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I was reading Po Bronson's stories related to his book What Should I do with My Life. (There are ten of the book's fifty on his website and they are well chosen to show the diversity of opinion on what work means for people). What I noticed was that they give some insight into what doing the job means to the person doing it. Here's an extract from Wendy's story.

As Director of Recruiting, she doesn't look for people whose dream is to work for Restoration Hardware. "Most people fall into things," she said. She's looking for the right fit, not credentials. "Degrees are small minded," she insists, reminding me she doesn't have one. She hires from other industries. One of the reasons her work is so meaningful is she's sort of rescuing drifting souls like the one she used to be, and giving them a home. Or at least a work-home.

All the interviews were talking in various ways about the meaning of work for them – a topic that I not certain that job design people think about when they are developing job descriptions to a standard framework which, beyond title and location usually includes headings like 'Overall purpose of the job', Principal Accountabilities, Job Challenges, Job Knowledge and Experience.

Alain de Botton in his book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work asks the question 'When does a job feel meaningful?' He answers it saying 'Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others' and the research from the Good Work Project http://www.goodworkproject.org/ describes good work as involving three considerations: l) it is technically excellent; 2) it is personally meaningful or engaging; 3) it is carried out in an ethical way.

Now consider the case of Jackie Ramos, the Bank of American employee, recently fired for taking a stand against the bank's $15 "convenience" charges and $39 over-the-limit fees. She says in her YouTube video explaining her point of view: "There was something inherently evil about my job."

Listening to her video I wondered what her job description said the work was and how far it matched the reality of what she found (in terms of her values and ethics). What lessons will she take into her next role, assuming she finds an organization happy to employ her? What led her to take the job in the first place? On this sample of one (plus some experience in the field) I'm left wondering whether designers of jobs, writers of job descriptions and recruiters pay far too little attention to enquiring about the type of work a potential employee would find meaningful or whether people applying for jobs are motivated by considerations that over-ride looking for meaning in their work. I'm also wondering how Jackie could have learned how to change the system she objected to in a subtle way (see Debra Meyerson's work on The Tempered Radical).

I spent a large part of today working on the question 'What is the right organizational culture?' As with all cultural stuff it is much more complex than I wanted it to be and involved a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between books, websites, and article; and then a lot of writing, erasing, and starting again. But I did get a few words written. I just hope that I don't have to delete them all tomorrow. In the course of the website searches I discovered Ethiscore which scores companies on various dimensions of Corporate Social Responsibility. What I enjoyed, up to a point, was the scoring of tea companies.

I'd just got back from the supermarket rejecting my usual brand here in the US Equal Exchange Tea (Ethiscore 17/20 ) and bought PG tips – the first time I'd seen my usual UK brand in the supermarket here (Ethiscore 0.5/20 ) because of a price differential. If only I'd read the website before I set off to the supermarket. I could have developed my shopping list from the highly scored companies – that is one of the options available, and avoided supporting a company of dubious ethics. (Hence my enjoyment only up to a point on the tea scoring – I compromised my principles on price grounds although I didn't know it at the time).

The information on the companies is, so they say, updated daily. Although it's not clear how or where the information comes from to do the updates but an affiliate, Corporate Critic, compiles the data. There's a slight discrepancy as ethiscore scores out of 20 and Corporate Critic out of 15 which is not clearly explained. Althought, it appears that Corporate Critic excludes product sustainability from their ratings (an allowance of 5 points, while ethiscore includes it).

The list of companies they are tracking is long – over 50,000. So Nestle, for example, has an CSR score of 0 while several UK Building Societies score 13 or 14 – the top score being 15. There are some omissions – Philip Morris International (a tobacco company) is not on the list – presumably falling too far below zero to even contemplate including them.

