The Controlled Rebel

In my (admittedly limited) experience in consulting I have learned that organizations actually want people that don't settle for the status quo. They may not know it, but they do. They want someone who can seek and destroy things that don't make sense. Not someone who wreaks carnage upon anything and anyone in their path, but a silent and deadly killer of bureaucracy, band aid solutions, and misguided holdover decisions. They want someone who doesn't settle for the status quo because frankly not settling is a lot of work. Both in the discovery of what doesn't make sense and in the crafting of solutions to impact meaningful change. Most people in organizations are just too busy to engage in one let alone both of these activities.

Don't get me wrong, organizations don't want someone to come in and totally rock the boat. They don't want an abrasive personality demanding radical change. They don't want someone to scream "bullshit" when the sacred cows are defended or when the inevitable "this is how we have always done it" arises. What they do want is someone to call "bullshit" in a professional and perhaps even a disguised manner so the organization doesn't have to address the reality that the status quo isn't working. The controlled rebel who can skillfully navigate this delicate balancing act is in demand.....even if most organizations don't know it.

Converging vs. Diverging From The Norm

How do you differentiate between a high performing organization and everyone else? There are countless answers that likely differentiate the two. However, as I was sitting in a two hour training seminar for contracting personnel at work today and I couldn't help but notice one extremely important differentiator.

When people hear the term government acquisition, high performing organization is not necessarily the first thing that comes to mind. That is not to say that there aren't extremely capable people and teams within the career field because I have definitely worked with both. However, the combination of bureaucracy, regulation, and a risk averse culture of the government procurement career field doesn’t propel it into the ranks of what many consider a high performing organization.

As I sat through the training session I could not help but notice the same phrases directed at the audience. "If you don't do this....then the auditors will slam you," or "You better do this.....or the Inspector General may write you up," and "You should be doing this.......because it is a direct reflection of you and your superior's work." It was relentless and I couldn't help but feeling like I was being pushed around a bit. Threatened almost. The kind of warnings one receives throughout childhood. Unfortunately these kinds of messages are the norm in the government arena. In the government contracting environment individuals are pushed to converge with what is ordinary. In that environment ordinary is good. Ordinary means staying well within bounds. Ordinary means being reactive to any feedback that is filtered down. Ordinary is the safe play. Ordinary (hopefully) keeps your organization out of the headlines.

In my experience, high performing organizations force you diverge from the ordinary. A high performing organization says "You better create or do something new and unique....or something bad will happen to you." There is a distinct incentive to not only break free of the status quo but to change it for the better. Instead of coloring well within the lines you go outside them and establish new boundaries that you would not have known were possible had you not put yourself out there. When an organization forces you to diverge from the ordinary you in essence become extraordinary, and being extraordinary is the epitome of what a high performing organization is all about.

Generation Y's Impact On Military Culture

I was forwarded a very interesting article today by friend and fellow blogger Al Chase entitled Military of Millennials. Al, who maintains the blog The White Rhino Report, sent the article to a group of Gen Y'ers for their thoughts on the thesis of the piece which is centered around the cultural impact of Generation Y on the US military. It is a long article but definitely an interesting read (full article here). There were a few things that really struck me in this article and although I don't necessarily agree wholeheartedly with everything that is presented, I am definitely seeing some of these trends within my sphere of influence.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) took an unprecedented step on May 15, 2007, blocking troop access to MySpace, YouTube, and other popular Web sites. The official reason was to conserve bandwidth and safeguard security. But the DOD’s ban also highlighted a gap in understanding between senior military leaders and what demographers call Generation Y (alternatively known as the millennial generation or the baby-boom echo). Few members of this generation, born after 1978, can recall a time when the Internet was not at their disposal.

