Dr. Yan Song and Cold Star Project host Jason Kanigan continue our exploration of what it takes to operationalize cultural development in organizations. In this deep talk we're looking at Steps Two and (unexpectedly for me, but we didn't want to leave people stranded) Three in a four-part process. I ask Yan about the following:  

I had to laugh because the points on slide 7 “Enter New Territory 1 / 4” are the same things we see in sales. We are all trapped in our mental model of limiting beliefs, and what we say we’ll do is often different from what we actually do. Is there a way we can help ourselves become more aware of these processes and contradictions?   

Slide 8 is about feedback loops and learning. In my experience, feedback loops have been the bugbear of organizations: they often are missing; they frequently have bad measures when they are in place; tasks and outcomes fall between the cracks as a result--and this obviously does not lead to operational excellence. Frankly, everybody seems to believe they are doing better than they actually are (including me). I also note the time difference between the “doing” and “learning” modes… I imagine this applies to organizations as well, since they are made of people? Is there anything we can do to accelerate learning?   

Slide 9 Entropy Increases… Leonard Cohen’s line “from the wars against disorder”... Yeats’ “the center cannot hold”... Why do we need a defensive system against chaos? What would happen if we adopted chaos (would we go insane, Motorcycle Maintenance style?) This Slide 9 is worthy of tremendous discussion--what’s going on here? A snapshot of human perspective, one which I certainly recognize symptoms of my own behavior in! If things are always falling apart, what hope do we have of keeping an organization together long enough to operationalize cultural development and head towards operational excellence?   

On Slide 10 we see the shift we must make. However, there is a lot here to explore and unpack. I like the “collective excellence” term. We can’t achieve cultural transformation (or much at all) alone. Reminding ourselves that the topic is “Bravely entering new territory”, I think we finally see what this can mean: not only picking up new ideas from some sort of inert or “doesn’t fight back” source like a book or a video, but rather exploring the new territory of someone else’s mind and ideas. Passive sources can jarr and possibly have their ideas denied by the recipient without pushback, but a live human will probably continue to argue. What are the consequences of that? (We see it played out often in Facebook arguments where no one changes the mind of the other). How can we avoid shut down?  

Cultural Development with Dr. Yan Song series playlist: https://coldstarproject.com/culturaldevelopment 

Slide stills:  Step Two slide:  https://coldstarproject.com/yansongs04e06step2slide 

Reflexive Learning Loop slide: https://coldstarproject.com/yansongs04e06reflexiveslide 

Double Loop Learning slide: https://coldstarproject.com/yansongs04e06doubleloopslide 

Unilateral decision making slide: https://coldstarproject.com/yansongs04e06unilateralslide 

Mutual decision making slide: https://coldstarproject.com/yansongs04e06mutualslide 

Step Three slide: https://coldstarproject.com/yansongs04e06step3slide 

Competence slide: https://coldstarproject.com/yansongs04e06competence  

OpEx Society: https://www.opexsociety.org 

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