Edgar Schein, la relation d'aide et le manager agile

L'agilité peut s'envisager sous plusieurs aspects. En particulier, elle redéfinit le rôle du manager:

• Il a un rôle d'enabler auprès des équipes: il est là pour lever les difficultés qui empêchent l'équipe de progresser
• Il a en plus un rôle de leader, d'inspiration, parce qu'il est là pour s'assurer de la cohésion du groupe, du partage des valeurs et de la dynamique
• Enfin, (et c'est en particulier le cas en haut de la hiérarchie) il a un rôle d'architecte, parce que, pour mettre en place des équipes auto-organisées, il faut les coordonner entre elles, définir leurs rôles et leur composition et la façon dont elles se coordonnent

Le Herr Professor Doktor Edgar Schein s'intéresse en particulier à la relation entre ces trois aspects. Dans la conférence que voici, il expose sa thèse sur le futur du leadership, qu'il résume au début de sa présentation: la clé du leadership dans les organisations d'aujourd'hui est la relation d'aide, la capacité à demander et à accepter de l'aide. La logique est la suivante: l'organisation efficace suppose une communication efficace, particulièrement entre le leader/manager et ses équipes, et aussi entre équipes. Mais la communication efficace repose sur la relation de confiance. Or le seul moyen d'établir une relation de confiance est d'établir une relation d'aide. L'évolution de notre monde rend difficile l'établissement de cette relation d'aide, en particulier à cause de la diversité culturelle croissante. Il ne s'agit pas seulement de globalisation, mais aussi de l'interaction entre des cultures professionnelles différentes, des cultures d'entreprise différentes. De plus, le développement de la communication électronique change la donne en termes d'établissement de relations de confiance et de compréhension inter-culturelle.

Pour ceux qui n'ont pas envie de passer une heure sur une vidéo d'une conférence de professeur allemand, je mets ci-dessous mes notes sur la conférence, qui contient plein de typologies intéressantes sur les trois cultures présentes dans toute entreprise, les trois échelles de la culture, les trois niveaux de l'analyse d'une culture (là encore, vous voyez la dialectique du professeur allemand à l'oeuvre...).

Le Tribal leadership de Dave Logan & Co et cette approche ont en commun de mettre en avant l'importance de la culture au service de la performance des organisation, et la transformation du rôle des leaders. Mais, là où l'approche de Logan est formelle et porte en fait sur la dynamique de groupe, celle de Schein, dans la grande tradition allemande, s'intéresse au contenu d'une culture (en voulant analyser l'ADN culturel d'une entreprise) et au dialogue entre elles (en s'interrogeant sur les conditions d'une communication efficace entre cultures, la création "d'îlots culturels").

The helping relationship as key to effective leadership

Prof. Edgar Schein, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4SVOn7EEUc&feature=relmfu

Help conditions trust, trust conditions communication, communication conditions effectiveness

In a highly hazardous and uncertain environment, everybody agrees that communication is essential to an organization’s effectiveness. But effective communication relies on trust.

Everybody agrees that trust is important, but little is said about how to achieve it. I submit that the key to trust is helping: I create trust by helping and by letting you help me. 

To understand helping, we need to understand three concepts

Humble inquiry

Sometimes, we ask what we think we already know and are actually testing our interlocutor. That does not usually work  in terms of creating trust and a helping relationship. A Humble inquiry is a genuine question, on in which we accept that we don’t know the answer and assume that our interlocutor knows better. What kind of question should I ask in order to learn what I really need to know in order to get or give help?

Cultural island

People in any given organization increasingly come from different language, value and belief. To reconcile and develop acommon knowledge, they need to temporariliy suspend cultural norms and create a space in which they can tell each other how they really feel. Leaders need to be able to create these situations where people can ask questions and get realistic, truthful, honest answers.

Focused dialogue

Cultures differ for example in how subordinates feel with regards to their bosses, and telling them that they’re about to make a mistake. In some culture, of course you should tell them. In others, under no circumstance could you possibly tell them (that they’re about to make a mistake). In a cultural island, how do we get people to reveal such differences? People can be asked questions (), where they’re not arguing face to face but responding, symbolically to the camp fire that everyone is sitting around. Gradually, out of that dialogue, comes insight into how things really work.

Culture comes in three sizes

 The macro-culture is one of a country, a region, or even an occupation. Culture does not only depend on the country or the religion you belong to: all physicians, engineers, singers share a professional culture.

The organizational culture also exists, and they are getting more complicated with globalization and the emergence of more inter-cultural teams. Organizational culture is of course the prime concern of leaders in an organization

Micro-culture have also emerged, that of specific teams. It allows them to work together efficiently even when they do not share macroculture or an organization. 

