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A statement of shared values, no matter how inspiring, does not make a healthy culture.
According to business ethicist David Burkus, who compared the corporate and ethical cultures of Enron and Zappos, “People typically do not look to written codes for clues about how to behave; they look to others.”
Whether in ethics or innovation, or in rule following or risk taking, organizational culture is shaped by the actions of people, especially the leaders.
Note the connection that Peter Steinke makes between the behavior of leaders and the system’s “direction aligned with purposes”:
Like healthy people, systems promote their health through “responsible and enlightened behavior.” The people who are most in position to enhance the health of a system are precisely those who have been empowered to be responsible, namely the leaders. . . . They set a tone, invite collaboration, make decisions, map a direction, establish boundaries, encourage self-expression, restra...
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Start functioning differently and let’s see what happens.”
Only as we began to act differently would we then know what infrastructure changes were needed to reinforce the new culture.
John Kotter puts it this way: “How does culture change? A powerful person at the top, or a large enough group from anywhere in the organization, decides the old ways are not working, figures out a change vision, starts acting differently, and enlists others to act differently.”
Creative collaboration and a more decentralized and empowering system did not come to our church because the leaders decreed it so or I gave a sermon or we reorganized our committees into teams.
Love
We protect what we cherish. Love drives us to hold on to what is dear and cling to what gives us meaning and life. But it is also because of love that we are willing to change. It is a great paradox that love is not only the key to establishing and maintaining a healthy culture but is also the critical ingredient for changing a culture.
How do we change the culture of a church? What if the default way of functioning is one of self-preservation? What if the behaviors of the leaders have created a culture of entitlement rather than discipleship?
What if the church culture is focused on preserving American Christendom or worse? When the church’s default behavior, way of functioning, its organizational DNA is now hindering the very thing that must be done to fulfill the mission God has given us, how do we change it? And if “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” then how do we change the culture before we are eaten alive?
You have to birth something new.
Ronald Heifetz said, “You don’t change by looking in the mirror; you change by encountering differences.”
To be sure, fear of differences can keep us resolutely committed to the status quo, to rejecting what seems foreign and to circling the wagons to keep out the intruder.
The new birth won’t be all you or all them but a new creation, a new living culture that is a combination of the past and the future you represent. But you have to communicate that you really love them, or they will never let you close enough to them to take in the different perspective, experiences and vision that you bring.
From a Healthy Culture to Adaptive Capacity
The most critical attribute that a congregation must have if it is going to thrive in uncharted territory is a healthy organizational culture.
Part Three LEADING OFF THE MAP In Uncharted Territory Adaptation Is Everything
7 - Navigating the “Geography of Reality” Those who follow Jesus embody fluidity, adaptation, and collaboration. It’s what we call the third-culture way. Adaptable to changing circumstances. To challenging cultures. To complex crises and problems. If there’s one quality that matters most to the fate of the church in the twenty-first century, it’s adaptability. Dave Gibbons, The Monkey and the Fish
Lewis at Lemhi
Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns describe a defining moment in Meriwether Lewis’s life:
He was approaching the farthest boundary of the Louisiana Territory, the Continental Divide—the spine of the Rocky Mountains beyond which the rivers flow west. No American citizen had ever been there before. This he believed was the Northwest Passage: the goal of explorers for more than three centuries, the grea...
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According to historical geographer John Logan Allen, that moment atop the Lemhi Pass was when the “geography of hope” gave way to the “geography of reality.”
Meriwether Lewis makes no comment about that world-rearranging moment in his journal, but Sgt. Patrick Gass describes his reaction some days later, saying that they “proceeded over the most terrible mountains I ever beheld.”
This is exactly the moment that the church faces today with the demise of Christendom and a changing topography of faith. In this new culture a new missional mental model is needed, and a new way of leading—and learning—is necessary.
Adaptive Leadership: Loss, Learning and Gaps
Adaptive leadership is about “letting go, learning as we go, and keeping going.” It’s about loss, learning and gaps: “Adaptive leadership consists of the learning required to address conflicts in the values people hold, or to diminish the ga...
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Adaptive leadership is exercised in helping our communities “mind the gap” between our aspired values and our actions, between our values and the reality we face.
Even more so, adaptive work pays attention to the deeper underlying causes that keep a group perilously perched in a state of inaction.
This mode of leading raises up and sheds light on the competing values that keep a group stuck in the status quo.
Like a person with one foot on the platform and one in the train, the moment of adaptation exposes the gaps within a system and forces the leadership to ask painful questions: What will we lose if we have to choose one of these values over the other? What must we be willing to let go?
Making hard decisions in the face of competing values is what every explorer confronts when they go off the map and into uncharted territory.
Because of their relational congruence, the men became a corps, and when they stepped off the map, they were prepared to be a Corps of ...
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Adaptive Capacity Adaptive capacity is defined by Heifetz, Linsky and Grashow as “the resilience of people and the capacity of systems to engage in problem-defining and problem-solving work in the midst o...
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When the world is different than we expected, we become disoriented. When the tried-and-true solutions to our problems don’t work, we get stuck. When we are faced with competing values that demand a decision which will inevitably lead to loss, we can get overwhelmed.
At exactly the moment when the congregation is looking to the leader to give direction, the leader’s own anxiety and inner uncertainty is the highest.
But this is the moment when the transformational leader goes off the map and begins to lead differently. This is when the transformational leader mobilizes a group toward the growth they will need in order to face the disorientation and find the capacity to refr...
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This adaptive capacity is the crucial leadership element for a changing world (see fig. 7.1). While it is grounded on the professional credibility that comes from technical competence and the trust gained through relational congruence, adaptive capacity is also its own set of skills to be mastered.
These skills include the capacity to calmly face the unknown refuse quick fixes engage others in the learning and transformation necessary to take on the challenge that is before them
seek new perspectives ask questions that reveal competing values and gaps...
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raise up the deeper issues at work in a community explore and confront resistance and sabotage learn and change without sacrificin...
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act politically and stay connected relationally help the congregation make hard, often painful decisions to effectively fulfill...
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It’s a set of deeply developed capabilities that are the result of ongoing transformation in the life of a leader.
Suffering Through Youth Sunday Again When I was first
We go back to what we know how to do. We keep canoeing even though there is no river.
At least part of the reason we do this is because we resolutely hope that the future will be like the past and that we already have the expertise needed for what is in front of us. And facing the “geography of reality” and the inner uncertainty that arises within us is extremely difficult.
*REORIENTATION* When our old maps fail us, something within us dies. Replacing our paradigms is both deeply painful and absolutely critical.
We too are not unfamiliar with the fear of barriers, sufferings and hardships when the world as we know it is changing rapidly, though Lewis’s disciplined response might be unfamiliar to most of us.