Data for scoring is organised under the following categories:

• Environment – Environmental Reporting, Pollution & Toxics, Climate Change, Nuclear Power, Habitats & Resources
• People – Human Rights, Workers' Rights, Supply Chain Policy, Irresponsible Marketing, Armaments
• Animals – Animal Testing, Factory Farming Other Animal Rights
• Politics – Anti-Social Finance, Boycott Calls, Political Activity, Genetic Engineering, Company Ethos
• Product Sustainability (Organic, Fairtrade, Positive Environmental Features, Ethical Consumer magazine Best Buy, Company Sustainability, Other Sustainability)

It's a subscription service and subscribers can get customized scores for the aspects they're interested in. I still don't know whether having a high ethiscore is a product of a 'right' culture or whether the right culture is a product of a high ethiscore (or even if there is any connection at all between culture and ethiscore) – I'm still working on that one.

The Economist of November 7 had an article on 'Lagrangian coherent structures' which describes these as 'the skeletons of the sea and the air'. The article explains by saying:

To understand what a Lagrangian coherent structure is, it helps to imagine a crowd at a railway terminus, says Thomas Peacock of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who studies the structures. Some people will be arriving. Some will be leaving. And, whichever they are doing, they will be going to and from numerous different platforms. The result is chaos, but structured chaos. What emerges is a shifting pattern of borders between groups of people with different goals. These borders are Lagrangian coherent structures. They are intangible, immaterial and would be undetectable if the passengers stopped moving. But they are also real enough to be treated mathematically.

Strangely Gareth Morgan in Images of Organization uses a similar analogy, taken from sociologist Harold Garfinkel's work, to discuss organizational culture saying that

'the most routine and taken-for-granted aspects of social reality are in fact skillful accomplishments. When we travel on a subway car, visit a neighbor, or act as a normal person walking down the street, we employ numerous social skills of which we are only dimly aware. …

What happens if we deliberately attempt to disrupt normal patterns of life. Look a fellow subway passenger in the eye for a prolonged period of time. He or she will no doubt look away at first but get increasingly uncomfortable as your gaze continues. Perhaps he will eventually enquire what's wrong, change seats, or get off at the next stop. … You will gradually discover how life within a given culture flows smoothly only insofar as one's behavior conforms with unwritten codes. Disrupt these norms and the ordered reality of life inevitably breaks down.

Further Linda Smircich (Linda Smircich. 1983. Concepts of culture and organizational Analysis, Administrative Science Quarterly 28. September) notes that researchers who study organizations from a cognitive perspective 'leads them to view organizations as networks of subjective meanings or shared frames of reference that organization members share to varying degrees and which, to an external observer, appear to function in a rule-like or grammar-like manner.'

So I'm now wondering whether what appear to be learned accomplishments around social behavior will turn out to be a mathematically predictable responses to hidden structures. If so, is culture structure after all and can it be taught (or learned) through mathematics?

In the Economist, November 14, the columnist Schumpeter advanced an argument that 'the corporate world is increasingly rejecting imperial chief executives in favour of anonymous managers'. It seems to me that he/she (the columnist – faceless as hiding behind the pseudonym so unclear whether male or female) is confusing 'blandness' with external visibility.

Perhaps blandness is the attribute required to do a successful job and not run the company into the ground. The men mentioned in paragraph two: Sam Palmisano at IBM, Tony Hayward at BP, Terry Leahy at Tesco, Vittorio Colao at Vodaphone are all reasonably successful at their jobs. IBM's third quarter results, for example, revealed that:

Third-quarter net income was $3.2 billion compared with $2.8 billion in the third quarter of 2008, an increase of 14 percent. Total revenues for the third quarter of 2009 of $23.6 billion increased 1 percent from the second quarter of 2009, and decreased 7 percent (5 percent, adjusting for currency) from the third quarter of 2008.

BP announced underlying profits of $4.7 billion for the third quarter of 2009, an increase of 60% over the second quarter, and well above market estimates. Tesco (the UK supermarket) is delivering strong growth and Vodaphone's results 'met expectations'.

So not too much bland about performance. If these bland bosses prefer to remain out of the limelight so much the better – maybe they're focusing on guiding their companies through hard times rather than doing on-stage performances.

