Essay
Exploring the Corporate Culture Gap
Jan
Lee Martin
Moving into the 'third stage' of life -
becoming an elder - has been a very interesting period of learning for
me, as it is for so many women. And yes, I mean interesting in the
Chinese sense. It has been painful and difficult, challenging and
rewarding, as I have learned more and more about how little I know.
It's not easy to be humbled by your inadequacies after a couple of
decades of believing in your own success. But it's immensely
satisfying, eventually, to shed the old certainties and begin learning
again. Humorist Ashleigh Brilliant puts it neatly, when he says:
'There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know
nothing about'. That works even better if we read "know" in its
fullest sense: understanding it not just as a cognitive achievement
but as a holistic way of sensing and relating to the world.
It's fun to imagine starting again,
with a lifetime ahead to discover fields that didn't exist when we
were children: approaching health and healing through the body/mind;
exploring the heights and the depths of consciousness; digging beneath
the mental models, values, beliefs, attitudes, ethics that each of us
put together into our unique tapestries of identity - and so much
more. If we do move into a period of extended human life cycles (in
spite of the ethical dilemmas attached to such a choice) then I hope
that the kind of maturity my colleagues now model, at mid-life or
more, will by then have become a norm, acting as a sound foundation
for the new learning of another decade or two.
And what difference would that
make in the next century or two? Where will we be, then? Will we have
developed a wise society? What will we consider success to be? Will we
be happy? Many futurists and thinkers see wisdom and happiness as
serious goals for the future. Some, like me, believe that we can
achieve these things by learning -- learning more about ourselves and
our relationships with the various environments in which we live. That
kind of learning is difficult, often painful, but always rewarding.
Could we, for example, see the path of the individual as a fractal of
human society? Many human lives move from the dependence of childhood
through the independence and often arrogant confidence of youth to the
interdependence and wisdom of age.
In wider terms, it is tempting to see
the past few hundred years as a period of adolescence on a societal
scale. With new technology as exciting as a teenager's hotrod, we're
off with our metaphorical foot to the floor. Our arrogance has taken
us to dangerous places. Denial has acted effectively to prevent us
recognising risk until the consequences of our ignorance and arrogance
can no longer be denied.
Isn't it time we grew up? Isn't it time
for a wiser society? And when we create it, won't we -- like so many
people in later life -- find that the busy-ness of making it all
happen is followed by a summer of happiness that satisfies our more
important needs?
Umberto Eco writes that the invention
of eyeglasses, in medieval times, made a big impact in advancing the
field of learning and sharing its benefits because it extended the
working lives of scholars, who were reading hand-lettered books and
scrolls by flickering torchlight. Of course, it was the oldest, the
wisest, the most learned whose work had been curtailed -- and then
extended. Could a futures focus, with the broader understanding it
offers us of our own perceptions and motives and relationships, act as
the 21st century equivalent of the eyeglasses of those earlier
scholars? Could a change of worldview, a new lens, for the majority
of the human population change the future of humanity? I believe it
could.
I certainly hope so. I'd like to think
that my grandchildren and theirs will live in a world where wisdom is
valued more highly than material success. It's intriguing to wonder
if that would be the inevitable outcome of an extra 200 years of
learning.
Looking back
It was interesting to be asked to
explain how I came to be in futures. The question made me aware for
the first time that it all began long before this journey into the
third age. A 1940s childhood in New Zealand meant growing up in the
postwar optimism of a young country, moving on into 1950s visions of
ever more exciting futures. In an age before television (there, at
least), a time when helicopters were still futuristic, I was
spellbound by picture book illustrations of "the future" featuring
high-rise towers, aerial highways, rockets and airliners in the sky.
Later science fiction was a favourite genre, as for so many futurists,
because it challenged the way we thought about our world and our
culture, offered provocative new ideas. There were stories that turned
our societal mores on their heads (sex in public, eating in shameful
secrecy); stories that challenged our prejudices (our friendly hero
revealed in the final line to be an anatomical horror): stories that
shifted traditional notions of time and space in various creative and
illuminating ways. They were stories that dared us to think
differently.