Not long ago, one of the authors of this article was asked to lead a U.S. Air Force study on the implications for the military of this new online generation. The request came from senior officers who had been appalled to discover a number of junior officers using the still permissible Facebook Web site for the purpose of organizing their squadrons. These senior officers were having difficulty with the concept of using a civilian social-networking site for military purposes. What would that mean for military security? How would it affect the control and vulnerability of squadrons in the field? And from the perspective of DOD “middle management,” what was a major supposed to do? Forbid the behavior and risk losing the real benefits of an online community? Or protect it and risk the wrath of more senior officers who just didn’t understand?

This kind of conundrum is relevant not just for the U.S. military. A wide range of organizations, including most global corporations, will soon face a large, new cohort of young employees. Generation Y’s affinity for the interconnected world is just one of its intriguing characteristics.

Although the start of this article is a little weird and I think it is a bit of a stretch to connect senior leader's inability to manage Gen Y with blocking Facebook in a work environment, the article does does highlight one trait that is very important to understanding the demographic; enhanced interconnectedness. The youth of today definitely has a desire to be connected to more people than any generation prior. The internet has proved to be a catalyst to not only satisfy that desire, but to expand the ability of people to maintain more relationships than ever before. Not only can people now keep a handle on social connections, but they can create relationships and build communities that would never have existed otherwise.

Generation gaps are not new to the military, of course, or to the culture at large. The Vietnam era was defined by the distinctly different attitudes between the 20-year-old draftees and the older career officers and senior enlisted men who commanded them. More recently, a report issued on February 15, 2000, by the vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army noted that the rate of voluntary attritions among captains had risen sharply, and the report cited generational differences as a chief reason. “Senior officers think they understand the world of lieutenants and captains,” the report observed, “but many junior officers and others are convinced that they do not.” As an example of these differences, the report cited senior officers’ “careerism” and dogged loyalty to the military as opposed to junior officers’ preference for a better work–life balance. To the typical junior officer, it noted, “being an Army officer is a noble profession…not an all-consuming source of self-identity.”

The report presciently foresaw the U.S. military’s current dif ficulties with recruiting and retention, exacerbated by its expanded involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because of Generation Y’s significantly larger numbers, and because its attitudes have been shaped by unique circumstances, these young men and women will provide distinctly different challenges and opportunities for the military, the business world, and every other kind of organization that they enter.

I really think these paragraphs are spot on in the challenges that have already begun to manifest within the ranks of the military. Gone are the days of corporate loyalty to the worker. Gone are the days where our elected leader's promises and programs can be counted on. And most importantly gone are the days where the youth of America believes that the key to a happy life is putting in endless hours at the same job for decades at a time. And can you really blame them? We have watched our parents and noticed the discrepancies between the world they grew up in and what we are living in. The generational quest for a better work life balance is real, and I would argue that it is powerful. The military is not only faced with this new reality, but it is handcuffed by stringent budgets, manning cuts, and two wars. Not easy to overcome and I would atrribute the aforementioned attrition more to those factors than leadership's inability to relate or manage Gen Y officers. That being said, the culture shift is something that I think has and will continue to shape the armed forces in the future.

Two of the most prominent theorists of generational change, historian and satirist Bill Strauss and histo rian and demographer Neil Howe, have suggested in their book Millennials Rising (Vintage, 2000) that Gen Y may be something of a throwback to its grandparents’ generation — the generation that grew up in the Depression, fought in World War II, and came home to build a powerful national economy along with strong, effective community institutions.

Like their grandparents, millennials appear deeply committed to family, community, and teamwork, which they have made priorities. Among middle-class high school and college students, volunteering for nonprofit work has become almost the norm. (In many states, it is now a school requirement.) After college, this generation is competing for places in organizations like the Peace Corps and Teach for America in extraordinary numbers, even as the military struggles to attract them. Indeed, the research summarized by Strauss and Howe (in their book and in the Harvard Business Review, July–August 2007) suggests that this new generation may in fact be more civic- and family-oriented than any since World War II, reversing long-term trends toward in­creased rates of criminal activity, drug use, and teen pregnancy.

