[Advice] Cultural Competency

The following meme is shared around LinkedIn and it goes something like this:

“The worst phrase in business is ‘We’ve always done it this way.’”

This has to come from somewhere. Not the meme, but the sentiment behind the meme.

The sentiment has to do with three areas that are critical to people becoming (and remaining) culturally competent in their organizations:

The presence of social proof: Whenever people get together, they begin to form tribes, cliques and in/out groupings. We can’t help it. Social proof allows some people to be “let in” to a culture, a way of doing things, or even a language–and encourages others to leave or get pushed out. Social proof is so strong, that when an individual violates it (either through ignorance or malfeasance), people in a group are more likely than not going to avoid confronting the behavior and wait for someone else to do something. This is why we have police officer and the Bystander Effect.

The need to be liked: Whenever people get together, there is an instant “shaking out” of the pecking order. Who is up, who is down and inside of those constructs, who is in and who is out. When people in the group don’t have an internal need to be liked by other members of the group, the group either ostracizes them or shames them into submitting to the group. This is why pre-school, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and Dr. Seuss matter between the ages of 4 and 6, and standardized curriculum, rigid conformity and social norming don’t.

The desire to obey authority: Whenever people get together, they automatically seek to assign power to one (or several) members of the group. In smaller groups, this may be based on skillsets, acquired knowledge, or even personal, physical power. In large groups, this desire to obey will be conveyed to people with titles, degrees, certificates and other pieces of paper that have been deemed to have social worth (there’s that proofing thing again). This is why a car mechanic has more authority carrying a clean overcoat and clipboard, than a car mechanic does with grease all over their hands and in their hair.

So what does all this have to with organizational culture?

Well, since culture in established organizations is driven by inertia and supported by social proof (“there’s evidence everywhere that the culture is working…we all still have jobs”), the need to be liked (“the culture can’t change because that would require someone to stand up and not be liked”) and the presence of an authority figure (“that guy over there in the suit and tie says ‘no’ so we’ve gotta follow him”), the idea that “we’ve always done ‘X’ this way…and we aren’t changing because that’s the culture” is a logical, rational, emotional statement.

But, it’s not an innovative one.

And it’s not a statement that’s going to disappear any time soon.

Better to distribute the meme around LinkedIn that goes something like this:

“The best phrase in business is ‘That person was a rebel, took a risk, changed things, and got fired for it.’”

Would that fit on a shirt?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtrainining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Opinion] Justice Is Blind

Justice is blind.

Or so it is said in Western culture.

The issue with justice is not the fact of justice, which is applied through law, morals, appeals to theology and philosophy. The issue with justice is that the narratives around it are often confused with several other things.

Desire for vengeance. Dissatisfaction with outcomes. Disappointment at a lack of desired consequences.

Crime victim families walk before cameras and state: “We came here for justice and justice was done.” Or, “We came here for justice, but there was no justice today.”

A character in a movie once stated that, “Karma is justice without the satisfaction. I don’t believe in justice.” Another character infamously intoned in another film “For justice, we will go to Don Corleone!” We should remember that Lady Justice carries both scales–and a sword.

Many people scream loudly for a narrative that includes and envelops justice. They even make signs and placards with the phrase, “no justice, no peace” emblazoned upon them, but what they are really seeking is karmic retribution.

Retribution, vengeance, revenge; wrongs righted with immediacy and swift, unambivalent consequences. Punishment, meted out by at the highest order, in the fastest way, with as few innocent people harmed as possible.

There is a revolution underway in both the Western world and at a larger, global level. Societies, groups, cultures and even individuals are confusing the results of that revolution with their own desires for karmic retribution. The karmic retribution narrative begins something like this:

“Never before in the history of world, do we (typically meaning “I” or “my in-group”) have access to more information, more money and more power to transform the world in ways reflecting how we would like it to be, rather than the frustrating, unjust ways that it has always been. No longer will we (typically meaning “I” or “my in-group”) wander the world, merely satisfied with outcomes formerly guaranteed to us by ‘people in power.’ We want more. And if we don’t receive the more we are guaranteed, then we will either move on those in power to get it. Or we will call for justice until we get the material outcomes we seek.”

