Jim MacQueen

Jim MacQueen
The Flow of
Organizational
Culture
New Thinking and
Theory for Better
Understanding and
Process
The Flow of Organizational Culture
“Organizational culture is the ever-evolving product of dynamic webs that con-

nect individuals and groups. Jim’s book awakens us to contemplate this flow in
everyday life … Thought-provoking and profoundly skill-building. This book is
for all system-change professionals who want to deepen their conceptualization
of healthy human systems, and put their participatory values into practice.”
—Sam Kaner, Founder and Executive Director of Community at Work; Author,
Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making
“In this well-written, expert, and important book, Jim MacQueen gives us
unique and coherent access to Organizational Culture. Why is this important?
For both the practitioner and scholar within our OD professional selves, a deep
and useful grasp of Culture’s sense/meaning and application/theory, like breath-
ing, is essential to our own effectiveness. I found learning, challenges to my
thinking, and new perspectives on many pages. Future readers should have the
same experience.”
—George H. Schofield, Developmental and Organizational Psychologist,
Writer, Consultant, Speaker; Author, How Do I Get There from Here?
(named a Must Read by NASDAQ, 2017)
“The amorphous concept we call organizational culture is truly a flowing,

ever-changing, complex adaptive system. MacQueen blends theories, examples,
consulting tips, and even scenes from Shakespeare into a clear narrative for prac-
tical application, to help consultants and leaders shape the shared understand-
ings of individuals in the groups they serve into new and better cultures for the
changing world around us.”
—Eric Sanders, Organization Development Economist, LLC; Faculty,
Elmhurst College, USA
Jim MacQueen
The Flow
of Organizational
Culture
New Thinking and Theory for Better
Understanding and Process
Jim MacQueen
InFlow OD
Bethel, AK, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-25684-5 ISBN 978-3-030-25685-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25685-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

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Acknowledgements
It takes many people to write a book such as this one. The following
people have been beyond helpful helping me on writing this book.
Romi Boucher—one of my readers and also an Organization Development

practitioner who has helped with content and keeping my APA citation
style on track. “I could not have done it without her.”
Veronica Aiken—a close friend and a fine editor of style.
John Moore—another good friend and proofreader extraordinaire.
Montenique Finney who served as a coach to keep me organized and
going during the writing process.
Philippa Thomas and Matt Vogler made substantial contributions to
my understanding and use of the neuropsychology content.
Joe Leedom helped in a significant way to edit Chapter 6.
Ceil Tilney offered excellent business-related feedback and enthusiastic
support throughout the project.
Lynn Mace was instrumental as a health coach in keeping my body func-
tioning so that I could concentrate on the task of writing.
Helen Anderson who began asking me about a book when I was still
doing presentations on culture and before I had seriously started to con-
sider writing this one.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Richard and Cathy Hach who participated in the actual consulting

work and have stayed friends in spite of it.
Christine Luketic did the initial data analysis and helped me to figure
out the right questions to ask.
James Hawden helped to write the survey used for the case study.
Michael Stamper was responsible for the data presentation graphics.
Joanna MacQueen—my wife and a principal reader and editor—has
made enormous contributions to the accuracy of the text and also to the
substance of the book. Thank you for your care, insight, and especially,
your patience.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 A Culture Perspective: Growing Culture in a

Community Garden 7
3 A Mental Model of Organizational Culture 17
4 Sense and Meaning 41
5 Ontologies of Organizational Culture 51
6 Culture and Organizational Change 65
7 Creating Context: The Role of Sensemaking

in Producing Culture 91
8 Metaphors: A Critical Culture Tool 119
9 Using the Ideas and Approaches: A Case Study 141
vii
viii CONTENTS
10 Working with Organizational Culture:

Ideas About Consulting 175
Index 199
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 Emergent process: a system of diverse agents (A), richly

connected (B), gives rise to an emergent pattern
(C), and which feeds back down into the system
(D) (Seel, 2000) 29
Fig. 3.2 The cultural dynamics model (Hatch, 1993) 30
Fig. 3.3 Culture as a complex adaptive system, Sub-systems
in the cultural system: A, B, C, and D 33
Fig. 7.1 Organizational sensemaking and transitions 113
Fig. 9.1 Quantitative data charts 159
Fig. 9.2 Qualitative data chart—Question 16 (Question 16:
What does the brand promise, “Let’s explore what’s possible
together,” mean to you?) 163
In what ways have you seen the brand promise
(Let’s explore what’s possible together?) and the brand
character (Approachable, Plainspoken, Collaborative)
become the [Department’s] way of doing thing?) 166
What additional thoughts about branding
at [the Department] would you like to share?) 168
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
No man steps in the same river twice. (Heraclitus)
One of the originators of the field of organization development, Kurt

Lewin, once said, “There is nothing so practical as a good theory”
(Lewin, 1951). Lewin seems to have had a great sense of irony when
he mixed the concepts of practical and theoretical in the same sentence.
“Practical” carries with it a sense of usefulness as well as connotations
of something that is down-to-earth, pragmatic, utilitarian, and realistic.
“Theoretical,” on the other hand, is more closely associated with the
notion that something is abstract, conceptual, hypothetical, intangi-
ble. Certainly, there is a kind of tension between the two words. I think
the juxtaposition is intentional, designed to construct challenges to
our thinking as we struggle with something like this book that is both
practical and theoretical.
Good theory needs to be put to use in a practical, utilitarian way.
However, for it to be truly useful, we need to be able to understand
the concepts and ideas that are its foundation. There is little in this
world as abstract and difficult to understand as organizational culture.
And yet, we can experience the force of its existence tangibly. Scholars,
organization development (OD) practitioners, and managers have been
working to define and harness culture’s energies since at least the 1950s
when an awareness of organizational culture first began to blossom.
© The Author(s) 2020 1

