TAKING CHARGE! THE BEST EXPERT IS ONE'S EXPERIENCE - THE CULTURE OF CONTRIBUTION

TAKING CHARGE!

THE BEST EXPERT IS ONE’S OWN EXPERIENCE

THE CULTURE OF CONTRIBUTION

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© April 27, 2014

RESEARCH:

This is yet another vignette from “Six Silent Killers.”  Today, reading the Sunday newspaper I am reminded how inauthentic existence has become, how dependent we all are, from our national leaders to what we do as ordinary individuals every day.

David Brooks writes “How leaders get to ‘yes,’ ‘no’ and ‘maybe'.”  It is disheartening to read as the jest of the piece is the predominance of “experts” and “consultants” in decision making from the President of the United States, to CEOs of most companies, to leaders in academia to the religious.  This finds, according to Brooks, that in government the difference between campaigning and governing has faded away, as corporate leadership has faded from the mission to promoting the brand, while academia and religious institutions have managed, on occasion, to make 180-degree pivots when it suits them, causing little alarm.

Leonard Pitts, a syndicated columnist who happens to be African American, takes Attorney General Eric Holder to task, who also happened to be black, on the rhetoric that comes out of the Attorney General’s office, rhetoric Pitts claims “we have swallowed whole.”  For example, the “War on Drugs,” which commence in 1971 has not seen a decrease in drug crime but instead an increase in drug crime of 2,800 percent, and Pitts adds, “this is not a typo.” 

Elsewhere I read in the Sunday newspaper that people are afraid to state their views based on experience if those views clash with those of science.  Religion has never had the dogmatic impact of science, not even in the 12^th and 13^th century when the fear was that of The Inquisition. 

There is a Sunday review of the young French economist Thomas Piketty’s book, “Capital in the 21^st Century” (2014).  Piketty apparently excoriates Adam Smith and Karl Marx, capitalism and communism in equal measure, while his critics excoriate him for being “naïve.”  Bully for him following his inter-disciplinarian research wherever it takes him.

Piketty has a problem with American economists whom he sees having tunnel vision, being too quantitative, and economically purists, while he peruses histories and novels to gain an intuitive as well as cognitive fix on the inequality in the distribution of income.  He sees the rate of return on capital could go on forever while Marx claimed the rate of return on capital would eventually fall to near zero, spawning revolution.  Likewise, he punches holes in Adam Smith’s laisser-faire capitalism with the idea that "wealth raises all boats."  Piketty, not surprisingly, falls off the grid to some economists.

Then there is a review of “John Wayne: The Life and Legend” (2014) by Scott Eyman.  Wayne, a fellow Iowan, born Marion Morrison, 1907, crafted his brand in Hollywood before brand consciousness was apparent.  I had read previously Garry Wills's biography of the actor (“John Wayne’s America,” 1997).

Wills's subtitle was "The Politics of Celebrity."  Wayne managed to become the prototype of the American as the “lone ranger” of individualism, dispensing his brand of justice, but apparently without a moral compass or center.  Unfortunately, too many Americans thought Wayne representative the quintessential American and imitated his swagger and bravado when he was only a celluloid image on the screen.

Reading these stories in the Sunday newspaper is one of the reason I write these books.  I’m not interested in people buying my ideas, but as it says elsewhere in this Sunday’s edition, “learning by connecting new information with old information already there” (Robert Frost, engineer and instructor at NASA).  I would substitute “experience” for information, but that is only me speaking.

TAKING CHARGE: CULTURE OF CONTRIBUTION

Proof that the workplace culture supports contribution is not straightforward but is enveloped in myriad behavioral indicators, among which there are:

Workers have a sense of purpose with a short-term minor goal and a long-term major goal. They are natural planners without portfolio. Once they have a clear objective, they don’t return to confirm and report every little iota of progress made. They have a plan, a schedule, benchmarks to monitor their progress, and a target date to complete. As long as they are working within time constraints and “on plan,” they stick to their work. No one develops this schedule for them. It is of their own design and construction and serves their peculiar style of operation.

Workers move with confidence, but not cockiness. They don’t hesitate to seek help and assistance when they have questions or problems. They are available to help others who have the need of their expertise. The work they turn out is user-friendly and shows evidence of understanding the needs of colleagues in that connection.

Workers are learners, not knowers. When someone asks them a question, they don’t punish the person with their knowledge, nor are they afraid to say, “I don’t know.” If they know an alternative source, they add, “but you might check with so and so.”

Workers have opinions and are not afraid to express them. If they disagree with someone, they tell them. They express their disagreement directly and politely and focus on the subject, not on the person.