Schumpeter takes them to task for spouting the 'same tired management cliches'. Yes, there is a repetitiveness about the language – but perhaps repetition might lead to something actually changing – e.g. judging companies on their activation of 'the virtues of sustainability' might supersede the judgments on their quarterly profitability which might make longer term thinking a viable proposition and even lead to a better existence for more people?

He/she then seems to equate facelessness with humility (I think that's the argument). But here's the paradox – apparently "business journalists have taken to producing glowing profiles of self-effacing and self-denying bosses" – doesn't that immediately make these bosses externally visible i.e. no longer 'faceless', so they have faces and are also humble.

It's odd (alarming even) that the journalist tells us to "Think of the people who have shaped the modern business landscape, and 'faceless' and 'humble' are not the first words that come to mind." No, exactly that's why we don't want more of the types of people who have shaped the modern business landscape – we don't want a repeat of the last two or so years.

Let's have a column about thoughtful, reflective, low (external) profile, business leaders who are skilled and successful at steadily improving the lot of their employees, communities, and the greater environment. Maybe we could learn from them.

I'm now wrestling with the question "Is there a 'right' organizational culture" which has taken me into some fascinating research papers with esoteric arguments that take a lot of unraveling and reflection. (Or maybe this is just displacement activity getting in the way of actually writing the chapter). One of the aspects that comes into play in answering the question is the gradual shift in societal values over the years.

The World Values Survey that, over several years, has tracked these changes "were designed to provide a comprehensive measurement of all major areas of human concern, from religion to politics to economic and social life" The analysts of the surveys contend that a large number of basic values are closely correlated. In fact, they can be depicted in just two major dimensions of cross-cultural variation

(1) Traditional/ Secular-rational reflecting the contrast between societies in which religion is very important and those in which it is not

(2) Survival/Self-expression values associated with the transition from industrial society to post-industrial societies.

"These two dimensions explain more than 70 percent of the cross-national variance in a factor analysis of ten indicators-and each of these dimensions is strongly correlated with scores of other important orientations".

The map itself is well worth a look as it shows where various countries (in 2005) are on the two dimensions. The narrative that accompanies it reveals, among other things,"that a cultural shift is emerging among generations who have grown up taking survival for granted. Self-expression values give high priority to environmental protection, tolerance of diversity and rising demands for participation in decision making in economic and political life. These values also reflect mass polarization over tolerance of outgroups, including foreigners, gays and lesbians and gender equality".

This is illustrated by the relative positions of Zimbabwe and Sweden the former being positioned as a religious country with members focused on survival, and the latter as a secular country high on self-expression. (This may be self-evident but at least there is some back up data).

A related presentation comments that "On average, the five cultural zones (for which data are available from 1981 to 2006) have been moving toward stronger self-expression values.
Four of these five zones also moved toward stronger secular-rational values. But this move
is less pronounced".

From an organizational culture perspective this is useful to bear in mind as companies try to take a foothold in new geographies and/or work with their internal cultural values which are changing as society's values change.

Each month I am putting up one tool that I use in the course of my organization design work. December's is the 'Ten Principles of Good Organization Design'. It's presented in my book Organization Design: the Collaborative Approach where I note that there is a useful discussion around the principles in Gareth Morgan's book Images of Organization. And I mention specifically Chapter 3.

I've just re-read that chapter to see how I developed the tool as a result of reading it the first time round. (I think that was the order but maybe I developed the tool and then read the chapter – I don't remember).

Anyway – this chapter, and indeed the whole book, is a powerful and provocative read. I bought it when it first came out and I sitll think it is the best and most recommendable book on organization design that I've read to date. Chapter 3 is on organizations as organisms and he concludes the chapter by noting the strengths and limitations of this metaphor.

