Home: Message List - Event June: Organizational Leadership

Event June: Organizational Leadership

CommunityTeam — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:00:38 GMT

Every small company is a tribe, in which everyone knows everyone else, or at least knows of them. Small companies tribes often include investors, spouses, attorneys, accountants, and advisors. But not all tribes are the same. What makes the difference in performance, innovation, and the ability to survive and thrive in economic downturns is tribal culture. The five cultures are:

Stage One: criminal clusters, such as gangs and prisons, where the theme is "life stinks," and people act out in despairingly hostile ways.
Stage Two: the dominant culture in 25 percent of workplace tribes where people say, in effect, "my life stinks," and exhibit behavior of apathetic victims.
Stage Three: the dominant culture in almost half of U.S. workplace tribes, where theme is "I'm great." This personally competitive cultural stage produces only limited innovation and almost no collaboration.
Stage Four: representing 22 percent of tribal cultures, where the theme is "we're great." Stage four is the zone of Tribal Leadership where the leader upgrades the tribe as the tribe embraces the leader. Stage Four is the beginning of high performance.
Stage Five: the culture of 2 percent of the workforce tribes, where the theme is "life is great" and people focus on realizing potential by making history. Teams at Stage Five have produced remarkable innovations, leading their industries and the economy.

In this highly interactive session, Dave Logan, best selling co-author of Tribal Leadership and The Three Laws of Performance shows executives how to upgrade their organization one stage at a time, all the way to Stage Five. The result is unprecedented impact and success.

Dave Logan is a USC faculty member, best-selling author, and management consultant. He currently teaches management and leadership in the USC Executive MBA-an area rated #1 on the latest Wall Street Journal ranking of EMBA programs. He is also on the faculty at the International Centre for Leadership in Finance (ICLIF), endowed by the former prime minister of Malaysia, and on the Foundation for Medical Excellence in Portland. From 2001-2004, he served as Associate Dean of Executive Education at USC.

As senior partner at CultureSync, a management consulting firm, Dave works with governments, non-profit organizations, and Fortune 500 companies, including Qualcomm, Intel, Charles Schwab, American Express, and Prudential.

Dave is co-author of four books including Tribal Leadership and The Three Laws of Performance. His books have been on the best-sellers lists of USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Week.

Dave has a Ph.D. in Organizational Communication from the Annenberg School at USC.

Post a question now, and then join us on June 4 at 2:00 p.m. EST for a response. Or join us during the event and post a question. Dave will try to answer as many questions as possible, but may not get to all of them. Note, you do not need to register for the event. You simply need to be a member of SBOC to post a question. If you don't have a user ID, join now, it's free.

Re: Event June 4: Organizational Leadership

CommunityTeam — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:04:15 GMT

Dave thank you so much for your time today. Community if you want to learn more about leadership, please visit:

http://www.culturesync.net/ and http://triballeadership.net/

Re: Event June 4: Organizational Leadership

Dave99 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:03:01 GMT

All this is based on Tribal Leadership that HarperCollins published in 2008, by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright. It's on Amazon and in most book stores.

You can go to our web site: www.triballeadership.net and see lots of videos, take a one-minute survey to assess your culture, and sign up a free "Tribal Tip of the Week."

There's also an audio book you can download, that was paid for by our friends at Zappos.com--the first time a major business book was released as a free audio book. We're grateful to Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh for that.

Best to all of you--and thanks for reading.

Re: Event June 4: Organizational Leadership

CommunityTeam — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:54:40 GMT

Dave - What recommendations do you have so people can learn more?

Re: Event June 4: Organizational Leadership

Dave99 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:53:33 GMT

Stage Five rocks. Most people have never seen one of these groups, but we've read about them in books. Think the group that built the first Macintosh, or groups at Pixar that have never had a flop.

What marks Stage Five is a "life is great" view. There is no competition. They are guided only by their values.