All these fell on fertile ground.
Throughout my childhood, my family had moved from one town to another
in step with my father's career. Every few years I became an uncertain
new girl again at school - but every few years my whole world was
replaced with a new and different one offering fresh experiences at
every turn. By the time I was 19 I was ready to make a trip of my own,
traveling by sea to England (six weeks in yet another new community)
and exploring Europe when we could still hitch-hike in relative safety
and live on five dollars a day. That trip and many more since, with
their exposure to a wide range of different cultures, simply extended
and enriched a pattern of variety that had begun years ago.
Perhaps that was the beginning of my
preparation for work in futures - repeated exposure to change, to new
places and new ideas.
So what am I doing about all this? What
do I see as my task as an elder, the task that all these influences
have prepared me to do?
To explain that, I need to add one more
piece to the jigsaw puzzle picture, a picture that still, necessarily,
leaves out more than it puts in. This piece combines a commercial
career with mid-years of marriage, parenting and divorce. These were
my "maya" years, years of full engagement with the material world,
years that yielded many rewards and a lot of learning. What's most
relevant to this story is that they fell within a span of more than 30
years in public relations. This may seem an unlikely seedbed for the
kind of values we associate with futures work. Yet this, too, has led
me to futures.
It was useful that I joined IBM in 1959
and began to learn just what the digitising of data could mean in a
world of electronics and ever-shrinking circuitry. In 1964 I returned
to the company in New Zealand from a spell with the UK office, and was
invited to take on the job of public relations officer. In those days
PR was a field almost as new as computers. There was little chance the
company could find someone who knew about both, so I was appointed on
the grounds that I knew about IBM and computers and could learn
anything else I needed to know on the job.
We knew, in those early days in IBM,
that our public relations responsibility was to see that IBM's name
was widely recognised and respected. As well as being known as the
leading manufacturer of computers IBM also wanted to be known for its
social responsibility. It was part of our job to ensure that the
company was seen to be a good corporate citizen. Yet many of its
actions (organisations are human, after all) failed to demonstrate
full commitment to that noble ideal.
On with the
Job
In the years that followed I worked as
a public relations consultant, first for others and later in my own
company. I found myself, time and again, living and working in that
grey space that fogs the difference between intent and action, between
espoused values and enacted values, between perception and substance.
It now seems that I was observing its dynamics all the time, though I
wasn't aware of it then.
I'm not accusing the organisations I
have worked with of sinister intent, nor even simple hypocrisy (though
I'm sure there's plenty of that around). IBM wasn't asking us to
manufacture a specious gloss to cover antisocial activities: just to
project a "good image". McDonald's, with its Trust Bank and its Ronald
McDonald Houses, isn't seeking to cover up deliberately villainous
behaviour in other areas. It simply wants to build community goodwill.
Most organisations that put a lot of effort into corporate citizenship
programs are not being intentionally deceptive in their endeavours. On
the contrary, almost without exception they see themselves as good
guys.
But that's no longer enough. Avoiding
being a villain, or being less of a villain ("for heaven's sake, we're
not making guns, we're not selling drugs") just isn't
good enough any more. There are pressures both inside and outside that
drive that point home.
In external relations, organisations
who want to distinguish themselves with a respected brand that carries
well into the future will do it best by being, and being seen to be,
corporate heroes.
Sadly, although the coming shift in
societal values has been clear to many of us for 20 years or more,
there are still too few examples of hero corporations. The same old
names keep coming up. Maybe this shows how hard it is to live our
values in the commercial world. But I have no doubt that times are
changing. I've watched it happening for a very long time now.
In fact, it's easy for me to create a
timeline from my own experience. When I started in public relations,
organisations were judged by what they said about themselves or caused
others to say about them. Later a more perceptive, better-informed
audience began to look for verification of those words in behaviour,
checking out what organisations actually did, and the match between
what they said and what they did. Growing demands for transparency and
accountability continue to advance this trend. And new pressures
today are moving the spotlight still further upstream to scrutinise an
organisation's real intent, and the values that lie behind that
intent.