It would appear, therefore, that if the current leadership in the public and private sectors learns to accept, deploy, and manage Generation Y effectively, the millennials could even provide an echo of the grit and selfless heroism that inspired journalist Tom Brokaw to label their grandparents “the greatest generation.” On the other hand, if the leadership fails to understand and adapt — if it insists on harnessing millennials with outdated mind-sets, rules, and processes — it could squander a historic opportunity to reinvigorate the military and rekindle an idealistic, can-do spirit in a wide variety of institutions.

I thought this passage was a great reminder that things do not always get worse. People are almost predispositioned to look at those that come after them with great concern as if the youth of tomorrow is destined to lead our nation down a path of destruction. Whether it is generational identity, politics, or the stock market people always think the sky is falling so it is great to see an author acknowledge that Gen Y are not just a band of miscreants and that they in fact have a unique skill set to provide besides just unique challenges. Perhaps the reinvigorated family value system that the author describes can be attributed at least in part to some of the generational traits expressed in Gen Y like the affinity for interconnectedness discussed earlier.

Gen Y’s familiarity with the interconnected world suggests that its members will respond enthusiastically to management styles that encourage creativity and initiative, and that they will be comfortable working in teams. Millennials exhibit characteristics likely to render them facile and effective decision makers, especially in combat situations, where decentralized operations are paramount. They are also adept at gathering information and sharing it with peers. The U.S. military has long struggled to smooth interservice rivalries and achieve better working relations between military and intelligence operations. Corporations face similar challenges in getting people to work together fluidly and productively across functional, regional, and operational boundaries. Might Gen Y, with its deeply ingrained habits of openness and teamwork, eventually succeed in breaking down some of these barriers?

In other ways, those deeply ingrained habits challengees tablished organizational values. To command-and-control organizations like the military (and many corporations), knowledge is power and, therefore, something to be protected — or even hoarded. To Gen Y, however, knowledge is something altogether different; it belongs to everyone and creates a basis for building new relationships and fostering dialogue. Baby boomers and Gen Xers have learned to use the Internet to share information with people whom they already know, but members of Gen Y use blogs, instant-messaging, e-mails, and wikis to share information with those whom they may never meet — and also with people across the hall or down the corridor. Their spirit of openness is accompanied by a casual attitude toward privacy and secrecy; they have grown up seeing the thoughts, reactions, and even indiscretions of their friends and peers posted on a permanent, universally accessible global record.

I know I find myself longing for more and more creative, collaborative team environments. That could also be attributed to my competitive sports background but regardless I think it is an important recognized generational trait for plenty of Gen Y'ers. This is something that definitely does not come naturally in the corporate or military rank and file chain of command. Empowering subordinates and creating collaborative environments will likely become more important as we progress into the next decade.

I think the point on openess and secrecy is also a very interesting dynamic, especially within the military culture. All thoughout my time at Air Force Academy I heard the definition of integrity described as "doing the right thing when no one is looking." I think that Gen Y'ers more confortable packaging themselves as one identity as opposed to a work person, an at home person, etc. They want to be respected for their ideas and contributions, not just for the appearance they present and for their ability to walk the line and live the status quo. Part of that process starts with the liberating practice of sharing information and experiences, and not necisarily just with those you know personally. Not everyone gets it, even in Gerneration Y. I know I still get comments and questions from friends about my blog all the time wondering why I put the time and effort in. But those who do get it are willing to bypass privacy for they feel that they don't have anything to hide and much to gain!

It’s still unclear how military and business leaders can adapt their traditional command-and-control operating models to make millennials feel comfortable. The U.S. military, and many corporations, rely on effective chains of command — on leaders who give orders and people in the field who execute them. It will be neither easy nor entirely desirable to make a transition away from that.

