I bought my first Mac in 1984. I didn't want the low end machine with 128K - no, I went all out with the 512K RAM model. We loved our Macs. We had Apple computers and notebooks for over 15 years. But in the 90's my son asked for a PC so he could play cooler computer games. I'd been using PC's at work for over a decade and it seemed to me that Apples were less powerful from a business perspective.
So we switched, gradually at first, eventually replacing our old Macs with new PCs. The problem, of course, was that the PC's crashed while the Macs had never done that. They froze up, had to be re-booted and at times developed maddening viruses. (I have nothing against PCs today - we actually use both systems.) Without ever intentionally knowing it, we lost our reliable operating system and replaced it with one that was a big headache. Because the underlying operating system could crash, we could never be sure that the program we were using would perform for us reliably.
Does that ever occur in organizations? Consider this question: "Does your organization have a high performance cultural operating system?" What we mean by a high performance operating system is that no matter what you are strategy you are trying to execute, what major project you need to bring online, what program you need to implement or improvement you need to make, it will occur because you have an underlying high performance cultural operating system.
High performance cultural operating systems can be built and they can also atrophy. In 1999 I welcomed a new colleague from Boeing who was a highly capable Organization Effectiveness consultant. We worked together on creating collaboration and dialogue across organizations. She confided in me that the reason she left her organization was her concern that the organization was losing its competitiveness because of the culture. The lack of collaboration showed up in hidden agendas, organizations competing internally, and the refusal to engage to work on business issues.
I trusted my colleague deeply and have followed Boeing's performance relative to its main competitor, Airbus. Both are large organizations with extremely complex products and difficult product development and execution challenges. From 1989 to 1999, Boeing had over 50% more orders and delivered 3 times as many planes as Airbus did. From 2000 to 2011, they had 13% less orders and actually delivered fewer planes. This year Boeing has had 1/3 of the orders of Airbus and delivered only 78% of the airplanes as their competitor, Airbus.
To be fair, both companies have experienced massive problems in developing and delivering to market existing and new airplanes in a very tough economic climate. And the exact causes of corporate performance are often unknown. But I would venture a guess that if you surveyed employees at Boeing and Airbus by asking " Does your organization have a high performance cultural operating system?" the scores at Airbus would be higher.
Employees behave differently in organizations that do not have a high performance cultural operating system. Employee act in silos and avoid conflict rather than surface and resolve problems. People end up protecting their turf and the organization finds it difficult to hold people accountable in meaningful and productive ways. Status quo behaviors drive status quo performance.
The most pernicious part of this scenario is that the culture and behaviors that impede high performance are found below the surface. The resistance that occurs from below overwhelms efforts to pursue a new strategy, implement a new process, install a new system or operate from a new structure.
We help organizations surface these below-the-waterline dysfunctional behaviors. If we know the status quo monster, then we can identify effective behaviors that form part of a high performance cultural operating system.
Handling Make-or-Break Conversations
Joseph Grenny's latest BusinessWeek column features new research VitalSmarts conducted on life-changing conversations and highlights results and content from Crucial Conversations Second Edition.
The research reminds us that we need to take control of a contentious conversation before it loses you a client, spouse, or job. Click on this LINK to learn how to do this and why it is so critical.
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