He argues that the strengths of it are:

• It aids our understanding of the relationship between organizations and their environments i.e. they are open systems and "are best understood as ongoing processes rather than as a collection of parts"
• It help managers think from a survival perspective rather than a goal perspective: if organizations managed by thinking of what they need to survive they will be more flexible and able to seek and make better use of resources than if they are managed on the basis of trying to reach specific operational goals
• It emphasizes that there are always choices and options for survival and that the quality of the choices made count.
• "It stresses the virtue of organic forms of organization in the process of innovation"
• "Finally. The metaphor is making important contributions through a focus on 'ecology' and interorganizational relations"

However, viewing organizations through the metaphor of organisms has limitations and Morgan discusses three of these:

• It leads us to think of organizations as tangible and concrete – much as we could prod an animal. In fact organizations are socially constructed phenomena with member choices that make them active agents in organization survival.
• It leads us to think of harmony as a body survives when its systems are operating effectively. Morgan points out that this type of harmony is rarely evident in organizations – the are not "functionally unified"
• It leads to the danger of becoming an ideology around which management and organization practices are shaped

So when using the tool bear in mind the limitations as well as the strengths of it.

Yesterday at work the repeated discussion we are having on 'service innovation' re-surfaced. Like others we believe there are methods for offering services not just in a 'better sameness' way but in an altogether different way. What seems to be a sticking point is a practical method for helping organizations think through how they can get to the altogether different way.

A site I have just come across Consortium for Service Innovation has a helpful range of tools and resources around service innovation including a paper "Observations on Innovation" which offers some good start-points on the topic plus a useful model (albeit the usual 2 x 4 box) that is straightforward to follow.

Additionally they have a methodology and a related certification Knowledge-Centered Support Principles Certification Exam as a means to test and then recognize individuals that can demonstrate their comprehension of KCS. What I find the conundrum in this (and related innovation services things) is that the way they are offered is not innovative at all. Thus the certification follows the standard US approach to certification "Each exam consists of 65 multiple choice questions and must be completed in 75 minutes. A minimum score of 80% is required to pass a certification exam, unless otherwise published".

Similarly, websites on innovation are rarely presented in an innovative way, and presentations on innovation still use PowerPoint slides. I can't help feeling that companies peddling innovation services training, consulting, or advice must show in their approaches that they are innovative but there (again) is the rub – innovative ways of doing things are somewhat scary. Companies want to know who else is doing something like this, and are frightened off by anything that looks out of the range of 'normal'. So the search for the fine line between better sameness and truly different (with all that this involves) continues in our company.

One of the many emails I get in an attempt to keep myself up to date in what is going on in the world (at least the bits that I am interested in) is from Science Daily which lists recently published research in a number of fields. It's easy to get lost in reading the many intriguing articles that bear no relation to why I am getting the email in the first place e.g. Polyphenols and Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids Boost the Birth of New Neurons, but also it has a good number of research studies that exactly relate to what I am involved in.

I am currently working with a retailer on an organization design project so it was good to find the article posted last week on Talking to Ourselves: How Consumers Navigate Choices and Inner Conflict "From simple decisions like "Should I eat this brownie?" to bigger questions such as "Should my next car be a hybrid?" consumers are involved in an inner dialogue that reflects thoughts and perspectives of their different selves, according to the authors of a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research".

Well any consumer knows this inner dialogue and maybe it doesn't need an academic research study but it's still interesting to see it examined to see if there are patterns, what they might mean, and how they can be useful both to the consumer and to the marketers. The review of the research noted that "The authors believe this study can help marketers and other agencies that are trying to promote more mindful consumption choices.'By understanding the different voices in consumers they can promote communications that model consumers' inner conflicts and present different dialogical strategies like negotiation, coalition, compassion, and compartmentalization that will help them navigate conflicts to make better choices.'"

So drawing this to the attention of the visual merchandizers, and the marketers I am working with evoked discussion on what it might mean for helping their functions improve the company's performance.

What the article didn't discuss was how the consumers, armed with more knowledge about their inner dialogues, might be in a position to better withstand the siege of the marketers. No doubt, a topic for a different research project.

Over coffee this morning I skimmed the Washington Post which carried an article about shops open for Thanksgiving opening with the comment that Thanksgiving Day used to be off limits. Stores closed, credit cards stayed inside wallets, and Americans spent the day reflecting on the joys of family, friends and football before surrendering to the smorgasbord of shopping known as Black Friday.

