comfortable and gives us a sense of control over the situation we’re in.  This is why we tend to approach efficiency in a linear way.  Yet in a highly complex environment, linear efficiency is not the answer.

It’s really not about results and play being in opposition.  It’s about understanding the need for a collaborative synergy between play and results in order to reach a creative outcome. Obviously we need to get things done.  But without a balance between the two, we run the risk of either never getting anywhere or getting someplace but not being aware of the changes in our environment.  This is why it is important that in our approach to life, or a project, we keep a dynamic relationship between linear efficiency and the random nature of creativity.

How to Evaluate Any Corporate Culture

corporate cultureFor those of you who missed our post last week, we used the Intuitive Compass® to create a Corporate Culture Questionnaire that is suitable for both CEOs trying to get a clearer understanding of how their company culture supports performance and for people in the process of looking for a new job who want to evaluate how well they would fit within the corporate culture of a particular company.  (For those of you that need a primer on the Intuitive Compass, please click here.)

As promised, below is the decoding section for the quiz.  You should have a score between 1 and 5 for each of the four quadrants of the Intuitive Compass: northeast, southeast, northwest, and southwest.

Northeast

The northeast quadrant highlights the administrative function.  It shows how business is managed and organized.  This is obviously an important aspect of business:  how can an organization function well when processes are not well managed or are simply absent?  Typically, a financial institution or accounting firm would score high in the northeast quadrant, whereas a startup may not be focusing on how to manage a business that is still being shaped.  Therefore the important facts here are the nature and maturity of the business.  Businesses with analytical functions at their core tend to score high in the northeast quadrant simply because organizational skills are in their DNA.  Mature business tend to score high in the northeast quadrant because over time it becomes highly likely that systems and procedures have been put in place to ensure smooth operations that support continuation of the status quo.  If a business is still young (less than 2 years old) it is naturally more adaptable; its culture is affected by the nature of the activity but can be influenced more easily because day-to-day activities are less ingrained with habits built over time.  It is also important to evaluate the northeast in relationship to other quadrants; a low score in the northeast can sometimes be of lesser importance in a very high-performing culture (indicated by a high score in the southeast) or temporarily out of balance because the company is going through a major phase of reinvention of its business model, which brings more focus on the southwest and northwest.

Southeast

In the southeast quadrant, we have insights into the focus on performance and the measure of performance.  A high score would be typical at a sales organization like a network marketing company.  A low score would typically be found in a company focused on administration.  This quadrant gives you insight into the level of emphasis that is given to results.  If you are talented at working with metric objectives, regardless of your function in the company (marketing or sales), you will probably be inclined to seek a company with a high score in the southeast, like a sales oriented company.  Conversely, if metrics are not your strength of interest, a company with a predominantly southeast culture is unlikely to make you happy or leverage your most valuable talents.  In this case you may look for a company that is more about creation (southwest) and/ or administration (northeast).  Again, the relationship with the other quadrants is key, especially the northwest and southwest quadrants.  I know of highly profitable large consulting firms that have no sales objectives and no ongoing measure of their commercial performance: however, because they are very strong in the northwest (strategic planning), they deliver great ideas, and phone calls from new clients continue to come in.

Northwest

In the northwest quadrant we gather information on creative thinking and strategic planning.  A higher score is always better, because as we saw earlier, research shows that openness to new ideas is a factor of longevity. However, a business may be extremely successful a few years in a row simply due to a series of great deals (southeast) and bold moves (southwest), without much strategic thinking involved.  I’ve observed that a number of large companies tend to focus more on feeding the pipeline or following the “business as usual” routine strategy to meet sales objectives (southeast).  Often companies focus on market opportunities to boost sales, with little thought about sustainable value creation, which leads them to not adapt their business model to today’s new market constraints and their marketing strategies to a new type of consumer; a dangerous path in the long run.  So it is important to look closely at a northwest score and compare it with the score in the southeast.

Southwest

The southwest quadrant shows how much a company is dedicated to R&D and creation.  This quadrant is crucial in the new economy.  A high score in the southwest quadrant indicates a buoyant culture that can generate new ideas and creative initiatives and can support an entrepreneurial spirit.  What can be problematic, though is a high score in southwest and low scores in the other three quadrants, as it would indicate a company where leadership and management are not well rounded and business functions are not well integrated.  CEOs evaluating their own company should strive for a balance whereby creativity is supported from the perspective of both allowing and funding such activities as well as supporting the marketability of the innovations that are generated by developing strengths in the other three quadrants.  Individuals evaluating the possibility of joining a particular company should also look for evidence of this balance.

