Introduction

[00:00:00] Paul: Welcome to Employing Differences. A conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:08] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:00:09] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:11] Karen: Each episode we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, should we change our structure? 

Revisiting Structure and Culture

[00:00:18] Paul: So in last week's episode, we were talking about boards. We were talking about structures. Where, how boards decide who is going to be on them. How the membership relates to that, and we started to get into this. Idea of the sort of relational space that might exist between a board and the members, and also between the members and the members. And that of course brought us to a conversation about structure.

[00:00:41] Paul: If this episode sounds familiar to you, it's because way, way, way back in the archives in episode four. Karen and I talked about the relationship between structure and culture in organizations. After five years, we're sort of revisiting this. Because it's a topic that's coming up for us, again. We don't recommend that you go listen to episode four if you haven't listened to it already. 

[00:01:03] Paul: We think our thoughts may be a little more well-formed this time around, and certainly our audio quality is better. But we do want to dig into today. 

Structural Solutions vs. Cultural Problems

[00:01:11] Paul: This notion that we see a lot in organizations. That when things don't feel right, when things are sort of breaking down. Oftentimes, people want to reach for a structural solution. To say like, well, we need to change the way that we elect our board, or we need to do this different way of work process, right? Or, we need to adopt sociocracy, or any number of things where people start to coming up with structural solutions. To address what we think is generally more of an underlying relational and cultural problem, and how that often doesn't work the way that people think it. 

[00:01:46] Karen: Yeah, I'm gonna guess that if you're asking the question, should we change our structure? And everybody in your organization is like, yeah, that would make everything so much easier. You probably have a structural problem and changing the structure is probably a great idea. But if you're asking the question, should we change our structure? And some of you are saying, yes, it'll all be so much better and we'll like it and we'll be happier. And some of you are saying, no, no, that sounds terrible and that's just gonna break things and whatever. And you got a big fight going on about that. That is in itself a sign that your problem is in the culture, not the structure. 

[00:02:23] Karen: I suppose there could be a case where that isn't so, but all the cases I've seen. My assessment was that while the culture, while the structure part might not have been ideal. Changing it wasn't gonna solve the problem. Because ultimately the problem was in the relationship space, in trust, in transparency, in connection, or lack thereof in communication and miscommunication and conflicts that didn't get resolved. All of the stuff that makes up the culture of an organization. If that's where the problem is, structure won't fix it. 

[00:02:56] Paul: We've talked before about how, one of the things we've seen when teams or departments or organizations or communities sort of change their structural way of doing things, they just simply find the new ways to do exactly the same thing that they were doing before. From a relational standpoint, it's like, well, we operated in a low trust way before, so we're adopting this new thing and we're still gonna be low trust. While structure and process does shape behavior in certain ways, and it can nudge our beliefs in certain ways around this. It isn't as big a lever, as people often think that it is. 

Organizational Antibodies and Culture Shift

[00:03:31] Paul: Because one of the things I sometimes talk with my consultant clients around is this notion of organizational antibodies. It's like, we wanna do this new thing and so we wanna introduce this new way of working. This new structure and whatever have you. And the thing is that as an organization, it is a foreign idea, a foreign entity, a foreign thing that's been introduced. And organizations react to the way that the human immune system reacts to certain things. This is outside, this is weird, get it away. Like, what can we do about it? Even when we like the idea. And so oftentimes we end up adopting whatever this new structure is or this new tool is, and using it exactly the same way as the old tool. Because that culture shift didn't really happen. We thought that by having a different way of selecting our board members, or we thought that by having a different way of having workflow through. That it would lead to a much larger change in our relationships with each other than it actually did.

[00:04:29] Karen: Yeah. 

The Importance of Culture Over Structure

[00:04:30] Karen: I think, there's a quote somewhere where somebody said that culture eats structure for lunch. And I think that's just true that if you have a fabulous culture and your structure's a mess. You might be less efficient, but you mostly won't notice. You'll kind of ignore the structure and rely on your culture to get things done, and the parts that aren't really working we'll just fall away. You'll stop using them because you have this high trust and great communication and all of that thing that you just the structure sits in the drawer. Like you use it as much as you need it to keep things working, and maybe you end up spending extra time talking about things or there may be things that you could adjust. But for the most part, that works. And if you reverse that. The structure's a mess, and you don't trust each other and you talk over each other and communication isn't working very well, but your structure is absolutely perfect for collaboration and whatever you'd want. It won't feel collaborative. It won't feel like it's working well. Because what's happening in the space between is so messed up that no structure in the world can save it. So ideally, we would have a strong and efficient culture and a strong and efficient structure. Like you have both of them and everything runs beautifully. But if I have to pick, I'm gonna pick culture every day. 

Edgar Schein's Perspective on Organizational Culture

[00:05:50] Paul: Edgar Schein talks about organizational culture in a way that I find really useful, right? He says that fundamentally culture is an accumulated set of learnings within a group about what works well enough. To solve both the problems of what he calls external adaptation, which is dealing with whatever is out there in the world that we're trying to do. And internal functioning, right. Allowing us to keep doing our thing together. That those, it's learnings about the things that work well enough. In order for us to pass those along to other people. And we do that for long enough that those things drop out of sight. We often don't even recognize that there. And so we can see an organization's culture, in the behaviors that people actually exhibit. The things that they do. We can get signifiers about it from things they say, the sort of espoused values. But recognize that espoused values may be in conflict with what people are actually doing. And you need to get curious about those kinds of things. But that really the bedrock of the things we believe about what works. Is what the foundation of this is. And so, to your point, like we might introduce a new structure, but if we don't believe that collaboration, that trust, that being vulnerable. If we don't believe those things work, we will never use those tools and use that structure in the way that was intended, in the way that would actually help us. And that's where I agree with you that there are these deep beliefs about who we are and what we need to be doing in order to succeed in whatever, realm success means. That affects the way that we then. Use the tools that we are provided with in our toolbox.

Final Thoughts on Structure and Culture

[00:07:31] Karen: I feel like the pretty short episode today. Because it's a pretty simple concept, but I think we're probably ready to wrap it up, which is if you're thinking about changing your structure, the question I'd be asking is, is our problem actually structural? And if there's broad agreement that changing and selecting the board a different way, or changing the bylaws or adopting a different method of decision making, and where you look at that and go, oh yeah, that'd make our lives easier. Probably, it would, and that's a great idea. And structure change can be a hundred percent useful. And if you're having a hard time even deciding whether to change your structure. That's an indication, that probably the clunkiness that you're experiencing or the conflict that you're experiencing or the strife that you're experiencing that's causing you to say, should we change our structure. Is coming from what I would say our culture or relationship territory. 

[00:08:21] Karen: And so if you're having problems with communication, with transparency, with trust, with anything in that relational space. Probably what's gonna help you is more like a dose of the things we talk about on here all the time of curiosity and vulnerability and relationship building and working through those conflicts and all that stuff. That's probably gonna have to change. Because even if you adopt a new and better structure, it's going to carry with it all the cultural baggage that was the real problem to begin with, and a new structure won't actually save you. 

Conclusion

[00:08:55] Paul: Well, that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time. I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:08:58] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig. And this has been Employing Differences.