Leadership and Culture: Why Leaders Should Destroy Obsolete Cultures

Leadership has many definitions and perspectives. To understand leadership many scholars and managers have tried to contrast it with management.

The popular distinction is that, while management is concerned with order and stability, leadership must be heavily focused on helping organizations adapt to their environment (business operational, economic, political) etc.

The role of leadership has gained more prominence in a world where technical skills abounds and where worthy captains that can lead organizations are in short supply.

Leadership itself is not a function that exists in a silo from where it directs the activities of organizations and nations. Leadership operates through a mediating concept called culture.\

What is culture? Here in Nigeria, many people will agree that culture “is a way of life”. I will share a definition of culture from renowned social psychologist- Hofstede.

”Culture according to him is a collective programming that makes members of one group different from members of another group.”

This programming of people in organizations affects their actions and ultimately, the health of the organization. It has ultimate effects in everything an organization does. Have we heard the saying that; Culture eats strategy for breakfast?

In a world where organizations have to constantly disrupt themselves to meet customer needs, the culture of an organization is very important.

Some cultures favor coping with the demands of this information age, some don’t. It is not organizations that have market leadership that survive, it is organizations that change easily that will be able to capture value in the future.

In the light of this, leadership must worry about the culture in their organization. This then begs the question, why do some organizations have a favorable culture and some don’t? I think the right question is how is culture formed?

Edgar Schein in his book: Leadership and Culture explains that culture is a result of the initial adjustment of an organization to its environment. Perhaps, we should employ story to get a vivid picture of Schein’s explanation.

Yinka and executive who used to work in a top tier bank in Nigeria leaves to set-up an HR consulting practice, she gathers a team of 5 people to work with her. In the course of their work, they encounter many challenges in business development and marketing.  

They employed different solutions till they had a breakthrough in getting high paying corporate clients. They were also able to win business from mid-sized businesses. Their approach in winning business and servicing clients has worked for some time.

Yinka’s team obviously tried many things to cope with their business environment, but a few things succeeded. It is the few things that succeeded that create and establish the culture of the firm. Her team and organization will stick to what worked when they were struggling and that becomes their culture.

What if things change? What if what worked for them becomes obsolete? How does Yinka get her team to change their mental models so that the organization can be sustainable? This is the typical dilemma of an average founder. The organization grow up to a certain point where the behavior and culture can no longer scale.

A culture that produced $1million may not be able to generate $10million.

In situations like this, the work of leaders is to destroy the culture of the organization. Edgar Schein also makes a point that the role of leader’s is to make and break culture.

 Leaders guide teams to establish current cultures, thus they are empowered to destroy a culture that no longer works.

Typically, a cultural analysis is done to understand the dominant and sub-cultures in the organization. There are individuals who embody these types of culture, they also need be identified.

Management needs to create a change management program where these stakeholders are invited and involved in seeing the danger of carrying on with a culture that is no longer useful.

Here management must teach the new thinking or new proposed culture. They must also determine the early adopters and make them champions of this new thinking.

Company wide consultations must be done to assess impact and trauma that the new thinking may cause. The purpose for this is that people go through what is called psychological reactance (People don’t want to lose control of their future) and psychological insecurity (People fear they have become less useful because of changes). The fears of people must be allayed.

People know they have to learn new skills; both soft and hard and this bring undue stress. It is normal. Management must show support by providing psychological safety and window period for people to change.

Leadership in the information economy is not short on information and knowledge. What leadership is short of is the willingness to destroy a culture that does not work.

It is the leaders who can drive change through “obsolete cultural destruction” and organizational learning that will be the Level 6 leaders.