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I was sitting in a meeting yesterday where we were discussing the impending office move. One of the effects of the move could be – if we drove it in that direction – a significant shift in the organization's culture. The amount of space people are moving to is much less than they currently have, and the layout is completely different: open plan, little in the way of cubicle divider height, and much less storage space.

The instruction has gone out that people will get no more that two crates to put all their items in and they are not to bring certain things – personal plug in electrical appliances, etc. The plan is that over the next two years people will practice hoteling, teleworking, free addressing and other ways of working that do not include having a designated personal desk space of their own.

This is a strategy to encourage among other things, lower carbon emissions, more efficient space use, and better collaboration between work teams. Now that the move is imminent there is a certain amount of pushback. People want to take their own desk top fans, personal coffee makers, arrays of potted plants and similar stuff.

At the moment the leadership team is holding its ground, believing that they have cultural 'ownership' and this move is part of their efforts to change the culture. However, all employees are contributors to an organization's culture.

Trade-off decisions are part and parcel of organisational life as people focus on achieving what is most important to them. These myriad decisions affect an organisation's culture in a similar way that decisions on, say, voting and community involvement, affect local and national culture.

The level of involvement and participation that organisations want from their staff influences the degree of impact employees have on the culture. At one level they may want tractable people who turn up, do their job without fuss and go home. At another they may want highly involved creative people who will take the organisation into new markets in an innovative way. Thus they parcel the work into jobs in a way that makes sense at a particular point in time. But the way work is divided has a big impact on the culture.

People make trade off decisions in relation to the jobs that they do and the cultural norms they share. If their job is on an assembly line and they are paid on a piece work basis they will have a different view of the culture of the organisation than a marketer working on branding strategy. Changing the way work is done changes the trade-off decisions that people can or do make in relation to it and thus changes the level of cultural ownership people take (for better or worse depending on the job change). Here's an example relating to a 'culture of corruption'.

NEPAL'S anti-corruption authority has come up with a novel solution to rampant bribe-taking at the country's only international airport – the pocketless trouser.
The authority said it was issuing the new, bribe-proof garment to all airport officials after uncovering widespread corruption at Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport.

"We sent a team to observe the growing complaints about the behaviour of airport authorities and workers towards travellers and we discovered that the reports were true," said Ishwori Prasad Paudyal, spokesman for the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA).

"So we decided that airport officials should be given trousers with no pockets. We have directed the ministry of civil aviation to implement our order as soon as possible," he told AFP.

Commenting on this report , a blogger at the World Bank remarks that business ethics professor Chris MacDonald states that, in fact, there are two types of solutions to problems like corruption: what he calls "people" solutions and "technological" solutions. The solution like the one proposed by Nepal's government falls into the technological category.

There then follows an interesting exchange on whether this type of fix is short term or the first step in forcing a discussion about behaviors that will ultimately lead away from a culture of corruption towards a culture of probity.

Stopping people from bringing certain items to the new office space, the case that I am working on, is part of a technological solution to culture change. However, as it is unfolding it is also challenging existing norms of behavior and modes of thinking that influence the culture. As long as the technological solution is supported by other people solutions (communications, leadership example, rewards and recognition) I think it will be an important part of cultural change. If the leadership team backs down on this technological solution it will have lost an important battle in the drive to change the culture.

Here's an extract from an article I wrote that was published in July 2005 in Professional Consultancy. As I re-read it still seemed as relevant for many of the companies I'm working with today as it did five years ago. Their focus is still on the human resource rather than human capital.

HCM is the management of an intangible and volatile organizational asset. This asset being the collective sum of the attributes, life experience, knowledge, inventiveness, energy, and enthusiasm that the organization's people choose to invest in their work.

"Like financial capital, people need to be treated with care, respect, and commitment if the organization expects them to stay invested. It must also provide them with the returns they need. Just as in managing financial capital, organizations cannot afford to waste their human capital or risk it going to places where it can get a better return. Like financial capital, human capital needs to be carefully allocated, utilized, and managed." (Lawler, 2003).

Unlike financial capital, human capital is much more of an elusive asset – it can be influenced but not controlled. People determine via their commitment to the organization and their engagement in their job whether or not to invest their capital for the benefit of the organization.

