The secret life is the container for everything that’s most magical and exciting about an organization.

1. Shrink-Wrapped in Our Own Thinking:
Thinking That Transforms
Presented by
Ariane David, PhD
Senior Partner
The Veritas Group
California State University, Northridge
ADavid@TheVeritasGroup.com
The Secret Life of Organizations:
Where the Action Is

2. Shrink-Wrapped in Our Own Thinking:
Thinking That Transforms
There’s no need to remember everything or take amazing notes:
this PowerPoint presentation is posted at
www.theveritasgroup.com
The Secret Life of Organizations:
Where the Action Is

3. The Life of Organizations
 Understanding culture
– Visible life
– Secret life
 Unlocking the secret life
 Transforming the secret life
Today we’ll focus on…

4. Organizational Culture and the Secret Life
 Culture influences everything we do and think within the organization.
 Culture extends out to the farthest reaches of the organization
surmounting geographic and social barriers, and it is amazingly
resistant to change.
 Culture is the social container in which everything in an organization
takes place.
 Culture is the greatest hindrance to change but can also be the
greatest help.

5. Why is there culture and how did it evolve?
 To contain the sum of organizational/societal experience
 To transmit knowledge, norms and values
…and as a result
 To maintain order and the status quo
 To contain group anxiety by fostering predictability
Culture simply happens on its own unless you take the lead.

6. The Visible Life of Organizations

7. What makes up culture: visible life.
 Tangible artifacts: what we can see, touch, hear, taste, smell
 Expressed rules of the Game: espoused norms, standards and
values
 Mission and vision statements, and all the things we say about
ourselves
 Conscious/ expressed behavior, language, customs, traditions,
shared assumptions

8. What makes up culture: visible life. (cont)
 Expressed metaphors and symbols
 Organizational knowledge, stories and expressed history
 Formal performance plans and measures, rewards and
punishment
 Formal distribution of power and expressed leadership norms
 Sanctioned/formal communication including social media

9. The Secret Life of Organizations

10. The secret life is the container for everything that’s
most magical and exciting about an organization.
 Creativity
 Engagement
 Real communication
 Commitment
…but there’s also a dark side that thwarts these things.

11. What makes up the secret life.
 The REAL rules of the Game: actual norms, standards and
values
 Shared unexpressed basic assumptions, meanings, and
metaphors and symbols
 What people know
 Unsanctioned communication including gossip,
un-discussables, and social media

12. What makes up the secret life. (cont)
 De facto rewards and punishment
 How leaders actually lead, and how power is distributed
 What really motivates and de-motivates *
 Hidden individual and group dynamics *
 Hidden organizational thinking including how we solve
problems, handle conflict, and make decisions *

13. Hidden Demotivators
 Poor work conditions
 Poor salary
 Poor relationship with supervisor
 Poor relationships with peers
 Management characteristics of supervisor
 Lack of career future
 Meaningless or unsatisfying work
The absence of demotivation does not equate to motivation

14. Hidden Motivators
 Trust in managers/fairness
 Opportunity to be creative
 Personal responsibility and autonomy
 Meaningful work
 Personal values that correspond to organizational values
 Sense of relationship
 Recognition

15. Thinking in the Secret Life of Organizations

16. Hidden Organizational Thinking
 What we say vs. what we do
 Organizational defense patterns (hiding failure and errors)
– Undiscussables
– Blame (the buck flies around)
– Mixed messages and fancy footwork
 Groupthink, group shift, and conformity

17. Positional Thinking
Major thinking errors in organizations.
 Tyranny of Knowledge
 Zero-sum Illusion
 Baboon Trap
 Lost Key Dilemma

18. Tyranny of Knowledge
 Choosing existing knowledge simply because it’s
the knowledge we have.
 Doing what worked in the past only because it
worked in the past, without examining how
appropriate that strategy is in light new information.
 It includes assuming the future will be like the past.

19. Zero Sum Illusion
 Believing that there is a limited amount of “solution”,
including “either/or” and “fixed position” thinking.
 Distributive bargaining.
 Politics today.

24. Baboon Trap
 Thinking for the short term, not how current actions lead to
future outcomes. Ex. Tragedy of the commons, Hawaiian
mongooses
 Seeing only parts, but not how they’re related or how they
form a whole, including shifting the burden. Ex. Auto
manufacturers; the “gap”
 Seeing only symptoms but not the underlying causes
 Attachment to unworkable situations. Ex. Our LIVES!

25. Lost Key Dilemma
Looking for information/solutions/answers somewhere
only because that’s where the information is easy to
access.
Not everything that can be counted counts;
not everything that counts can be counted.
(Variously attributed to Albert Einstein, W. Edwards Deming and a half dozen others)

26. The Secret Life and Organizational Learning

27. Two Kinds of Organizational Learning
 Adaptive Learning: Non-learning Organization
How to avoid pain and get pleasure
• Based in fear
• Uses blame to succeed
• Purpose is survival (groupthink)
• Defensive (organizational defense patterns, blame)
 Generative Learning: Learning Organization
Learning is its own reward
• Based in curiosity and openness
• Uses accountability to succeed
• Purpose is growth and self-expression
• Creative

28. Non-Learning Organization:
Positional (Adaptive) Problem Solving
BLAME
Problem
Fear
Blame / Fault
DefensivenessDenial
Distorted Information
Ineffective Action /
No Learning
Fear /Blame
No learning can take place in the space of blame.