Four shifts new leaders must understand

As leaders learn their new role of asking for, receiving and giving help, they need to become more culturally insensitive, especially because of four ongoing shifts:

Technological complexity  forces leaders to accept that they don’t actually understand what their teams are talking about and makes it all the more necessary to develop a helping relationship. Thus in the field of imaging, technicians tend to know better than doctors what to look for in images, which means doctors find themselves in the unusual situation of having to ask for help and expertise. 

Information technology advances challenge the way we think of teams and culture. We don’t know yet what a leadership of virtual teams will look like.

Cultural diversity implies the need to develop some sort of common language – this is where cultural islands are needed

Social and global responsibility is also on the rise: stakeholders play a growing role in every organization. 

Three levels to analyze a corporate culture: Digital Equipment vs Ciba-Geigy

Let’s talk about how we define culture. Culture is not something that we create. It is a product of what we do, a product of learning. Like personality or character, it is what we are based on our history and experiences. 

The first step is to figure out what our experience has taught us to be so far. You have to start with where you are. 

At the top level, there is what is visible: the architecture, what we see, how people talk. I used to work at Digital Equipment. It looked like a mess. No door, dining room in the middle of offices. The next month, at Ciba-Geigy in Basel, the number of heavy German doors I had to through was the polar opposite. Artefacts have an impact, but you don’t know. Why did Ciba-Geigy have so many doors, and Digital none?

You have to go to the lower level, find out about values. At Digital, they say doors destroy communications. At Ciba-Geigy, they say it’s the only way they can work. Now we know the values are different, but you still don’t know why. 

The explanation is at the lowest level is: at Digital, they say: “ we’re inventing something entirely new, nobody knows what it will look like. The only way we get somewhere is by constant arguing and talking.” Communication is the bedrock of their work, open debate is the only way to take decisions. 

At Ciba-Geigy, they say “how do you make decisions about chemical compounds unless you fully know how they work, study their books, talk with experts?”. If you’re wrong here, things explode. There the important thing is not communication but thought, certainty, knowledge.

To understand a culture, you need to get to the underlying assumptions about how things are what they are. You need this in order to understand the organization’s culture and technology.

Examples of cultural DNA

How many principle can there be in a culture, in a cultural DNA? One possibility is a culture of profit. Another one is a culture of service: it’s primarily about providing a service, not primarily making a profit. For many organizations, the fundamental DNA is about being creative and innovative. Some young companies have the innovation gene as their primary DNA. 

That explains the history of Digital Equipment: they were successful as long as they were an innovation engine. Then the market changed and innovation became less important. Digital told itself: “but that’s who we are. We won’t build junk like the IBM PC”. They went broke, were sold to Compaq then HP. They never had the money gene. 

In utility companies, reliability is what matters the most. 

In the nuclear industry, safety is the primary DNA.

Hence the question: what’s in our DNA, and will it in the future create problems with the four shifts I identified above (Technological complexity, IT advances, cultural diversity and global responsibility)?

All companies have subculture – creating cultural dialogue is key to effectiveness

Leaders have to begin thinking about alignment inside the organization, and creating the right kind of micro-cultures inside the organization. 

There are basically three kinds of subcultures. The question is not, which is the right one, but how do you get them aligned together. For example, in the medical industry: how much should certain routines be industrialized? Doctors said it’s the worst idea, that it takes their initiative away. But hospital designers push evidence forward that it would give better results overall. And then executive subculture, over them all,  is about keeping the ship afloat financially – or even make a profit. 

How do you put money management, design and operations together, recognizing that you need all three for an effective organization? It is a huge challenge for leaders.

Do all organizations have three subcultures? Yes, they do. Engineers/sales/marketing, doctors/designers/executives, etc.

Communication failures resulting from cultural misunderstanding are at the heart of safety issues. As face to face contact diminishes (with electronic communication), high trust will be more and more central. Authority issues are likely to be the more different in the different cultures.

Also, different technologies command different cultures – see the example of Ceib-Geigy above.

Creating relationships that foster helping relationships

In most cultures, unfortunately, the concept is an adult is someone who doesn’t need help. Asking for help shouldn’t have to happen. The higher you go in the organization, the more you think it shouldn’t happen. It is very painful for a boss to say “I need your help” to a subordinate. From the leader’s point of view, develop that attitude is even more difficult than developing the sheer skills of humble inquiry.

Similarly, offering help feels insulting to subordinates, when they think they know how to do it. Don’t insult me by offering me help where I don’t feel I need it. 

Leaders therefore have to learn how to create relationships where these vulnerabilities, anger don’t happen – humble inquiry, creating cultural islands and dialogue.