This narrative underlies many current calls for justice, with the immediacy of the narrative being employed, following ever newly discovered injustices, as wave after wave of more access, more mobility and more individualized power seems to wash over the societies and cultures we inhabit.

But so what, right? Under a Rawlian (or even a Lockean) philosophical world view, why shouldn’t narratives be reframed and cries for justice recried?

Well, conflicts occur when narratives differ, when perceptions of justice don’t match and whenever disruptions happen. Conflicts happen when narratives of injustices (and perceived narratives of injustice) rub up against each other.

And when the only resolutions come in the form of power transfers and shifts, conflicts escalate quickly to violence. And, while this is nothing new (see Don Corleone) one need only look at incidents around the United States (and the world) last year to see the evidence of the conflicts and how quickly and irrevocably they can escalate.

What are we to do?

What is the balance between justice, vengeance, and the more revolution that we are experiencing worldwide?

What is the most unambiguous way for all people (even those who have chosen not to participate due to inability, lack of ability or lact of interest) to benefit from the new largesse that our recent scientific/moral/ethical/legal revolutions promise to provide?

What are societies and cultures to do, even as the center disintegrates and the power holders in culture, media, journalism and on and on, lose out in the shifting narratives of our times?

Who gets to choose?

Who gets to make the world?

We don’t know the answers to any of these questions.

But far more energy should be spent on discussing and solving those questions and advancing the narrative of peace. Much less energy should be spent on advancing narratives that cry out for karmic vengeance, too often framed in the language of justice, while always proclaiming that fairness and equitable treatment are the ultimate goals.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Opinion] You May Have Already Won – Part Two

The future isn’t guaranteed to anyone.

There are so many industries, assumptions and pieces of our culture that are being disrupted by software applications and technology, that it feels like a whirlwind. But there is a growing problem.

In the world of technology, minorities, women and other underrepresented individuals and groups in the old economy are even more underrepresented in the new economy.

The future isn’t guaranteed to anyone.

The problem is not the wealth gap, or the inequality gap, or even the person gap. The problem is threefold:

Access—this is becoming the driving issue of the 21^st century. People who will have access to technology and the ability to access understanding about advancements in technology, (regardless of group affiliation, economic level, gender or nationality) will have access to the virtual/physical integration that mobile technologies and the internet represent. They will also have access to the financial, spiritual and emotional rewards that will flow from this access, first in a trickle, then in a stream, and finally an endless flood. People who won’t have access will be effectively “locked out” of opportunity and advancement and will (to use the line from Braveheart) “scramble for the scraps from Longshank’s table.”
Understanding—there are many people (regardless of race) who have no idea, who, what or how the world that is coming is being built. Case in point: We recently had a conversation with a 20 year old the other day who had no idea that the content he consumes on YouTube was actually created by someone. We had to show him some of the behind the scenes stuff that goes on around here at HSCT in order to make all of this happen. Suddenly, he was able to make the connection between “boring” writing and studying classes and developing the discipline to write, research and publish every day.
Identity—many people have voted with their feet (and their wallets) in this new economic situation. They use Air BnB, Uber, Yelp, and pay attention to Amazon.com reviews. They book tickets to the movies through Fandango, they use Urban Spoon or Open Table to book a restaurant, and they have multiple applications on their smart phones and move with ease through the neighborhoods that each application represents in the community of the internet. However, there are also still people who shop at Wal-mart and won’t buy an I-phone until it shows up there. Marketers call these people lat adopters, but their identities are wrapped up (their stories, if you will) in being late adopters. Identity still is a driver for a lot of issues.

The future isn’t guaranteed to anyone.

Yes, there are many people who “Just want it to work,” no matter what it is—the economy, their family, their job, their car or their house. They don’t want to wrestle with questions about access, have to get more education to interface with new technology or worry about what their mobile phone choices say about them as a consumer/person. They just want things to work in their lives so that they can interact with a scary, chaotic and disquieting modern world with a measure of control, safety, security and reasonable level of prosperity.

These are the people for whom the future is not guaranteed.