Because HCM is not a new label for old HR practices but a profoundly different way of managing individuals in the workforce, there are some fundamental questions that challenge leaders of organizations as they think about transforming the way they manage their workforce (from one of cost control to one of strategic investment to ensure a good return):

Strategic Alignment
• How can collaboration and synergies be created among the different parts of the business to encourage extensive teamwork, create pools of innovation, identify and eliminate overlap and duplication, share knowledge and best practice?
• How can organizations develop their skills in external sensing – identifying trends in customer and competitive markets, government, legal, community and responding in a timely, effective, and efficient manner?
• What alliances must be created and sustained to ensure continuing strategic alignment of human capital with business plans and objectives?

Workforce Planning and Deployment
• What plans and actions must be taken to improve efficiency, reduce cost through productivity improvements; focus on being the low cost producer of products or services, with high levels of customer satisfaction?
• What needs to be put in place to leverage technology?

Leadership and Knowledge Management
• How will leadership talent be identified, created, and retained?
• What leadership attributes are required to guide the organization into the future?
• Who will build the organization's leadership brand and how?

Results-Oriented Performance Culture
• What systems, processes, and mindsets must be introduced or changed to drive HC quality and continuous improvement
• How do organizations acquire and exploit the latest trends in all forms of technology to manage the investment in human capital better?

Talent
• What organizational architecture needs to be changed or put in place to get competent and committed talent at all levels?
• What measurements will be put in place to ensure people are (and have the opportunity to) work at their potential?

Accountability
• Who will ensure accountability for human capital management? And how will they deliver on this?

Posing the questions is one thing. Answering them is another! Briefly, there are four things organizations can do (and many are doing).

1 Appoint someone at an executive level who is accountable for Human Capital -whose background is delivering business results, and who is a strategic yet pragmatic thinker. This is unlikely to be someone with a pure HR background.
2 Develop the organization's HC capability and mindset so that this appointment works.
3 Take positive steps to develop and implement a 'new economy' model of HC asset management linked to the business strategy, bearing in mind that many countries are working towards requiring annual reporting on human capital as an organizational asset. (This is not relabelingling the HR function).
4 Integrate HCM measures and metrics into the overall performance reporting and management of your organization. (Consider tying human capital management to compensation).

Each one of these four things requires careful attention and none are quick or easy fixes. Bear in mind that in changing your organization's thinking about the human side of the enterprise from 'old economy' (HRM) to 'new economy' (HCM) is tantamount to business transformation, not 'better sameness'.

Strategy+Business has an informative article 'Cleaning the Crystal Ball'. In it the authors suggest that

Competence in forecasting does not mean being able to predict the future with certainty. It means accepting the role that uncertainty plays in the world, engaging in a continuous improvement process of building your firm's forecasting capability, and paving the way for corporate success. A good forecast leads, through either direct recommendations or informal conversation, to robust actions.

I waver on my views on forecasting. On the one hand it seems to be a waste of time, and on the other madness if it isn't done. But taking the tack that crystal ball gazing is a risk mitigation strategy makes good sense.

Although predicting the future is difficult to do – who can be sure what 'the next big thing' will be, or how the business environment will change, or which new opportunities or challenges may arise – developing the characteristic of predicting or preparing for the future brings a necessary (for survival) adaptation benefit.

Predictive skill comes in a variety of forms, through research and development labs, through scenario planning (developed by Shell in the 1970s), through employing 'futurologists' to predict technology trends – as BT, a UK telecoms company does, through systematic assessment of changes in demographics, societies, economies, medicine, and so on. Perhaps remarkably given its importance, crystal ball gazing or horizon scanning is a characteristic many companies do not have.

Here's an example of one company where the jury is out on its predictive and risk management abilities. Nestle is one company highlighted in the film Flow: for the love of water,: a documentary investigation into world water and the tussle between politicians, environmentalists, human rights groups, and corporate interests over the control of the supply of fresh water.