When I sold the business of my company
in the mid-1980s (it was getting really hard, then, to talk to senior
executives about values) I retired to a seaside village to slow down
and spend more time as a parent. There I started learning again. After
much reading and reflection, my career in corporate communication was
overtaken by the futures perspective. The need and the opportunity
seemed so urgent that I was driven to a frenzy of activity, from
learning, to writing, to working with futurists, to setting up the
Futures Foundation, all aimed at building connections between global
needs, futures work and the huge power of corporations. It was clear
to me that, while all of us have a hand in creating our own futures,
it is increasingly the managers of organisations who are creating the
future for our bigger and more complex communities around the world.
If we are to create the changes we need, we must reach behind that
power and work with it, instead of standing in front of it with a stop
sign. Instead of being face-to-face, we need to be
shoulder-to-shoulder.
Leveraging
Change through Corporations
The work of futurists and others is
lifting into attention the urgent physical and social pressures that
demand our attention as a global society. Soon even the most
reluctant, the most distracted, the most self-interested corporate
executives will be forced to focus on the real needs of the community.
Meanwhile there are encouraging signs that, at last, high-calibre
organisations are prepared to take the lead and identify themselves
with community values and community needs. Of course, there are sticks
and carrots to help. Those of us who have worked in what public
relations people call issue and crisis management have seen the costs
inflicted upon organisations who have broken the rules, organisations
whose activities fail to meet the expectations of their communities.
These "learning experiences" are teaching organisations that there are
shrinking boundaries to their freedoms, that like it or not they must
take into account the attitudes and opinions of a wider range of
stakeholders than the traditional groups they are accustomed to
respecting.
There's nowhere to hide any more.
Whether you're Exxon or a US president, a uranium miner in outback
Australia or an oil company in Nigeria, the world is watching what you
do and how you do it. Companies now pay dearly for failure to meet
community expectations, and those expectations are increasing.
Communities are remembering that they legitimise the activities of
organisations. More and more are asking questions about the basis on
which any organisation should be licensed to exploit the global
commons or to act in a way that damages basic human rights -- rights
to fresh air and water, to clean oceans and to "right livelihoods". As
social and environmental pressures increase, so will community
pressures intensify, becoming more insistent that organisations meet
the needs of the community.
The sticks come in the form of bad
publicity (sometimes enough to break an organisation), tightened
regulations, product rejection, staff dissatisfaction, lack of respect
in the marketplace and a host of other negatives. Carrots, on the
other hand, are on offer to organisations willing to change their
behaviour to reflect the values of their stakeholders, internally and
externally. They include opportunities to attract top talent, win the
attention of the surging ethical investment community, create the kind
of highly energised, positive culture that generates outstanding
performance, and enormous opportunities to create new products and
services for a growing market with new consumer values.
For those organisations that don't want
to see themselves as donkeys, prodded by sticks and attracted by
carrots, there is the ethical dimension in which they can opt to make
the right choices because those are the choices that ought to be made.
Are these the organisations of the future? Will they avoid the sticks
and win the carrots, and survive when others die? When stakeholders
can see quite clearly that what an organisation says is backed by what
it does, and that in turn is in line with clear intent -- and that, in
turn, meets real needs -- then (and increasingly, only then) will it
win their trust. Without that trust, it will become more and more
difficult to operate at all.
So a futures perspective offers a new
way for organisations to rebuild their relationships with their host
communities. Some organisations will do too little, too late. Others
will take the lead, create new markets and new opportunities and win
the support of their stakeholders by the fact of doing so, and the way
they do it. I think the gap between these two kinds of organisations
is a very, very important "corporate culture gap". In a natural
process of succession (success-ion?), organisations of the future will
be those which have shown leadership in the present.