There are no secrets. Trust is the foundation of all relationships in this culture. There is no claptrap of “on a need to know basis.” Information is up front and available.

The focus is on designing and building concepts that lace together the important ideas necessary to get the job done. Out of this grow practices that are flexible, relevant, and changeable. Nothing is written in concrete.  

The frame of reference is broad, deep, and diverse. Conventional problem-solving is passé, where the emphasis previously was on cause and effect analysis, linear logic and linear curves, and quantitative analysis. Creative thinking is in vogue, not critical thinking. Critical thinking leaves out constructive possibilities and creates adversarial relationships—winners and losers.

Parallel thinking is in, which explores the problem at several levels and perspectives and creates a solution. It does not "discover" a solution.

Change is a natural phenomenon, not an artificial construct with workers in collegial engagement without being pretentious.  Cooperation is not the attention-getter, but the product of joint exploration in the problem solving. 

Workers are self-organized and are no longer externally controlled.  The fire is within, not under them. They understand that their perceptions are constantly in a state of flux, self-organizing, and changing, as they work and experience new things.

Workers are free to personalize their work, founded on the trust that they will do a good job. They are in control. Should they fall short of the mark, however, they seek help and correct their errors accordingly.

In the Culture of Contribution, you sense that it is fun to be at work. Problems occur, but there is no panic. 

What is conspicuously absent is the too controlling, too defining, and too overwhelming manager, who in his effort to motivate instead kills the worker’s spirit. Here the focus is on creating a performance climate by reinforcement of the values of contribution: (a) providing the training and tools necessary, (b) presenting workers with an objective and the time constraints to do the job, and (c) then backing off and allowing workers to achieve the objective on their own. What is remarkable about this formula is that (a) and (b) are commonly provided, only to be thwarted by (c).

What is also absent in the Culture of Contribution is finger-pointing. The focus is on what is wrong, not who is wrong.  Humility is more common than arrogance—“We accomplished” rather than “I accomplished.” Wisdom is much more appreciated than cleverness, so workers don’t waste their time being crafty. 

To an outsider immersed in the flow of this casual chaos, it might seem people are goofing off, but this could not be further from the truth. Work is fluid and dynamic, with action evident by the rate of completion of tasks, with no one standing around waiting to be told what to do next. They know their complementary roles and move to fill them. There is a lot of give-and-take humor but little evidence of complaining. Workers pride themselves in anticipating and dealing with problems. 

Crisis management is an embarrassment. Managers and workers hold each other in equal esteem and support each other to the point that their roles seem indistinguishable.

The most subtle characteristic of the Culture of Contribution is presence. It is that unspoken quality that you feel more than you see. You have the sense that people wouldn’t be here doing this work if they didn’t want to and that they have a high personal regard for themselves and feel no need to assert their dignity.

Workers are selfish in the sense that they have a high need to please themselves, but not at the expense of co-workers. If they didn’t enjoy the work or like their co-workers, they would clear out and not become a nuisance. They are far less self-centered than those of the please-other mentality. Those with an obsessive need to please derive their satisfaction by complaining and drawing attention to themselves. Those of a please-self mentality are more inclined to enlightened self-interests. This is displayed in their enthusiasm for work, which is catching, and is directed toward the service of others, not because it is the thing to do but because it is how they feel.

Workers in the Culture of Contribution see managers and workers as there to serve each other as first customers. They feel traditional management fails to see workers and managers in complementary roles. Some have attempted to educate management into understanding this new relationship. 

No organization, within my experience, has been completely successful in this regard. Most success thus far of the Culture of Contribution is ad hoc or in the realm of informal group activity. Yet cultural change of this nature is not likely to be accidental. Without the direct involvement of senior management, the full benefits of this culture will continue to linger. Meanwhile, conventional wisdom still holds most organizations to conventional practices, which are described here as

Level I -- The Culture of Comfort;
Level II -- The Culture of Complacency.

Level III, The Culture of Contribution, requires conscious competence to establish its behaviors. This compels the organization to make a supreme effort and, yes, a radical departure from the conventional approach to doing business. 

What we have, at Level III, is mature adult workers, not sniveling workers in suspended adolescence, nor do we have codependent bonds between employers and employees. Obviously, the Culture of Contribution threatens the status quo. With this culture, control shifts from a select few to a network of managers and workers throughout the workplace.

The technology is already here begging for this cultural development, but the social dynamics lag, as one might expect, because workers and managers are not ready, nor are they mature enough to fathom its implications.