Recognising that the significant combined power of its many detractors in the tap v bottle water debate, poses a critical threat to the entire bottled water business that Nestle operates in the company not only issued, in 2008, its own video and a statement in response to Flow, but has also become more vocal about its environmental record and the benefits of bottled water in general. Kim Jeffery, North America President and CEO, Nestle Waters stated (in Around the Water Cooler. Beverage Industry. December 15, 2008) that the company also "plans to engage with the NGOs … and actually sit down and speak with as many of them as possible. 'You know, some of these people simply aren't going to agree with you, but you can hear what they have to say and give them something to think about,' Jeffery says. 'I believe we've got a great story, and I believe this is a really good company and a company that cares about these issues. So we're just going to tell our story to people.'"

The growing opposition to bottled water from many quarters is mounting evidence that the company is at risk – in August 2009 the Washington Post reported:

"Sales of bottled water have fallen for the first time in at least five years, assailed by wrathful environmentalists and budget-conscious consumers, who have discovered that tap water is practically free. Even Nestle, the country's largest seller of bottled water, is beginning to feel a bit parched. On Wednesday, it reported that profits for the first half of the year dropped 2.7 percent, its first decline in six years."

Jeffrey; however, is optimistic "I believe the future is very good for our industry, and we're going to continue to invest in it," he says. "We recognize the next year or two are going to be tough, but I've had many tough years here over the 30 that I've been here. We're going to keep our heads down and keep moving forward. We've got a great portfolio of products, a great corporate culture, a low-cost manufacturing model that's very, very competitive, and I think we're going to do well."

It remains to be seen whether what the company is seeing in the crystal ball will come to pass or whether the company is refusing to look into the crystal ball and see the risks in what many others appear to be seeing. The asset value of predicting without the 'hubris born of success' is one worth harboring.

In my new book Organisation Culture: Getting it Right. I say that

Managers often talk about 'creating a culture …' as in "the strategic global expansion IKEA is undertaking involves creating a global internal culture and business system that connects their brand and human resource strategies via shared democratic company values". This sort of statement is confusing in that IKEA already had a culture and what the firm was seeking to do was to change it from a domestic to a global one.

The term 'creating a culture' is more appropriately used in relation to only two situations.

1. A newly created company
2. The merger of two or more companies with the aim of creating a genuinely new organization as opposed to subsuming one into the other.

Even in these two situations it is not a greenfield site ( that is an undeveloped site but one that is earmarked for development) because organisation culture does not explode from nothing into being. Even in a start up the attributes, preferences, and experiences of the founder(s) and first employees, together with the business model and the underlying business strategy all already exist and play a part in the development of a distinctive culture. "

So I was pleased when I was sent an article by Alistair Moffat, Adrian McLean, (2010) "Merger as conversation", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 31 Iss: 6, pp.534 – 550 that discusses the formation of a new culture following the merger of two companies. Moffat and McLean point out that:

"The approach saw the merger as an opportunity to develop a culture distinctive to the new entity and not as an integration of two cultures, based on "best of both" thinking. It was a deliberate attempt to create the conditions in which something novel might emerge. The emphasis was on cultural formation not cultural integration. Culture here is seen as an unfolding, emergent accomplishment over time – a multi-voiced conversation. The task was seen as discovering, noticing and capturing the emerging clarity, understandings and agreements as they formed fresh, cultural pathways unique to the new enterprise. "

One of the key approaches in the development of the new culture was the use of IBM's Jam technology. This allows huge numbers of people to collaborate quickly and easily in an online event that is carefully orchestrated and managed. Washington Technology, for example, reports that:

IBM's internal Innovation Jam in 2006 brought together more than 150,000 people from 104 countries, including IBM employees, family members, academicians, business partners and clients from 67 companies. In two 72-hour sessions, participants posted more than 46,000 ideas, which resulted in 10 new businesses and $100 million in funding.

There are other collaborative technologies that do the same kind of thing Imaginatik is one. They all work on the premise that, as Moffat and McLean say,

"Pre-defined topics provide focus for discussion of strategic issues in a time-limited event in a way that allows for participation from tens of thousands anywhere in the world. The JAM process is supported by a team of regionally based facilitators who encourage generative contributions, track themes and coordinate the conversation globally. The processing power of the Server computers allows for real time analysis of contributions and provides a capacity to identify emerging trends and themes"

The outcome of using these types of collaborative technologies bears witness to their power. So what stops them from being put to more widespread use? First they require careful seeding and facilitation – collaboration is not just chatting. Second their use needs to be in relation to a specific issue that needs attention and framing these in a way that is useful and usable in a Jam session takes thought and time. Third they are time-bound – much like a pop up shop the Jams and their equivalents are not on-going 'talking shops' as a blog might be.