To be sure, the reasons for making such a transition continue to increase. Modern military adversaries — and, in the business world, commercial competitors — increasingly use nontraditional structures. Al Qaeda, for example, is not a top-down hierarchy. It is a flexible, decentralized network. As numerous experts have pointed out (for example, University of Pennsylvania professor Marc Sageman in his 2004 book, Understanding Terror Networks, and former U.S. Treasury Department analyst Jonathan Schanzer in his 2004 book, Al-Qaeda’s Armies), this network relies on shared ideologies, common hatreds, and distributed technical know-how, rather than on centralized command, regimented training, and tightly organized supply lines. Will it take a Gen Y military to learn how to effectively counter such virulent franchises?

I will have to defer this topic to fellow blogger Cam Schaefer who writes on fourth generation warfare. He has written extensively on Afghanistan explored the many questions surrounding our strategy and new ways of acheiving our nation's interests. In short I would just say that we are fighting a war that is longer than any war prior with acknowledged minimal gains, and a unique and new strategy whether fueled by Gen Y or another generation is surely welcomed by me.

In the end I think the author does a great job summing up what the real challenge is surrounding the unique dynamic of Generation Y and the military, and that challenge is balance.

Besides restoring the right value proposition, the military leadership can ensure that those in positions of command at all levels are trained and stress-tested to maintain a delicate balance — the balance between empowering Gen Y troops and providing them with direction, discipline, and cohesion. Indeed, balanced leadership is the only way to empower a millennial-dominated military to think and act creatively, responsibly, and with the right sense of mission.

Confronted with the reality of Gen Y’s unique characteristics, what’s a military leader to do? More research into the attitudes, aptitudes, and habits of young military officers and noncommissioned officers should help to clarify key issues; we already know that the answers are unlikely to lie in stifling this generation’s natural talents and predilections. Most generations have a way of challenging their elders’ fundamental assumptions and ways of doing things. Gen Y is poised to do the same — and in potentially constructive and original ways. The job of today’s captains, majors, and colonels is to encourage and guide millennials and protect them from the senior officers who may not appreciate their unique qualities. Let’s hope the military, and the corporations that hire the people who leave the military, can learn to make the most of this new generation’s distinctive talents and instincts

Innovation In Action - Tata Group

It's not that there had been no innovation inside Tata Group, the 117-year-old Indian powerhouse responsible for that nation's first steel mill, power plant, and airline, among other achievements. But when India's long protected economy was opened in 1991, Chairman Ratan Tata decided that for his companies to survive and thrive in a global economy he had to make innovation a priority—and build it into the DNA of the Tata group so that every employee at every company might think and act like an innovator.

Today those 15 companies have produced such innovative products as the $2,000 Tata Nano car, and includes firms such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the Mumbai-based IT services and outsourcing power, which earned almost $6 billion in revenues in 2008.

People often talk about being innovative and going against the status quo but it is another thing entirely to actually carry it out. It is even more impressive to establish a corporate culture that inspires innovation amongst the masses. It seems that is exactly what Tata Group has done. The article on the Tata Group in BusinessWeek found here, illustrates how the company has made innovation a part of the way they do business. I would love to work for a company that truly embraces ideas over the ability to walk the line. While reading this article there were a few things that really jumped out at me that we all can learn from.

The first thing that caught my attention was a lesson I have consistently been reminded of through my work with lean and continuous process improvement. As a change agent within an organization the different tools/methodologies of lean, six sigma, theory of constraints, or whatever continuous improvement theory you are utilizing are the easy part. Most people can see the tools working or at least acknowledge that the reasoning behind them are sound. The most difficult part is changing the culture. And most often it is the lack of leadership commitment that gets in the way. I believe that change can come from the bottom, but it is a hell of a lot easier and quicker when the top lives it. I put this lesson simply as, "what the leader wants done, gets done." Tata not only says that innovation is important, but the leaders promote those who have experience as innovators. It is important to leadership that the next wave of leaders be experienced in creating change. I don't know how many programs there are in the Air Force that leaders say are important, however after the "important speech" is made the leader never checks up on it again. People aren't stupid. You can say something is important, but the workers will always know what the few real priorities are.