Mediators, social workers, conflict specialists, lawyers, and social scientists have a responsibility to act as ambassadors between these two groups, advocate for the groups that are having identity, access and education issues and make the argument to the technical folks that are building our new economy and new world, that there are people being left behind.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] What Cultural Competency Looks Like…

So, if culture matters, and the people in your organization drive your culture forward, what does competency look like?

Cultural competency looks like the founder/CEO knowing what the organization is going to look like. And then sticking to that vision.
Cultural competency looks like the team being composed of people who buy into the vision and will push it forward relentlessly. But, the team is not a collection of mere “yes” men…or “yes” women…
Cultural competency looks like hiring people based on your internal gut reactions—backed up by trustworthy people—rather than merely relying on cultural inertia to move an organization forward.

Culture eats strategy gets repeated over and over, and then a group, a speaker, or a room, laughs and moves forward with their own preconceived notions of strategically implementing whatever organizational changes are deemed necessary.

And, in the process, losing the very culture they were trying so hard to preserve through strategic means.

Deep competency looks like strategy servicing culture in order to move and organization forward, without worrying about change or innovation.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Culture Matters

Culture means something.

We forget about the clarion call of culture in our pell-mell run toward the future. But culture matters, particularly in companies and organizations. Culture, as defined by the cultural anthropologist E. B. Taylor, is the complex whole that includes morals, knowledge, arts, beliefs, law, customs, capabilities and habits, acquired by people as a part of society.

Culture means human beings connecting with other human beings.

Start-ups get this sometimes. The ones that don’t fail, the ones that do succeed beyond their wildest dreams.

Established organizations forget that culture matters after a certain level of cultural inertia happens. When organizations begin hiring, and it expands to more than 150 people, culture is often forgotten in the pursuit of making profits and appealing to the shareholders’ demands.

Nonprofits underestimate the power of the culture they create and that they help develop. Then they wonder why they can’t raise more money, or struggle to justify grant funding year-on-year.

All of these different stories about culture in different organizations create the dynamic cloud that covers the creation of a society, and an overall culture.

There are three things to remember when developing a culture for your project:

Conflicts will happen, whether you have 30 people or 150 people. It seems cool when you’re talking about 30 people and “how exciting it all is,” but how people deal with conflicts will determine how the project grows…or doesn’t…
Hiring people is really important. Teams, belonging, and pedigree matter. Or they don’t. When building a company culture, knowing what you’re going to emphasize versus what you’re not going to emphasize is important. And it has to show up on more than just your website’s home page.
Failure is not an option, but learning is. This is not an excuse to make bad decisions. There are enough of those excuses out there. However, learning about how people—customers, clients, investors, fans, audience members, etc.—react and respond to your product and your culture, gives you an opportunity toward growth. Typically called a feedback loop, we here at HSCT call it a learning curve.

Here is the challenge question for your organization: If culture means something when developing your project, when was the last time you took the time, to examine how your culture could be better?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] Building Better Work Relationships

Relationships at work are third level relationships.

First level relationships are familial ones, all the way from the family in your house that you grew up with to your cousin Wanda in Oklahoma. Second level relationships are close friends and associates, schoolmates, neighbors, etc.

But the people that we work with are not ones that we would have chosen. Even in an era of choosing yourself, or four-hour work weeks, the vast majority of us still work under conditions that resemble the ones that our grandparents worked under, albeit with less pollution and physical effort.

And, for the foreseeable future, since human beings are going to continue to build organizations, establish and maintain hierarchies, and engage with mechanisms of active and passive social control, there will always be workplaces.

Always.

With that being said, the question becomes, how does a person build better work relationships? With everything that we now know about neuroscience, psychology, the genetic code and even the world of software and computers, developing the resources to build better workplaces should be easy. But it’s not. And what’s even more distressing is that the most common solution proposed, with access to all that knowledge and data, is to replace humans with software programs and/or mechanical objects.