However, given that culture is about the construction of shared meaning, using a platform that encourages this development makes perfect sense. Although Moffat and McLean say that it's too early to tell whether a new culture is being created in the organization they were working in, they say they see definite signs that a new culture is "indeed emerging in response to these activities and processes. "

Three people in the last week have mentioned concepts of servant leadership to me. I don't know a lot about the topic so went off to look at the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership. There I found that Robert Greenleaf coined the phrase 'servant leadership' in an essay that he first published in 1970.

The website has some clearly written paragraphs that start to answer the question "What is servant leadership" but then one is pointed to a $9.00 essay to get more information on the topic from Professor Stephen Prosser. He takes up the debate and asks whether servant leadership is a philosophy, or a theory, or a set of values, or a list of characteristics, or a series of practices-or some combination of all of these things? He discusses these questions "in the context of the literature and research on servant leadership in the new essay Servant Leadership: More Philosophy, Less Theory. After reviewing the ways in which people try to describe and explain leadership, he provides six reasons why servant leadership is a philosophy, not a theory, concerning service and the practice of leadership."

I didn't buy the Prosser essay yet, but instead went back to one of the articles someone sent me. It's called "Savoring Life through Servant-Leadership", by Richard Leider and Larry Spears, and is available as a free download.

This paper is a fascinating discussion on the idea of servant leadership and aging. The article quotes Greenleaf on this point "Spirit can be said to be the driving force behind the motive to serve. And the ultimate test for spirit in one's old age is, I believe, can one look back at one's active life and achieve serenity from the knowledge that one has, according to one's lights, served? And can one regard one's present state, no matter how limited by age and health, as one of continuing to serve? Robert K. Greenleaf, Old Age: The Ultimate Test of Spirit: An Essay on Preparation, Chapter 8 in The Power of Servant Leadership, L. Spears, Editor, Berrett-Koehler, 1998

The article reminded me of the blog piece I wrote on social system transformation last month which mentioned the end of ambition as Peter Block wrote about it in the introduction to the book Inviting Everyone: Healing Healthcare through Positive Deviance "At the most human level, these [organizational] reforms are initiated by people at the stage of life where they have given up on ambition. They are often people in midlife, in age or spirit, who reached a point where they are ready to look far outside what they were conditioned and trained in to find meaning for what is to come. "

The essay by Leider and Spears picks up this theme and talks about the 'responsibilities of elderhood' which they take the responsibility of older people to give their gifts (experience, guidance, skills, knowledge) in new ways that serve others rather than just themselves. In a way that they embrace as a critical responsibility of their elderhood.

As discussed the new elder spirit is one of "giving it away." The authors give the examples of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter who by "teaching Sunday school, building low-cost homes for Habitat for Humanity, and working for social justice in fledgling democracies, the Carters have committed themselves to both saving and savoring the world."

This all seems relevant as I think about the organization I am working with. More that 36% of its workforce is eligible to retire in the next three years. If they all do so it is likely that there will be large knowledge gaps as well as large tears in the social fabric of the organization. However, in common with most western organizations we are not yet taking steps that show we care about valuing the insights, experience, and skills of the elders in the workforce. Nor are we encouraging them to make a different style of contribution for the betterment of the organizational community. If we could weave together the threads of 'the end of ambition' and 'servant leadership' we might be able to take the organization into a much healthier future than if we just let the elders go without at least asking if and how they would like to lead albeit in a different way from the more usual 'up or out' leadership model.

Last week I participated in several mixed attendance meetings. That is some people were present in the room and some were dialing in. In my case I dialed in (sometimes as the sole person on the phone) to meetings where several people were present face to face in a room. None of these were great experiences or felt like being a productive use of time. Perhaps because the organization I was working with is not very disciplined in either meeting organization or in teleconf protocols.