TCS has also incorporated innovation into its formal annual review process, making it one of the nine categories on which employees are evaluated. If an employee wins the company's Young Innovator Award, he or she will see more than a salary bump. "It certainly accelerates your career track," says Krishnan. "I might pluck you up and put you in one of our innovation labs."

In addition to formal systems, TCS takes steps to stimulate innovative thinking. "We train people to think about improvement all of the time, to have what I call a culture of creative dissatisfaction with the status quo," says Krishnan. TCS has made innovation a component of training programs, from its leadership institute, to which 50 senior managers are sent every year, to its four-day "Technovator" workshop, at which its programmers are taught to think creatively.

I also thought it was pretty impressive that the company allows employees to use a certain amount of paid work time to work on personal projects. This 'skunkworks' or intrapreneuring style reminded me of 3M, a mainstay firm in the innovation arena. Talk about putting your money where you mouth is. They say that they value innovation at Tata, so they pay you to innovate and they empower you to thrive in a incubator unhampered by bureaucracy. Pretty cool stuff.

Five hours of an employee's 45-hour week can be used for personal projects, such as learning a skill or developing an idea.

The most impressive thing I read was with regard to a topic I have blogged about a lot since reading the book where Seth Godin coined the term; the topic of tribes. The company followed Seth's recipe for creating a powerful tribe to the letter by creating a vision and empowering tribe members to communicate and carry out that vision.

To better capture nascent ideas, the company launched IdeaMax, a Digg-like social network that lets any employee submit, comment, and vote on ideas. Since it was launched last year, IdeaMax has collected 12,000 ideas, several hundred of which have become projects. "Every quarter, I review the top 10 most popular ideas," says Krishnan. "The wisdom of crowds works for us."

The concept is very similar to the post I did recently on innovation in the music industry. The company is leveraging the expertise of the knowledge workers at process level to decide the best ideas are. There are no egos, only transparency and empowerment. From a corporate standpoint I can't really imagine too many cheaper ways to innovate either. All in all I think this company gets it, and I would love to do some more research on the happiness and retention of their employees. Even if the company is being aggrandized in the article the lessons can help you become a better leader, build a better business, or be a better person.

The Lean Manager - Developing a Lean Mindset

I subscribe to a Lean Enterprise Institute newsletter and about once a month the man who coined to the term lean, Jim Womack, writes a letter to subscribers. I have included the letter below in full. He shares a valuable but frustrating lesson. One of my mentors in my continuous process improvement journey used to say to me it's about 20% tools and about 80% culture. I think what he meant by that was very much in line with what Womack says here. Anyone can learn lean tools. It has become somewhat of a fad in corporate America and obviously, since I am constantly writing about it, has become instituted in the Department of Defense as well. The tools are the easy part. Maybe it is because they are more tangible, or that they seem more like a step by step guide. However, it is the leadership support and culture change that is truly difficult and will require the most effort. It is never easy to steer the ship when everyone else wants to keep going straight, when everyone else wants to keep things comfortable. Sometimes it just takes showing them that you can go against the status quo and the world is not going to end.

Dear Matt,

Several years ago I started to talk about the need to move beyond lean tools - including the very powerful concept of Value-Stream Mapping - to lean management. At the same time we at LEI began to publish a set of volumes on lean management techniques. These consist of strategy deployment to set priorities from the top of the organization, A3 analysis to deploy new initiatives and solve problems in the middle of the organization, and standardized work with kaizen to create stability and sustainability at the bottom of the organization where value is actually created.

Recently I've been walking through a range of organizations to see how these lean management techniques are being used. Let me cite several illustrative cases:

In one organization I found a remarkably elaborate strategy deployment matrix posted throughout the headquarters and in the plants. It was the familiar x-shaped diagram with important business objectives on the left side, the initiatives needed to achieve the objectives along the top, and the specific results to be achieved in the current year on the right side. In addition there was an array to the right side showing who in which part of the organization was taking responsibility for each initiative and which parts of the organization were affected by each initiative.

