Disrupting Corporate Culture: How Cognitive Science Alters Accepted Beliefs About Culture and Culture Change and Its Impact on Leaders and Change Agents

Cover
Endorsement Page
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 The 5 Myths of Culture
	Your Platform Is Already Burning
	Myth 1: Culture Starts at the Top
		Value Engineering and Self-Enhancement
		It’s What Good Leaders Do
		Problem 1: Leaders Overestimate Their Own Influence
		Problem 2: Complex Change Does Not Happen through Individual Influence
		Problem 3: For a Leader’s Beliefs to Take Hold in the Organization, They Have to Be There to Begin With
		Problem 4: Culture Is Not the Sum of Personalities (The Leaders’ or Anyone Else)
		Problem 5: Language Alone Does Not Change Culture
		Leadership and Culture: There Is a Connection
	Myth 2: Culture Is a Physical Thing
		Problem: Culture Doesn’t Exist – or Does It?
		Culture Doesn’t Make Us Do Anything
	Myth 3: One Company, One Culture
		Problem 1: Cultural Boundaries Overlap
		Problem 2: Region, Nation, and Language
		Problem 3: Network Size Limits Culture
	Myth 4: Culture Is What We Say We Care About
		Problem 1: Norms Aren’t the Whole Story
		Caveat 1: Context Matters
		Caveat 2: Group Membership Matters
		Caveat 3: Task Matters
		The Problem with Culture as Values
		Problem 1: “Values” Means Different Things to Different People
		Problem 2: Values Are Expectations, Not Behaviors
		Problem 3: Values Need to Be Already Socialized to Be Adopted
		Problem 4: Some Values Are Compensations for Deeper Cultural Forces
		Problem 5: Values Cannot Be Instilled by Telling People What to Value
		Lived Culture
	Myth 5: Culture Is Employee Well-Being
		Problem 1: Attitudes and Opinions Are Not Culture
		Problem 2: How We Behave Does Not Reflect How We Feel (or Think)
		Problem 3: Measuring Items Out of Range
		The Gap between Myth and Science
	Notes
Chapter 2 What’s Wrong With Corporate Culture?
	The Great Reductions
		Reduction #1: The Problem in MBA Programs
			Outdated Theory, Problematic Assumptions, Leaps of Faith, and Anecdotes
			The Big Assumption: Culture Drives Business Performance
			Reducing Culture to a Dependent Variable
			Academic Myopia: Drawing From Too Few Wells
		Reduction #2: Dumbing Down for Business
			Reduction by Conflation: Culture as Employee Engagement and Well-Being
			Reduction by Compartmentalization: Culture as Employee Behavior
			Reduction by Coaching: Culture as What Leaders Should Do
	The Manager’s Dilemma
		A Better Way
	Notes
Chapter 3 Where Culture Comes From
	Deep Structure
		The Cognitive Science of Culture: Executive Summary
	Culture Comes From Grounded Meaningful Experience
		It’s “Meaningful” Because It Worked
		Culture in the Brain, the Body, and the World
			Evidence From Neuroscience
			Evidence From Developmental Psychology
			Physiological and Kinesthetic Evidence
			Evidence From Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology
			Socio-Cultural Evidence
	Culture Is Shared Knowledge
		Shared Dominant Logics: Transforming Experience into Basic Units of Culture
			Evidence for Schemas
			Shared Dominant Logics
		Making Sense: How SDLs Ground Culture
			From SDLs to Culture: Models for Making Sense
			Pervasive Forms: SDLs for Sense-Making and Structure
			We Think in Analogies
	Where Corporate Culture Comes From
		Doing Meaningful and Habitual Things: The Grounds for Culture
			Professionalization
			Shared Task Solutions
			Differentiated Core Purpose
	Functionally Grounded Cultures
		The Reference System
			Practices and Adaptations
			Visible Culture
		Discrete Signatures
	Notes
Chapter 4 Invisible Hands, Invisible Walls
	The Reference System in Action
		New Company, Old Grounding
		Trailblazing
			Into the Unthought Known
			Finding Culture in Talk
		Unthought Knowns
			Ethnographic Action Research
			Quantitative Analysis
		Results
		How These SDLs Make Up the Reference System
			Patterns in Practice
			Adaptations
	The I3 Reference System
		FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE FIRST
			How Does It Show Up? (Practices and Adaptations)
			When Overlearned …
			Where Does This SDL Come From?
		RULES and CERTAINTY
			How Does It Show Up? (Practices and Adaptations)
			When Overlearned …
			Where Do These SDLs Come From?
		MAKING THE ABSTRACT TANGIBLE
			How Does It Show Up? (Practices and Adaptations)
			When Overlearned …
			Where Does This SDL Come From?
		FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE
			How Does It Show Up? (Practices and Adaptations)
			When Overlearned …
			Where Does This SDL Come From?
		ACTION
			How Does It Show Up? (Practices and Adaptations)
			When Overlearned …
			Where Does This SDL Come From?
	The Reference System Supports … Until It Doesn’t
		Cultures Are “Perfect” …
		… Until They’re Not
		Digital Values and Practices
	Notes
Chapter 5 Change the Practice, Change the Culture
	Reference Systems Hold Your Secrets
		Exploring One’s Reference System Is an Adaptive Challenge
	Changing Reference Systems: The Process Framework
		1: Define Principles (Values That Enable the Future)
		2: Gain Perspective (Seeing Dominant Logics and the Whole Reference System)
			Option 1: Full Research
			Option 2: Partial Research
			Option 3: Co-Creation (Reference System Reverse Engineering)
		3: Prioritize Practices
			Practice Areas
			Gaining Leverage: The Practice Prioritization Matrix
			Changing the I3s Reference System
			SDLs Targeted through Practices
		Getting More Radical: New Logics for a New Business
			Cultures Aren’t Blank Canvasses
			What Does Radical Inculcation Look Like? (It Looks Deliberately Developmental)
			What Is “Deliberately Developmental”?
			Deliberately Developmental Practices
	Changing Reference Systems: The Leadership Framework
		Holding Environments
			Creating Holding Environments
		Personal Leadership Orientations
	Notes
Epilogue: The Way Forward
	Using Reference Systems to Target Behavior
		Four NEW Laws of Culture & One Takeaway
			Spot the patterns and surface the assumptions.
	Disrupting Culture to Disrupt Yourself
	Note
References
Index