Measuring
Performance
For all these reasons, many
organisations have been taking a long, hard look at the way they
measure and report their performance to stakeholders. It has become
clear that the old focus on dollar profits is not enough any more.
John Elkington's handy phrase, "the triple bottom line", has worked
its way into boardrooms around the world and is being used
enthusiastically even by executives who don't really know what it
means. But at least it's in the language. And it isn't too difficult
to understand the idea that social and environmental performance
should be reported as well as financial performance.
This trend runs in parallel with the
wider challenge to GDP as a measure of national success. A new study
from the Australia Institute, for example, shows that the costs of
economic growth in Australia have largely outweighed the benefits.
Using its own set of measures, the Genuine Progress Indicator, as an
alternative to GDP, the Institute argues that national wellbeing has
risen by only 3.6 per cent since 1996 while GDP has increased by 13.4
per cent.
Director Dr Clive Hamilton says that
because GDP measures only expenditure on goods and services, it is too
narrow an indicator and gives a profoundly misleading picture of
changes in national wellbeing. This echoes the work of alternative
economist Hazel Henderson, whose books and articles have been
challenging the GDP for many years. For example, she pointed out long
ago how curious it is that the GDP fails to show any debits…. the cost
of industrial accidents, environmental pollution, resource consumption
are not taken off the GDP. On the contrary, all too often they go
on to it! “In contrast, the GPI measures [goods and services] plus
20 other factors that influence the wellbeing of Australians,
including the social costs of unemployment, overwork, problem
gambling, land degradation and crime" Dr Hamilton said.
"The rationale of the GPI is that,
while consumption expenditures are an important component of
wellbeing, they are only one part of the full picture. Trading off
more pollution for cheaper electricity, accepting longer hours and
reduced job security for faster employment growth and diminishing the
stock of environmental assets to provide a short-term flow of goods
may have increased GDP but these policies have failed to deliver the
improvements in wellbeing that they seemed to promise.
"Unless we have better measures,
governments will continue to pursue policies that keep indicating
growth while the wellbeing of Australians is going in the opposite
direction."
Corporate policies, too, might be very
different with new measures that unmask distortions and take a wider
view.
Any company can maximise short-term
profit if it doesn’t care about protecting product quality, customer
relations, staff morale and other factors that create value. But they
can’t sustain that profitability. If we take a wider view of
corporate success we see a very different picture, and that picture is
coming into sharp focus for leading organisations right now.
They are recognising that measuring
profits without exploring the real cost of those profits is to risk
making policy decisions based on poor information.
New models for performance reporting
also reflect a growing demand from stakeholders for greater
accountability from organisations. More people want to know more about
the organisations they are working for, the organisations they are
buying from, the organisations they are investing in.
This shows we will have to change the
way we compete for top talent and elicit top performance. It signals a
significant shift in the consumer marketplace for the future. And it
suggests we may find ourselves reviewing our entire performance
measurement and reporting regimes:
• We already know that
organisations in the knowledge economy can’t force their employees to
be creative: the shift from perspiration to inspiration also means a
shift from material incentives to less tangible motivations like
shared goals and values.
• The profile of consumer
markets is changing. Researchers Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson estimate
that the emerging culture already includes 26 per cent of US adults --
about 50 million people. European studies and local estimates suggest
similar numbers. This is a major market with new values.
• The rapid growth of socially
responsible investing means that more organisations will want to show
how they are helping to meet the real needs of the community, rather
than measuring their own performance on the single dimension of dollar
value to shareholders.
All this signals a very different
operating environment from that enjoyed by respected "captains of
industry" for decades past. Could it mean that the legitimacy of
profit-making is itself under challenge?
I believe that it is not the matter
of profit-making that is under challenge now, but the manner of
profit-making. It is already clear that making profits at the cost of
others (outworkers, for example) is no longer seen as acceptable.
However profits that are made fairly, meeting real needs, are more
likely to be seen as legitimate and win the support of
stakeholders.