Most meetings I've attended there do not have an agenda, the person calling the meeting does not usually act as a chairperson i.e. a control point, people shout over each other, they talk to each other on points – despite pleas for 'one meeting' a phrase that has just entered organizational vocabulary, and very few action points are recorded or picked up for action.

Fortunately organization members are at least partially aware that their meetings leave a lot to be desired, and have put up notices in the common areas headed: "Are your meetings effective?" with some points on how to address deficiencies. However, it's noticeable that no points are specific about how to handle dial in attendees, who have particular challenges in participating in badly controlled meetings. Key among these:

• First people in the room forget they have people on the line, so there is no convention of saying "This is Tom speaking … "
• Second face to face participants do not speak into the microphone so it is very difficult for dial in people to hear and follow what's going on.
• Third the fact that the meeting is ill-disciplined means trying to unravel several competing conversations.
• Fourth, the chairperson, or anyone else rarely invites people on the phone to contribute or offer thoughts so it doesn't seem to make much odds whether they're on the phone or not.

These experiences led me to start formulating a guide 'how to run a mixed teleconf/face to face meeting'. But then I realized there must be some already available which proved to be the case. The best one I found came from the CIO magazine

The author, Esther Schindler, makes the point that,

"You may be great at orchestrating an in-person meeting, but running an effective teleconference requires new skills. … It's easy to forget that people who are not physically present have no access to your nonverbal cues. They will lose place, lose focus and lose attention to the meeting. In a meeting room, you intuitively notice if your audience doesn't get you, and instantaneously adjust, but virtually, you won't notice if they don't get you; they won't tell you. So you have to be clearer-more explicit."

The piece goes on to note that: "In a combined audience situation, it is very important to continually think about the remote users' perspective, … They can't see nods of the head around the table, or actions like looking through papers for the answer to a question. They also can't hear low-volume conversations. It's the meeting moderator's role to provide an audible connection with remote attendees. During a pause in the proceedings, for example, describe what is happening, so remote users understand the silence. … Direct commentary loudly and clearly towards the microphone, and encourage other participants in the room to do likewise."

Other useful pointers – those that came up in several of the guides I looked at – include

1. Send the agenda and supplementary information in advance
2. Include ground rules such as when/if to put your phone on mute, use of the 'on hold' button
3. Ensure the technology is working before the meeting opens. Have a technology back up plan (ready before the meeting begins).
4. Start the meeting on time, define the meeting objectives, invite the right people, etc
5. Ask people state their name as they begin to speak
6. Invite people to participate by name. One suggestion, from the comments on the CIO article, is to go around the virtual table; inviting each participant to speak for 30 seconds and no one can interrupt. Note that "Silence doesn't necessarily mean someone has nothing to say or is finished finished. Ask them explicitly, 'Anything else?'"
7. Keep participants focused and engaged during a virtual meeting. It's easy for people to multitask when they're in the meeting it's even easier if they're not physically present.
8. Build trust and social capital – make it clear that the contribution of those not present in the room is as valuable as the contribution of those present in the room
9. Maintain momentum between meetings – start by following up the meetings with a note of what's been agreed and the action items arising.
10. When you're on the phone remember you're still in a meeting. Don't say things you'd think twice about saying if you were in the room with other participants.

Circulating a list of good practice points, on its own, will not make any difference. Enough people in the meetings must model the good practice behavior demonstrating that good practice results in more efficient and productive meetings – that way, one hopes, the norms of the meetings will change for the better.

Yesterday I got the press release for the toolkit I wrote earlier this year. It's just been published and the press release reads as follows:

"New, practical 'change tool' from the CIPD, designed to help organisations gain confidence to adapt and grow

Change and re-organisation should mean 'business as usual' for organisations in 2010, but for many it remains a challenge, particularly in difficult economic times. The launch of the latest addition to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's (CIPD) collection of practical tools, focusing on change, re-organisation and the role of HR professionals within this context, will help organisations adapt and build towards a sustainable future.

The tool, Approaches to change: building capability and confidence, allows the user to think through the issues affecting their organisation, with diagnostic exercises and checklists to complete. It is designed to help HR generalists and business partners who are working to develop change management capability and supporting their staff in coping with a planned disruptive change.