From these results a number of conclusions can be drawn.

If you’re looking for a job, it is important to review the relationship between the culture of the company you are considering joining and your own Intuitive Compass® to determine whether it is a compatible match.  For instance, if you are more of a southwest type of professional, you should really consider whether you’re being offered a position in a company that displays a northeast culture, and vice versa.  These results are also insightful if you’re simply evaluating whether or not you should stay in the company you work for.  I have a client, a C-level executive who realized that he would enjoy the southwest culture of a start-up much more than he did the very northeast/southeast culture of the multinational he had been working for since the beginning of his career.  He finally decided to leave his job to create his own start-up: a consulting firm with a built-in incubator to launch new digital companies in the new media industry.

If you’re the CEO of a company and would like to improve the culture of your organization, analyzing the Intuitive Compass in relation to the culture of your company will lead you to identify areas for improvement in every quadrant where a score is low.  You need to put the profile of your Intuitive Compass in perspective with your objectives and also your context at the time of the review:  industry, market situation, mission of the company, corporate strategy.  Each quadrant with a low score or any imbalance between the four quadrants represents an opportunity for growth.  In addition, the Intuitive Compass can help you clarify and articulate to your teams the reason behind the new goals you may set for them.

Environments in Which Creativity Can Flourish

It is a truism that the one thing that doesn’t change in life is change; we are constantly dealing with the unknown. A decade immersed in the performing art and cultural studies gave me a new perspective on the how modern world deals with change. When directing or acting, I had to accept that great art is not about control. It is about having discipline in the preparation and surrendering during the performance. Management, at lease the way I had experienced it, is about controlling the environment to ensure flawless execution and reach the expected results. Management is a powerful means to reach one’s ends, but my artistic journey made me realize that in the modern world, our fear of change and our inability to deal creatively with the unpredictability of change lead us to seek control over the process of life. This means that although management should be about stabilizing our environment to facilitate the natural creative process belying any human activity, we attempt to control the process to secure the results we want; we do everything we can to eliminate the unknown, but in doing so we work against the creative nature of life.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

The Intuitive Compass™: A Framework for Intuitive Intelligence

We know that innovation is more about people and culture than it is about process and structures. Yet many executives find themselves unable to inspire their teams and foster a culture of innovation. This is not a new theme in management thinking, but it is one that has never been more important.

Early on, as my work took me deep into this realm – the world of intuitive intelligence –  I struggled to build a model to explain why this was so.  And so it was by accident, and by now we know that there are no accidents, that the model of The Intuitive Compass™ took shape:

intuitivecompass.gif

Oddly enough, I was using Cartesian coordinates to explain the flaws in our linear thinking. The two principal axes, Play-Results and Instinct-Reason, give us four quadrants (NE, SE, SW, NW). Each of these quadrants represents a function or even a mindset in an organization. Let’s make a few generalizations to explain the framework:

The NE quadrant is the area where reason and results prevail. This is the realm of business administration and management. Most companies excel in this department, led by teh twin beacons of “maximizing shareholder value” and “cost management.”

The SE quadrant is the area where instinct is at the core and results are the rule of the game. This is the mindset one finds in a sales department, or in an athlete.

The NW quadrant is the area where reason engages in a creative thinking process as in strategic planning or marketing (think of an architectural firm or engineering company).

Finally, the SW quadrant is the area where instincts are at the heart of the creative process to invent and create from the unknown and the depth of the unconscious. This is where creators, scientists, researchers, and inventors experience eureka moments. Most executives and almost all companies, even those engaged in creative fields, lack a way to connect this quadrant back into the rest of the business.

The Intuitive Compass™ becomes a tool we can apply to assess and chart progress as companies (and executives) learn to harness intuitive intelligence in four key areas:

Strategy: how to employ intuitive intelligence to create sustainable, innovative business models which deliver real value to customers in their local environment.

Leadership: the transformative power of intuitive intelligence energizes, and builds movements – with clarity of vision and purpose.

Work Culture: the ecosystem health of your business culture is reflected in your bottom line results. The Intuitive Compass™ helps create the open culture you need to succeed in the intelligent economy.

Consumer Needs: map your customers needs and wants using The Intuitive Compass™ – creating a value innovation agenda for your customers.

The bottom line is convergence – with customers, employees, management and leadership.

Going forward, we’ll use The Intuitive Compass™ to chart how companies and leaders can use intuitive intelligence to shape the future – both in their industries and in the larger world.