Robots are fun and AI is coming, but we are a long, long way from building something—well—more human than human. So, here are the top five ways to build better relationships, one human to another:

Empathy is huge—and we don’t mean in the “touchy feely” way that empathy is often thought of. In a workplace culture, empathy begins with Wheaton’s Law and ends at actively listening to someone else. Even if you disagree with them.
Do emotional labor—we wrote about this last week, but it bears repeating: in the economy that we all work in—no matter if we are co-working with others or on a distributed team—doing the hard work of caring, listening and acting out of self-interested selflessness is the only way forward.
Remove the fear—acting out of fear: of getting fired, of irritating a boss, or of confronting a co-worker, has to be jettisoned. Fear is a common reaction when things that matter to us (i.e. our values, our needs our emotions, etc.) are threatened. But, the brain only knows what we tell it. So tell it good, factual self-talk, rather than allowing biases and false ideas to fill the brain space.
Lead on doing the hard things—this is the 2nd hardest thing to do in building better work relationships, because there are so many things that we would rather avoid. But doing the hard things that are also the right things, is the only way that an organization can survive. Which leads into the last thing…
Leave if it doesn’t fit—most of the pushback that we get around the five things comes down to this statement “If I do all of these things that you suggest and nothing changes, not even the place I work, then what do I do?” This statement reveals a common workplace false parallel: A person’s value is not determined by their work. There are other positions, cultures and value systems represented in other workplaces out there. And if you’ve already done the hard work of building better work relationships, do you think that this work will make you less employable in the future, or more employable in the future?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] Trust is not Scalable

Conflict resolution is not scalable, because trust is not scalable.

Make no mistake though, the products of trust are scalable. And the results of trusting an organization, a brand or even another person are scalable.

But trust is not scalable.

And the reason that it’s not is nuerologically and psychologically complicated, but basically, trust wanes the further removed my relationship is from another person. Not a brand, and organization or a system, but a person.

Conflict resolution in organizations, thus becomes unscalable, because the trust at the core of resolving conflicts doesn’t exist in the first place, because the parties involved are far too separated by the barriers of organization, values, culture, mindsets, behaviors, beliefs, etc.

This is the reason mediation works so well for neighborhood disputes, but not so well for sexual harassment lawsuits. When conflict resolution processes become a strategy, rather than part of an overall organizational culture, they fail miserably. Mediation, conflict resolution and other forms of ADR, should be at the core of a culture’s development as an organization grows, so that the products of trust—increased revenue and productivity to mention just a couple—become expected.

And so that, when disputes arise—and they will—the trust is already there and litigation (and even more untrustworthy, unscalable process) becomes unthinkable.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Values as a Service

Even in a high tech, money saturated, hard charging culture, values, just like symbols, still matter.

Think of values in terms of the following metaphor: If values were the cloud, the story that we tell ourselves and others through our behaviors, language choices, and other means, would be the apps in the cloud.

The Ellen Pao case, the issues in Indiana, the arguments and disagreements over healthcare, how the government should spend money (guns vs. butter) and even the arguments and disagreements in your organization, all come down to values.

Culture comes about when people come together to form a community and abide with each other. Those people typically agree—either tacitly or openly—on the shared values their culture will demonstrate to the wider world. And what values will be reinforced with each other. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then what does the Ellen Pao verdict say about the culture of the American judicial system, the culture of litigation in this country, and the culture of Silicon Valley VC’s?

Well, we here at HSCT believe that the verdict says three things:

The culture of Silicon Valley is functioning exactly as it was meant to. Which means that it is going to have to fundamentally be broken and reshaped to mirror where the business culture of America is going: Silicon Valley VC culture is not alone here. All over America this is happening, in corporate boardrooms and splashed across websites. And no, public shaming of “guilty” VC’s, a la, Brendan Eich isn’t going to change anything significantly, either.
The culture of litigation is overdone, overblown and over relied upon to “resolve” some of the most value driven issues in the country today: From healthcare legislation to gay rights, the courts and litigation are being relied upon to settle arguments that are about the human heart, emotions and values. But the law—which reflects and supports a dominant value system—cannot change individual hearts or values. Not even a little. Don’t believe us? Think about this: How many racists are still doing business, building companies and making money in America, post-1968?
The culture of the American judicial system has to change: Should issues be brought before the court? Yes, but don’t expect justice. People usually sue when their feelings are hurt (a heart based issue), when they feel as though they aren’t going to be treated fairly (a heart based issue) or they feel as though they won’t be heard (a heart based issue). This is the place where restorative justice circles, public conversation projects and other heart based, values based process need to be implemented at a wider cultural scale. Don’t believe me? Ok. How many personal stories from women who have been (or are being) sexually harassed, can the VCs at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (or other male dominated, hyper competitive VC firms), possibly hear in a room, before they change their minds and hearts? 200? 300? 1,000?