This question of legitimacy – and
recognition of the community’s power to grant or withhold it -- is
warming up as a corporate issue. Growing pressures in our physical
and social environments are likely to bring it to the boil.
Whether that’s good news or bad news
depends upon your point of view.
Herd organisations may see the
increasing demands as a nuisance. Leading organisations will see them
as opportunities.
Paul Hawken points out in Natural
Capitalism that only about 1 per cent of the materials and energy used
by the US economy in production ends up in durable products: the rest
is trash within weeks. Clearly that’s unsustainable. We have to invent
new ways to make things. Who is going to own that market? Are they
creating it now?
We now know that we have to cut human
impacts on the planet and restore natural assets. Whether it is
tree-planting to reduce salinity or water filtration for domestic use,
there’ll be a host of new products and services. Who is going to own
that market? Who is designing those products and services?
The future of food is a topic that
invites exploration from anyone in agriculture or food technology or
hospitality. For a number of reasons, from health to hysteria, it
makes sense to anticipate a continuing shift to natural food
production, to more diverse food products, to new forms of
preservation, packaging and distribution. Who is going to own that
market?
The future is full of challenge. But it
takes only a simple flip to see that challenge as opportunity.
Perhaps the starting point is
redesigning what we see as success, leaving behind outdated ideas and
adopting new ways to measure our wellbeing. Do we need a GPI for
organisations? That, in rather different terms, is what we're
suggesting as we introduce organisations to the concepts attached to
wider and deeper measures of success -- sustainable success.
Working for
a Better World
Of the many alternatives that lie in
the future, one popular vision is a world where organisations are
collaborative, perhaps as cooperatives. These cooperatives would
network local initiatives into global systems designed to protect
sustainability and enrich human societies in a way that distributes
wealth more effectively than our previous systems have done. Certainly
it can no longer be a world in which we continue to allow some groups
of people to poison our shared nest for private gain, in which we
continue to add wealth to the wealthy and strip basic human rights
from the poor and unprotected. Even without making moral judgments, it
is clear that that just won't work any more.
But couldn't we do better than that? If
we look at the human journey again, seeing the individual as a fractal
for the whole, what is the most successful story we see? Isn't it the
story of the individual who learns? The person who learns wisdom, who
learns to manage himself or herself and the many relationships any
individual has with the natural and human environment? The person who
is able to enjoy a rich inner life as well as a tranquil outer life
with (in the most popular versions of this story) a diminishing need
for material goods replacing the traditional need for increasing
wealth?
Are we on our long, laborious way,
after all, to a happy society?
Riding high on the euphoric spirit of
the Olympic Games in Sydney, it occurred to me that when we have
stopped being dazzled by information and communications technology;
after we learn to manage biotechnology; when we have used new
materials technology to meet most material needs; after we develop
safe and healthy versions of nanotechnology; we might realise that
technology itself is a tool and not a goal. We might then, older and
wiser, turn our attention to the wider goals of human wholth and
happiness. What would be a "right livelihood" in a society like
that? Would it be teaching the inner skills and abilities that help
individuals, families and even organisations to move toward that kind
of wisdom? Bringing that kind of happiness?
So my favourite vision for the future
is of an older, wiser Australia becoming a global centre for the
happiness industry -- not the short-lived, 20th century
idea of happiness as denial and distraction, but the wiser, deeper,
more enduring happiness that comes from within. And I'm not just
talking about tai chi on our beaches, zen at the zoo. Imagine our
tourism industry becoming a personal renewal industry; professional
development teaching more inner than outer skills; experiential
learning in the natural environment replacing an environmental
restoration industry that's no longer needed, school curricula that
help children to learn how to manage their inner lives.
Even now, we know that we are doing
more and more with less and less in the material world. We know that,
in organisations, emphasis is shifting from the physical and material
(production, manufacturing) to the non-physical and immaterial
(innovation, design, creativity, relationships). Isn't it logical to
anticipate these trends moving further into the abstract? Sir Ervin
Laszlo highlights the evolution of consciousness as a phenomenon that
has already overtaken physical evolution. Isn't it logical that whole
new areas of future products and services will emerge to service this
growth?