And I also found very little success in achieving the goals. Instead, the organizational focus at the end of the budget year was on explaining why progress had not been what had been anticipated. It was a new form of the variance analysis I caricatured in last month's e-letter!

In a second organization I found that the COO had decreed that all problems were henceforth to be tackled using A3 analysis employing a standard eight box format. At the review meeting I attended, every manager showed up with a completely filled out A3 to prove they were on top of their jobs. And, because this organization was transitioning from a decades-long tradition of preparing lengthy reports on every problem (with pages of documentation), the A3s used one point type to crowd in all of the details that would have been included in a traditional report. When these were projected as PowerPoints it turned out that
no one in the room could actually read them. But every manager had done his job.

In a third organization I found all of the elements of standardized work - work standards, work combination tables, kaizen opportunity lists - clearly posted in work areas and ... no standardized work. A few minutes observation showed that the work was not actually being done in the way the work standards required and that kaizen activities were not based on clear problem definition. Yet the management took pains to show me how much progress they had made with this splendid technique as part of their new visual management system.

As I walked through these and other organizations I was sobered to realize that these new lean management techniques had become more tools, in this case lean management tools. They were being followed as corporate ritual without thinking about their actual purpose. As so often happens in organizational life, means had become ends.

I was not surprised. Tools -- for process analysis and for management -- are wonderful things. And they are absolutely necessary. And managers love them because they seem to provide short cuts to doing a better job. But they can't achieve their potential results, and often can't achieve any results, without managers with a lean state of mind to wield them.

What do I mean by a lean state of mind?

First, the lean manager eagerly embraces the role of problem solver. This means going to see the actual situation, asking about the performance issue, seeking the root cause, and showing respect for lower-level managers and for colleagues at the same organizational level by asking hard questions until good answers emerge. It's this critical, probing state of mind that permits lean tools to be put to good use as the lean manager applies the right tool for the specific problem and does this in context on the gemba rather than in the abstract in some conference room. Empty ritual is replaced with a rigorous thought process that engages employees and pulls forward their best abilities.

Second, the lean manager realizes that no manager at a higher level can or should solve a problem at a lower level. (And one of the worst abuses of lean tools lies in trying to do just this.) Instead, the higher-level manager can assign responsibility to a manager at a lower level to tackle the problem through a continuing dialogue, both with the higher-level manager and with
everyone actually touching the process causing the problem. The lean law of organizational life is that problems can only be solved where they live, in conversation with the people whose current actions are contributing to the problem. But this requires support, encouragement, and, yes, relentless pressure, from the higher-level lean manager.

Third, the lean manager believes that all problem solving is about experimentation by means of Plan Do Check Act. No one can know the answer before experiments are conducted and the many experiments that fail will yield valuable learning that can be applied to the next round of experiments.

Finally, the lean manager knows that no problem is ever solved forever. Indeed, the introduction of a promising countermeasure is sure to create new problems at some other point in the organization. This is not bad. It is good, provided the critical, probing mind of the lean manager keeps on the case in pursuit of perfection.

In short the traditional manager is usually passive, going through rituals and applying standard remedies to unique problems. By contrast, inside the mind of the lean manager lies a restless desire to continually rethink the organization's problems, probe their root causes, and lead experiments to find the best currently known countermeasures. When this lean mindset is coupled with the proper lean tools amazing things are continually possible.

Best regards,
Jim

James P. Womack
Founder and Chairman
Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc.

Organizational Culture Lesson from the Life Textbook

In college I took a class or two on organizational culture and how it impacts the productivity of personnel. Some of my nerd friends (engineers, math wizards, etc.) always said management was too fuzzy. I always liked fuzzy but now that I am living the textbook so to speak I would argue that something like organizational culture isn't as fuzzy as we might think.