Tech oriented people, engineers, software developers, finance geniuses, and management leaders, like to operate in numbers, because numbers seem value neutral. After all, who can argue that 2+2 =4? But, when they have to deal with people, sometimes, they would rather not. Will VC’s in the Valley clam up, slowdown in hiring women, and become more closed, following the Ellen Pao verdict?

Maybe. Maybe it would be better for the culture of VC firms to model the attitude they try to foster in the culture of the start-ups they fund. But the rational hearts of the people who believe in numbers rather than values, are the ones that have to shift before the culture will.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] You Are Doing Great Things, I Know It…

Performance evaluations, feedback, criticism and “suggestions for improvement” in people’s performance all serve as ways to separate leaders from followers.

We had a conversation this week about caring (see here) and we keep coming back to the idea when we think about how leaders should encourage their followers’ hearts. Most of the time, people analyze what we do—as either leaders or followers—and then make judgments about our performance. Often this judgment is then equated with a person’s character, wisdom or ethics.

But organizations and institutions can’t—and don’t—care. Only people do. And in order to encourage people to continue to follow, leaders must care about the people that they are leading, enough to guide them through the necessary risks to execute the mission.

Performance evaluations, feedback, “suggestions for improvement,” criticism, and many other forms of feedback are often used as a cover for the vulnerability that really caring about followers requires.

“But what do you do if people aren’t doing the ‘right’ thing and screwing up the process?”

This question is a corporate variation on “How do you tell the truth in grace to someone?” and it’s an excellent one. Here are three ideas:

Know what you care about as a leader and why—Some leaders care about process more than people. If that’s the case, recognize and praise the process, rather than attempting to recognize and praise the person.
Be genuine with yourself as a leader—Some leaders struggle with self-awareness. But feedback, criticism and other forms of “improvement” lectures don’t work, and can often be seen as blameing and excuse making. Being genuine with yourself means care about what your role is before caring about your followers’ roles.
Seek to understand first—Some leaders are self-absorbed, narcissistic and vainglorious. Harsh sounding words, yes, but in a world where genuine recognition of others is the only way to effectively encourage a heartful followership, a leader must seek to understand their followers’ hearts—and care about them.

In the short run, caring about people and building relationships is the only way to go for a leader. Celebration and rituals, combined with the importance of symbols, done with authenticity and heartfelt pride in ones followers, can do more to cement long term growth than any amount of money, service development or process change.

Encouraging the heart requires caring about people and creating long term, value based relationships.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] This Moment of Clarity

Leadership requires faithfulness to be effective.

It is often to followers that the character of faithfulness is required to be demonstrated: Faithfulness to the leaders’ vision, mission, values and goals.

But rarely is it asked if the person leading the parade has to be faithful to the participants and followers in the parade, and to larger missions, visions and goals.

In order to develop faithfulness from within, leaders must be emotionally and spiritually clear about what their personal values are, as well as how those values either do—or don’t—fit with larger organizational values.

But how does a leader get such clarity?

Engage with self-awareness – Find out about what makes you tick as a leader, and why.
Develop a mentality of stewardship – A steward preserves first, maintains second and manages last. A steward also remembers that people come first, processes come second and money comes third.
Be a follower AND a leader – Earning respect is about honoring the accomplishments of others who came before your leadership; and demurring on the drawbacks and mistakes of those same others.

Leaders who aren’t internally and externally clear about where they are going, and about how their values align with the organizations and the groups that they seek to lead, can’t ever hope to be more than managers of the process to get there.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/