The new tool draws on current thinking and includes up-to-date examples of good practice from a range of case study organisations, including: Oxfam, Cancer Research UK, RCT Homes and Azko Nobel.

The tool allows the user to:

Expand their knowledge and skills on concepts and applications of approaches to organisational change
Provide a seven-step flexible framework for understanding organisational change
Deliver a high quality change management service to clients

Rebecca Clake, Research Adviser, CIPD, says, "This new tool offers a practical and interactive way for HR professionals to plan, prepare and manage organisational change. We feel this new tool will benefit HR practitioners working to manage and minimise any adverse effects from change, particularly in the public sector, which is facing a potentially challenging period of change following the spending review."

Naomi Stanford, author of Approaches to change: building capability and confidence, says, "The prospect of major business transformation can raise concerns for HR practitioners. However this change tool will help them work through scenarios, diagnose problems and develop a coherent strategy, minimising any potentially challenging issues."

NOTE: This practical web based tool: Approaches to change: building capability and confidence is a CIPD member only service and members can download it at http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/corpstrtgy/changemmt/_approaches-change-capability

We're getting a lot of questions from people in the organization that I'm currently working with about teleworking. This is specifically in relation to the business strategy to increase the number of days people telework. The most frequently asked questions are: How will managers measure teleworkers performance? This is a question that comes both from the managers and the staff they manage – see my blog knowledge workers and the Kano model for one perspective on this.

Hot on the heels of this question is managers asking "How much physical space do I need for my staff?" Of course, the answer to this is 'It depends on the type of work, the worker's ability to telework, and the manager's ability to manage people teleworking."

The work can be roughly segmented into six typologies

Deskbound interactive: On Call
'I am near my desk all day long, but spend a lot of time on calls and meeting with people.'" (e.g. an on-site buildings engineer).

Deskbound concentrative: Heads Down
"I come in, sit at my desk and get things done all day". (e.g. policy writer)

Roaming interactive: Meetings, Meetings
"I am often in meetings and barely ever at my desk". (e.g. Marketing and Sales Manager)

Roaming concentrative: On the Go
"I spend a lot of time away from my desk getting things done." (e.g. Video producer)

Remote interactive: Checking In
"I'm not in the office much, and when I'm here I'm in meetings all the time". (e.g. Customer sales rep)

Remote concentrative: Touching Down
"I'm not in the office much, and when I'm here I have a lot to get done." (e.g. IT helpdesk co-ordinator)

Each of these work types requires different space configurations to be available, and different arrangements for booking and using the space. The deskbound interactive people are the one category who are likely to be allocated a fixed desk, all other typologies are candidates for hoteling.

Hoteling is "the office management strategy that considers certain office resources, such as workspaces and equipment, to be shared assets, rather than assets 'owned' by specific individuals within the company. … Hoteling is typically characterized by reservation and check-in processes, and includes telephone switching functionality."

Given the range of work within each typology, and the management of the work and workers, it is difficult to arrive at an optimum ratio of employee to office space. However, some guidance is available. In the IBM white paper 'Working Outside the Box' the author reports the following:

"In the early 1990s, IBM owned or leased more than 185 million square feet of office space with a ratio of office space to employee of 1:1. Through its telework strategy, since 1995, IBM has reduced office space by a total of 78 million square feet. Of that, 58 million square feet were sold at a gain of $1.9B. And, sublease income for leased space not needed exceeds $1B. In the U.S., continuing annual savings amounts to $100M, and at least that much in Europe. With 386,000 employees, forty percent of whom telework, the ratio of office space to employee is now 8:1 with some facilities as high as 15:1. In 2007, in the U.S. alone, the mobility program conserved more than 5 million gallons of fuel and avoided more than 450,000 tons of CO2 emissions."

A Wainhouse Research report Telework and the US Government, discussing the US Trademark and Patent Office makes the point that

And most important, the agency can add over 1,000 examiners a year without securing additional real estate or parking facilities.

When a hoteler comes into the office, they bring their laptop and have access to hoteling suites scattered across the campus, where the ratio consists of 10 Teleworking employees per suite. Even with the suites the USPTO is saving on real estate expenses.