So to the question I asked at the
beginning of this article: what do I see as my task as an elder? It
would be nice to say I'm conducting a personal crusade to turn
Australia into the world's first happiness economy, but I'm afraid
that will have to wait for someone younger and stronger.
The professional focus of my past few
years has been on the intersection between the field of futures, and
the field of organisations.
Change in the way we manage our
societies is clearly imperative and urgent. The greatest impact is
made by organisations. Doesn't this mean that the greatest opportunity
lies in the reframing of their role in society?
We've seen that the managers of
organisations are creating the future for our communities through the
choices they make every day. But people who run organisations are not
aware of the need for deep change. They're busy doing things. The job
of executives is to execute. And they're under pressure to do more,
faster, in an accelerating environment. How do we reach them? How can
we catch the corporate elbow? How to help them to look over their
walls? Alert them to the tidal waves of change that threaten us all at
the same time as they offer us wonderful opportunities?
One of my painful learnings when I was
in public relations was that it's really hard to change the minds of
chief executives, whose traditional perspectives have been reinforced
by success. Or did I just learn that I wasn't able to do it? Either
way, it clearly needed a new approach.
At the same time, I experienced the
isolation of the adviser who's out of step, the consultant who wants
to talk about values when clients are interested only in profits. So I
talked with some futurist friends, and over a series of meetings (over
a number of years) we agreed to form a mutually supportive network
which, in turn, would establish a Futures Foundation. The Futures
Foundation sees itself becoming a global centre for learning about the
future, describes its mission as "inspiring ways to create the
future". It is set up to act as an interface between the formal field
of futures studies and the managers of organisations, to bring to
their aid the tools and skills and methodologies of futures that are
most usefully applicable to the management of organisations.
On the basis of experience, our
strategic approach specifically excludes trying to change people's
minds. On the contrary, our target market is identified as those
managers and organisations who are seeking help - the people who have
reached the point where they recognise that traditional methods don't
work any more and who are ready to work at a deeper level. At the same
time we are putting together a learning program for those who want to
know more about futures, and planning to link that into formal
academic courses. And we are working to set up research and
information management systems that will interact directly with
learning materials and publications. All of this is being done on a
voluntary basis, so we dream of a future when we'll have the kind of
resources that will allow us to do it all at the professional level
that the importance of this work demands.
We have undertaken consulting
assignments ranging from exploring the future of financial markets to
developing the creativity of a marketing team. We maintain a busy
calendar of events for members and the corporate world, and we are
actively promoting the concept of foresight at senior levels in
government. Our website needs upgrading but it's there, and it works (www.futurists.net.au).
Our regular newsletter has just been upgraded to a more professional
quality. And our database is about to be turned into a professional
resource.
But perhaps the single most important
activity is one we have undertaken since the very beginning --
carefully building relationships of mutual trust with people inside
and outside the organisation, in Australia and elsewhere. Those we
value most highly are those with the growing number of organisations
which are spontaneously appearing to create what I call the "change
community". Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson would call them "cultural
creatives". Many of them are actually corporate creatives, who may or
may not be located in an alien culture.
Already there is great encouragement to
be found in the consistent growth and visibility of the new worldview,
of people -- and increasingly, organisations -- who recognise that the
future of humanity depends upon our changing the way we do things. By
the time that knowledge becomes unavoidable, even for the busiest
corporate executive, it's good to know that a new world will already
have emerged that could be the beginning of the shift to a world of
wisdom.
And if we have longer life cycles, and
if we're fast learners, maybe our grandchildren will be the ones to
create a world in which wisdom and wholth and happiness become
realistic goals. Even for organisations.
Jan Lee Martin, director of the
Futures Foundation. 2 Phillip Street, Sydney NSW 2000. Tel. 61 2
9247 8411 Fax. 61 2 9247 8947.