I remember an old study from the 1920's or something (can't remember who carried it out) that put in brighter lights into a manufacturing plant and the productivity of the workers increased. They put in even brighter lights and productivity increased even more. Supposedly it was studies like these that changed conventional management principles away from treating people as components or interchangeable parts of the overall system into unique valued assets that make 1+1=3.

Since I came into the Air Force as an officer, I have worked in an organization that was dysfunctional at best. Between cliques, constant fires (perceived), hostility, lack of customer focus, and he said she said type accusations, the place has pretty much been a disaster as a working environment. Coming from a long history of locker room brotherhood I could not believe the culture I stepped into. I was used to overachieving alongside 25 of my best friends towards a common goal for most of my teenage and short adult life. I always thought that I was just spoiled by the hockey background and that was the reason why my new environment was so shocking to me. But recently I was requested to fill a new position for the base with much greater responsibility, more personal growth opportunity, and in my eyes a greater impact and contribution to the base. Due to some of the politics and culture I have described above, my moving on was resisted. So a compromise was reached. I now work my new position three days a week, and my old much less enthralling position two days a week. The compromise, although not my ideal situation, continues to prove valuable in illustrating all those fuzzy concepts from back in the day.

I came into my first job ready to overachieve. I wanted to achieve competency quickly and be a valuable asset to the team. I think I did a fairly good job and I think that I made myself an important part of the team. I always figured that with my drive, personality, and work habits I would be successful in any environment. Was I successful? Yes, I think so. However it wasn't until I got into my new environment that I was able to see what I was actually like in the dysfunctional environment. The new environment is much less structured around rank, work product, and obviously it has much less conflict. The organizational culture is much more team oriented and centered around creatively coming up with the most effective ways to implement and achieve our goals. I would say it is almost as if we are running our own start up company. The overall strategic concept is always in focus, however we are left to our own devices to implement the strategy. It is quite rewarding. As I said before, I was successful in my first job. However it wasn't until I was inspired again and placed in a culture that set me up for success that I realized I was not reaching my potential. When you are passionate about what you are doing the sky is the limit. When you are fighting a battle every time you enter the office you may still be successful (I like to think that my destiny is in my hands) however it is likely that you will not surprise yourself with your accomplishments and actions like you are capable of in a great organizational culture.

A few things to think about organizational culture. First is what are you doing to help shape your culture or perpetuate the direction it is already going. I was very involved in my original job and did what I could to vector it in the right direction. Even through my various efforts, I think the most powerful thing that I did was just to treat others in a manner that they probably weren't used to in that environment by maintaining a positive demeanor. Hopefully that helped some people in the workplace. I think I could have improved by cutting down on the time I vented about the situation. Venting is normal and it helps to have a better grasp on what is actually taking place culturally, however there is a fine line between venting and playing the holier than thou worker who points out every thing that everyone else does wrong. Hopefully I didn't cross to far over that line.

The second thing that was fully illustrated in this scenario is the danger in falling into a self serving bias so to speak. A self serving bias is attributing your successes and accomplishments to internal factors (I, as well as most people who read my blog are probably guilty of this based on our desire to succeed) while attributing failures to situational factors beyond their control. Or in this case the abilities and failures of others to their internal factors while neglecting the presence of external forces. I learned that maybe some of the people in my negative environment were truly being impacted by the external forces or the culture more so that I originally thought they were. So I guess I learned some empathy. With that being said, I also took from my experience the importance of surrounding yourself with good people.....with winners. There is a balance between recognizing the impact of external forces such as culture, and with taking responsibility for ultimately being successful no matter what. There are some people who are a lost cause. Recognize who they are and if you have the power or are in a situation where you can cut ties with those type of people, do it sooner than later. If you aren't in that position seek to minimize their impact on your success and your contributions to the organization. What are you learning from your day to day life?