Agilquest reports that "The most successful mobile workspace solutions achieve worker-to-desk-ratios of 7:1, effectively reducing the cost of accommodating each worker by 43%. Perhaps even more significant, employing a mobile workspace management solution removes the ceiling from a company`s growth by enabling it to add innumerable staff without adding to their real estate investment."

For remote workers E&Y, HP, Metlife, and Cisco all use 1:18 MetLife was 1:18 or 1:20,
while for roamers the ratio varies from 1:2 to 1:4.

Getting the space allocation and configuration right is only one part of a successful teleworking/hoteling workforce. The way management and staff operate the system is equally as critical. I'll discuss this in a future post.

In my book on Organisation Culture I ask the question "Can culture be measured?" Here's an extract from the chapter that deals with that question.

Edgar Schein, in The Corporate Culture Survival Guide, discusses several reasons "why culture surveys do not and cannot measure culture":

1. There is no way of knowing what cultural dimensions are important in any one organisation. Even so, the surveys make an assumption that the dimensions they pick up are the same for all organisations that take that survey. In the example above the cultural dimensions being asked about focus on behaviour and include people's relationship to the organisation's mission, vision, and/or values: the "mood" of the organisation, the activities of leaders, what people complain about most, the structure of people's relationships. Without doing a lot more digging for information it is not clear on what basis these behaviours (if they are behaviours) have been picked out.

2. There is little recognition, at least in off the shelf surveys that culture covers all aspects of a group's external tasks and internal integration processes the ways these interact, integrate, and endlessly recombine. This is likely to be because these dynamic factors cannot be adequately addressed in a survey.

3. There is no way of knowing what a respondent is reading into the questions. In the example above, is 'mood' being experienced in the same way by everyone? Are complaints across the organisation the same and why are there only five things to complain about?

4. There is no way of knowing what the individual interpretation of a question is (or, indeed, if the respondent is answering honestly or in good faith), it is a leap of faith to assume that individual responses can be aggregated into a perspective on the whole organisation's culture. In this regard, Warren Bennis made the point that "you can't just pop a culture in a microwave and out pops a McCulture"

5. There is an implication that if the survey results show issues or problems then something will happen to address these. However, there may not be a will to do anything about the issues, for example if there are "clusters of people who feel they have very little impact on how the organisation is run", so what? If the organisation is performing well although lack of impact may be of importance to the responders it may not be a material finding to their managers. (Which, in itself, says something about the culture of the organisation).

Beyond the five reasons discussed by Schein there are several others that contribute to the case that surveys 'do not and cannot measure culture' including:

6. They take a reductionist view of culture which attempts to isolate independent cultural variables (norms, attitudes, values, behaviours, management practices, etc.) and 'treat' them. The problem with this is that even if surveys had meaningful variables they are not independent. Every variable is dependent in some way on every other. The previous chapter has made the argument that taking this approach is like taking an element of the weather (e.g. hours of sunshine in a given period) and assuming that manipulating this as an independent variable (were it possible) would change the weather in a desirable direction.

7. They imply that 'fixing' a culture that's 'broken' or working out what is great about a culture and needs protection can be quick and painless. Neither is the case. (Chapter 7 discusses the question 'Can culture be changed?').

8. They assume, by using the same dimensions in the survey, that organisation culture is homogeneous and shared across all employees. Again this is not typically the case. In organisations of any size there are sub-cultures, counter cultures, and variations in culture (as in the day to day weather analogy described in Chapter 1).

9. They take the view that organisation culture is 'transmitted' through behaviors and actions of employees within an organisation. This does not allow for the complexity of the interplay between internal and external 'transmission' routes and the chaotic and dynamic nature of culture.

10. They purport to be more than a snapshot in a particular time period – over-riding the dynamic and constantly changing nature of culture.

The popular Dilbert cartoon series created by Scott Adams has generated the 'Dilbert Metric' that neatly and absurdly makes the point about trying to measure an organisation's culture using surveys.