Now, it seems that lots of stores are open (and obviously online shopping is available). Out of curiosity I ran a route that took me through some shopping areas to see if the article held true in my neighborhood. Well there was a mixed bag of open and closed places. The two most popular restaurants were closed, but the pharmacy was open, as were several coffee shops, but not all of them. Some supermarkets were open but the one opposite me was closed. What was I found intriguing was that of the closed places some had notices informing customers that they were closed "In honor of Thanksgiving Day" but others were simply closed without explanation, although one could make an assumption that it was because of the holiday.
What I would like to have seen is some explanation of how the stores made the decision to open or stay closed. Was it a command and control edict from 'top management', or had employees been allowed to vote? For those opening how was the staffing decided – by lottery, by volunteering, by incentives like double pay, or by threats of job loss? Was the decision made on a purely profit basis (I'm assuming yes on this!) or on a more altruistic serving the community basis – people living alone, or with no family, might like to be able to drink a cup of coffee in a social setting.
Nowhere I passed had any information on the method of making the decision. (I guess I could ask on Twitter and someone might respond). I wonder about this because I spent much of last week discussing with a client group how 'decision making processes' can be designed into an organization, and what the connection is between the organization design and its culture. So in wondering how stores made the decision on whether to open or close on Thanksgiving was the connected thought on how they came to that decision and what it said about their culture. Any input to this musing would be welcome.

Back to rituals (yesterday's post) I'm also wondering how long the ritual of "Black Friday" shopping will hold up. The Washington Post article suggests that it is already under siege – another indicator that rituals change as cultures do (or vice versa). Just to confuse the matter further in my mind when I first heard the words "Black Friday" in the US I immediately thought of "Black Friday" in Northern Ireland – the July 21 1972 bombing (but then discovered that I had renamed "Bloody Friday" as "Black Friday" in my own mind). But the connection took me back into the loop of who makes decisions in organizations (and how they get made), and on what kind of moral principles – an again what this says about the culture of the organization.

I arrived back in the US late last night and today is Thanksgiving. Both my fridge and my social calendars are empty so I am planning to catch up on the work that I have let slip while I've been working in Europe.

Being British, Thanksgiving does not feature in the landscape of observances in the UK (except, I guess amongst US expats) so I'm in the position of being able to be an anthropologist watching what Schein in his book on Organizational Culture and Leadership describes as "Observed behavioral regularities when people interact: the language they use, the customs and traditions that evolve, and the rituals they employ in a wide variety of situations". To me Thanksgiving falls directly into that category which led me to thinking about organizational rituals and wondering whether they merited a special mention in my still being written book on organizational culture.

Looking back over my working life one of the company rituals I remember most clearly is when I worked for Prudential – the UK insurance company At that time its head office was in Holborn (and maybe still is – no it's not, I just checked). Once a year all employees in Head Office trooped out into the quadrangle and sang a founder's song. I have no recollection of the words or how this ritual initiated but I've just emailed the company's archives to see if I can get more information.

A second one was the subsidized breakfast that all Marks and Spencer Head Office employees in Baker Street enjoyed. This seemed to me a monumental waste of money – every morning between 8:45 and 9:30 ish the 3000+ staff in Head Office could go to the restaurant and have a full English breakfast subsidized by the company. Not only was it time off the job it was also a rift creator between HO staff and store staff (who did not enjoy that perk). However, my efforts to stop that daily ritual fell into the same level of effort that would be required to get Thanksgiving stopped in America.

Racking my brains about other organizations I've worked in (Xerox, Price Waterhouse, British Airways) I can't immediately think of rituals that stick out in the same way as the two I've mentioned, although the annual carol service in Southwark Cathedral that Price Waterhouse held probably qualifies – does it still happen, I wonder? I can think of endless routines e.g. weekly leadership team meetings, but I think routines are different from rituals – I'll check the definitions!

Meanwhile I'll consider whether I need to do more research on the topic for the book or just go out and find a restaurant offering a Thanksgiving lunch for bemused English people.

(A useful academic article on the topic of organizational rituals is Rituals Revisited: A New Look at Organizational Rituals)