29. Learning Organization:
Non-Positional Problem Solving
Problem
Quality information
and communication
CollaborationEffective action
Organizational learning
Openness / Curiosity
Accountability
Mistakes are the price we pay for learning.

30. Changing Organizations and the Secret Life

31. Changing organizations by transforming
the secret life.
 If you want to create permanent change you need to transform
the culture to support it.
 But first you need to unlock the secret life
Culture transformation can be intentional or unintentional.

32. Unlocking the Secret Life:
Thinking non-positionally
 Realize/acknowledge that you don’t know what’s going on
 Decide what it is you want to know and why
 Approach your research with curiosity not certainty
 Sleuth out the situation
– Observables vs. assumptions
– Organizational “habits” that are implicated
– Hidden organizational thinking and thinking errors
– Think of analysis as building the story line
Breakout: Figuring out the problem

33. Figuring Out the Problem:
Breakout
 What is the problem?
– Observables vs. assumptions What are the actual behaviors?
– Human dynamics that are involved
– Organizational “habits” that are implicated
– Hidden organizational thinking and thinking errors ✪
– How the culture keeps it all in place

34. Hidden Organizational Thinking
 What we say vs. what we do
 Organizational defense patterns (hiding failure and errors)
– Undiscussables
– Blame (the buck flies around)
– Mixed messages and fancy footwork
 Groupthink, group shift, and conformity
✪

35. Hidden Organizational Thinking ✪
Major thinking errors in organizations.
 Tyranny of Knowledge
 Zero-sum illusion
 Baboon trap
 Lost Key dilemma

36. Transforming the Secret Life
 Clearly define where you are now
(what you figured out about the secret life)
 Clearly define where you want to be
 For each change that you want to introduce, ask
– What cultural “habits” need to be created in order to support them?
– What cultural “habits” need to change?
– What are the behaviors associated with these “habits” and how can we
minimize them? How can we strengthen the behaviors we want or change
those we don’t? (more on this in a moment)
 Identify “resistance”

37. Transforming the Secret Life (cont.)
 Define a strategy for the change including how to overcome
cultural obstacles and resistance, and reinforce allies*
 Include how to engage people
– Communication: up and down
– Ask for people’s ideas
– Find out what people need
– Find out what really motivates them
 Be consistent in upholding changes

38. Change, the Secret Life and Resistance

39. Overcoming Resistance

40. Overcoming Resistance
News Flash!

41. Overcoming Resistance
News Flash!
Resistance is an illusion - it does not exist.

42. Overcoming Resistance
News Flash!
Resistance is an illusion - it does not exist.
Only reactions to change exist.

43. Reactions to Change
 All change generates a reaction that either reinforces the
change or pushes back on it.
 When it reinforces it’s called an ENABLER.
 When it pushes back it’s called a RESISTOR. Resistors create
resistance.
 Resistance to change cannot be managed by bull-dozing it. The
only way to deal with resistance is to understand what lies
beneath, and work with that.
News Flash!
It is not human nature to resist change or fear the unknown.

45. Reactions to Change
How, then, do we deal with resistance?

46. Reactions to Change
 Resistance is a natural, inevitable and unavoidable human
reaction to disruption.
 How much of it we have relates to the size of the disruption and
the way in which it is being handled.
 Begins immediately when people become aware of the change.
 Is neither good nor bad.
 Is expressed overtly or covertly.

47. Managing Resistance to Change:
Non-Positionally
 Don’t assume you know what’s going on. Resistance is very
rarely what we think it is.
 Identify specific resistors: people, conditions, fears, motives
(think “fruit”)
 Identify the underlying causes of each of these resistors.
 Identify specific enablers.
 Make a Force Field Analysis for resistors and enablers.
 Find ways of weakening resistors and strengthening enablers.

48. Change Force Field Analysis
Resistors
(weaken resistors) 
List RESISTORS and assign a value from 1 to 6, 6 being
strongest
Enablers
(strengthen enablers) 
List ENABLERS and assign a value from 1 to 6, 6 being
strongest
5 4 3 2 1 ITEM ITEM 1 2 3 4 5

49. Creating a Culture from “Scratch”
TOPRAK: A mind experiment.

50. Shrink-Wrapped in Our Own Thinking:
Thinking That Transforms
Questions/Comments/Feedback
Ariane David, PhD
The Veritas Group
Additional Information
ADavid@TheVeritasGroup.com
www.theveritasgroup.com
The Hidden Life of Organizations
Where the Action Is