"The Dilbert metric involves showing ten Dilbert cartoons selected at random to members of an organisation. Each member rates the cartoons on a scale of zero to ten. Zero means the cartoon is wholly applicable to the organisation while ten means the cartoon is not at all relevant. Each individual's score is totalled up and an average score of all the totals is taken. The resulting figure is an indication of the health of the organisation's morale and culture: the closer the figure to zero, the closer the organisation to the Dilbertesque, chaotic view of corporate life; the closer to one hundred, the better".

Peter Blocks's foreword to a recently released book on positive deviance (aka 'bright spots' in the Heath brother parlance), Inviting Everyone: Healing Healthcare through Positive Deviance makes the point that:

We all have a long tradition of thinking about individual transformation, but the question of how collectives or social systems are transformed by design is still open for discovery. We are familiar with how social systems can be disrupted by forces like technology, or shifts in markets, or political upheaval, but how to reform a social system growing out of the explicit intention of its own members is still cluttered with conventional practices that struggle to fulfill what they were designed to do.

I was reminded of this during a meeting last week when a business unit head remarked that she expected 75% of her staff to leave rather than take on the extra 45 minutes each way on their commute that the office move to a new building imposed on them. Her anxiety was that there would be a total collapse of business continuity if this happened. But at the same time that she worries about three-quarters of her workforce leaving, she is also aware that the move will disrupt the existing social system enough to potentially bring in its wake transformative positive change and a much better way of operating the business.

So how can she use the move in a positive way to achieve that end rather than a decimated and angry workforce?

Block offers a way forward. He remarks that:

Social systems are human systems. They are complex systems, as mentioned in the book. Which means that they cannot be reasoned, persuaded, driven, engineered, or implemented into an alternative way of functioning. They have to be invited, enticed, seduced, engaged into participating in what could be called a self- inflicted wound. Real change in human systems has to be bought, it cannot be sold. The easy term for this is self-organizing or self-managing change.

Suppose we approached the move not from the point of persuasion or coercion but by enticement and seduction, in a way that doesn't scare people or provoke them to leave.

Block suggests some building blocks for how to do this:

The following seem to be the strategic elements that are associated with this idea of communal transformation:

Choice and Invitation. The thread in all reform movements is that they are initiated by choice and invitation.

The End of Ambition. At the most human level, these reforms are initiated by people at the stage of life where they have given up on ambition. They are often people in midlife, in age or spirit, who reached a point where they are ready to look far outside what they were conditioned and trained in to find meaning for what is to come.

Acts of Dissent. Healing and reform begins with an act of dissent. Jung said that all consciousness began with an act of disobedience.

Gifts and Capacities. Healing and reform is interested in the gifts and capacities of ordinary people. It is not interested in the gifts of extraordinary people-the world of celebrity, passing fame, and the meta message that this could not happen to you.

Community Is It. Healing and reform is all about a shift or renewal of the collective. Communal transformation. Individuals play a small role in reform. It is when a community, even if just three people, gets organized and determined that health and transformation show up.

Humanity Restored. Finally, reform efforts have to accept the fallibility in each of us. There is great respect for mistakes, which are essential for learning. There is a place for variability, sometimes called diversity. Real reform avoids the instinct for raising the bar, increasing controls, endless automation and the stress on performance. It reclaims and honors our humanity as the ultimate healer.

Translating these into action revolves around:

1. Looking for signs of health – where things are working well.

2. Listening. Most improvement efforts are about profound speaking. And if the message is not working, turn up the volume. This approach is only about the listening.

3. Choosing positive intent with each person. Acting on faith, rather than cynicism. Not talking about resistance to change, but catching people at their best. Holding the wisdom of people at every level in esteem. Authorizing people on the margin and lower levels to speak.

4. Having top leadership be tolerant and often playing a supportive but relatively minor role. (Not to discount their place or say the leaders did not matter, because of course they do). But avoiding the deference to position that is so common in most stories about "change management."

5. Learning through a peer-based process rather than an expert-based teaching process. Helping people discover what they already know.

6. Thinking in a holistic way. Integrating a common spirit from a wide variety of disciplines or fields of endeavor. Calling on the self-organizing wisdom of complexity theory and the large group methodology of organization development where we know the wisdom that is released when the social system is the focus of attention.

7. Developing and telling stories of community organizing: slow, persistent relationship building, awareness building, and celebration as we transform.