Organizational Culture and Leadership, 5th Edition

17THE CHANGE LEADER AS LEARNER

The various predictions about globalism, knowledge-based organizations, the information age, the bio-tech age, the loosening of organizational boundaries, networks, and so on all have one theme in common: we basically do not know what the world of tomorrow will really be like, except that it will be different, more complex, more fast-paced, and more culturally diverse (Drucker Foundation, 1999; Global Business Network, 2002; Michael, 1985, 1991; Schwartz, 2003).

This means that organizations, their leaders, and all the rest of us will have to become perpetual learners (Kahane, 2010; Michael, 1985, 1991; Scharmer, 2007; Senge, Smith, Kruschwitz, Laur, & Schley, 2008). When we pose the issue of perpetual learning in the context of cultural analysis, we confront a paradox. Culture is a stabilizer, a conservative force, and a way of making things meaningful and predictable. Many management consultants and theorists have asserted that “strong” cultures are desirable as a basis for effective and lasting performance. But strong cultures are, by definition, stable and hard to change.

If the world is becoming more turbulent, requiring more flexibility and learning, does this not imply that strong cultures will increasingly become a liability? Does this not mean that the process of culture creation is itself potentially dysfunctional because it stabilizes things, whereas flexibility might be more appropriate? Or is it possible to imagine a culture that, ...