Know that Stage Five only lasts for a short period, and then groups regress to Stage Four. But some companies have moved in and out of Stage Five many times, producing world-changing products (like the I-Pod).

Remember that tribes only move one stage a time. So only Stage Four can move to Five. If you're got a group at Stage Four, ask them: "what can we do that would make history?" The Gallup Organization asked this question and came up with the first ever World Poll (the entire world speaking with a single voice on key issues like peace in the Middle East).

Stage Five is where really remarkable things happen. I hope you all have the opportunity to experience it in your companies...and the results it delivers.

Re: Event June 4: Organizational Leadership

CommunityTeam — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:49:18 GMT

Dave - can you tell us what is Stage 5 and how do you get there?

Re: Event June 4: Organizational Leadership

Dave99 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:47:59 GMT

Great question.

First, you have to figure out whether people are in Stage Two or Three. This is critical, because if use the "medicine" that works in stage and the other stage, it can backfire.

If people are down in the dumps, get them back to Stage Three by using tips in an above post. If they are in Stage Three, again, use the above tips to get them to Stage Four.

As you do this, you have to emphasize that raises and vacation times will be possible again once we find new sources of revenue, and that you'll need their help and insights in doing that. It it's a "we're in this together...and we can get out of this together," you have a good shot.

Note that if you have this conversation in a Stage Two group, they'll reject it. "That'll never work...we're in deep trouble...our lives stink" is what you'll get back. No involvement or ideas.

At Stage Three, you have tiny shot. People will put forward their ideas, but they won't build on what others do. You'll hear things like: "I know how to do this..." or "If you did what I told you do before, we wouldn't be in this mess." Lots of "I'm great (and you're not."

If you can get them to Stage Four, it'll be a different game, as we've been discussing on this threat. It becomes almost easy to get great results in a short period of time.

Remember: Stage Four is what launched this country. It's what led to the most important scientific advances in history. It can certainly help your company get raises and vacation days.

Re: Event June 4: Organizational Leadership

antiques4me — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:31:46 GMT

I can't afford to give my employees a raise or more vacation time. How can I increase their morale AND productivity? what tips do you have?

Re: Event June 4: Organizational Leadership

Dave99 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:38:09 GMT

In terms of how to channel this self-promoting attitude into something that's better for your company, you have to go through the steps to move from Stage Three to Four. Those are written up above.

In addition to what's there, consider that your job is "fuse" people in your company together, based on shared values and a common interest. You do this by figuring out what individuals value (remember open-ended questions). Then say something like: "Mary, it makes sense to work with Ted on this project. He's done similar work that can help you. Also, you can help on project xx that he's working on. And having spent time with both of you in the last few days, you are two people who are really into developing your employees. That's a core part of how you both operate."

As you start "fusing" people like this, ask them: what should we be doing, based on what's unique about our firm and our core values, that we aren't doing? As people get connected at the level of their values, they'll be very interested in putting their ideas forward. As as Stage Four forms, people will add to, rather than top, the ideas of others.

Also, there's a chapter in Tribal Leadership on how to take Stage Four to the next level of revenue through something called a Tribal Strategy. That would be a great exercise to do. Could get you a big return quickly.

Re: Event June 4: Organizational Leadership

Dave99 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:32:09 GMT

Consulting is filled with Stage Three folks. I say this having been in consulting for almost 20 years.

Yes, the great part of Stage Three is that people will work their behinds off to outperform one another. As my friend David Kelley at IDEO says (referring to Stanford, another Stage Three place): "we win the hell out of the Nobel Prize...but we do as individuals."

That's the problem. People don't collaborate. Where this is hurting your business is in sales and knowledge management. People hoard what they know, so that they know more than others. Sales leads are MY leads, not our leads.

Without any hyperbole, if you can transform your sales group to Stage Four, your sales will go up so much it'll seem to people like you must be cooking the books. Likewise, if you can create Stage Four among your top consultants, they'll come up with new types of services, new potential clients to go after, etc. And everyone will have a lot more fun as they make a lot more money.