J. MacQueen, The Flow of Organizational Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25685-2_1
2 J. MACQUEEN
In this book, I will offer up new perspectives, ideas, and interpreta-

tions of theory about the nature and processes of organizational culture.
It is my hope that these new approaches will help to release the energy
embedded in Lewin’s dynamic tension between the practical and theo-
retical and make the book useful in both realms. Throughout the book,
you will find practical ideas about consulting to and changing organiza-
tional cultures. In every case, I have tied those ideas to the theoretical
concepts and philosophies of other scholars and practitioners (especially
Edgar Schein, Karl Weick, George Lakoff, and Mark Johnson) as well as
my own. As a boy, I was the type who liked to take things apart to see
how they worked. Toys, clocks, kitchen gadgets, all were the targets of
my curiosity. As an adult, organizational culture has become the target
of a similar drive to separate its parts and understand how those compo-
nents work together as a whole. The theory in this book is one product
of those explorations. Another is the consulting practices that come out
of that theory. I am happy and excited to be sharing both with you in
this book.
Speaking of you, who do I imagine you to be? First of all, I hope this
book will be valuable to consultants like myself: knowledgeable OD
practitioners with some experience explicitly working with organizational
culture. Like me, some of what you have tried didn’t turn out so well
while other efforts exceeded expectations, though you may not have
understood fully why that happened. I hope this book helps you to cre-
ate more consistency in your practice by providing you with new ideas
and insights on both the theoretical and practical sides of your work.
This book is intended to be a springboard for your intellect, imagination,
and invention to take your practice into new areas and to higher levels. It
is not a collection of how-tos or recipes for dealing with organizational
culture. You will have to make those up for yourself.
I am also hoping this book will be of use to those of you who are
students of OD and to your teachers. There are many ideas contained
here that are not included in the more traditional OD texts. Or, if they
are, they may show up in a different form with a different point of view.
Some of the underlying ideas I think are quite important. They will be
new to you and perhaps a little challenging. Some ideas, such as sys-
tems thinking and social construction, are not explained here in any
great depth. These topics are too big to be handled effectively within
the scope of this book. Also, it seems they are already a part of the dis-
course of students that I’ve encountered over the last few years. (Please
1 INTRODUCTION 3
don’t assume that you don’t need to study these topics or others that are
touched on but not elaborated in this book because I haven’t taken the
time to deal with them in more depth. I believe that studying those top-
ics, if you’re not already familiar with them, will markedly increase your
insights and abilities as consultants.)
I want to reference a second Lewin quote for this introduction “A
culture … is not a static affair but a live process like a river which moves
but still keeps to a recognizable form” (Lewin, 1951). This speaks to an
idea that is fundamental to this book: All organizations and their cultures
exist in a flow of time and process.
In my mind, this statement by Lewin is closely related to a principle
of change articulated over 2500 years ago by the ancient Greek philos-
opher, Heraclitus. Heraclitus is famous for saying, “No man steps in
the same river twice.” This statement is true because the river is always
changing. The water that is in it today is not the same water that was
in it yesterday, this morning, or even two minutes ago. In addition,
you are always changing. If the baseline is yesterday, what have you
learned or experienced that is new or different for you since then?
You have changed physically and psychologically since yesterday, this
morning, or even seconds ago. This idea is fundamental to much of
the premise of this book and so I will be referring to it periodically as
we move ahead.
Organizations and their cultures are like Heraclitus’ river. They exist
within the flow of time. Their processes, like time, are continuous. As a
consultant, the group you worked with yesterday in many ways will not
be the group you work with today. Any change or disruption that hap-
pened to their processes between yesterday and today will have had an
effect on their assumptions and beliefs about their organization. Their
sense of identity as part of the organization may have shifted. In addi-
tion, their plans about what actions and activities they may need to
engage in today may also be different. In effect, their culture will have
changed, possibly not in an immediately noticeable way. (Noticeable
changes may often take a long time to emerge.) The assumptions that
constitute that culture may have shifted and are on their way to manifest-
ing themselves in the groups’ behavior. As a consultant, you need to be
aware of this, not because you are necessarily going to change what you
do with the group now, but because you need to be prepared to do so.
In other words, staying centered, in touch, and in sync with the organi-
zation’s culture as it flows is critical to your success as a consultant.
4 J. MACQUEEN
This book provides a tour of the elements of organizational culture.

Understanding these elements, their interactions, and interdependencies
is necessary to the work of consultants who want to work in this particu-
lar part of the field of organization development (OD). These are the
consultants who seek to participate with an organization in developing
or changing an aspect of its culture. Especially if this will be happening
in the context of supporting the resolution of some business problem
or structural change effort. In general, the book examines how culture
is created from the moment people begin to organize, to how culture
tends to be regarded in the process of change management, to the pro-
cesses at work in an organization as culture is being formed. Along the
way, there are descriptions of how I have consulted to cultural issues
and recommendations about consulting practices and techniques. What
follows is a chapter by chapter overview of this tour so that you can
anticipate where we are going.
In Chapter 2, “A Culture Perspective: Growing culture in a
Community Garden,” I examine some very basic ideas about the nature
of organizational cultures, how they grow and function in everyday life,
and how culture is part of an organization from the moment people start
to organize. It will cover a bit of the history of how a few representative
scholars have conceived of culture over the last 60 years.
In Chapter 3, “A Mental Model of Organizational Culture,” the
answer to the question “What is organizational culture?” gets fuller and
deeper consideration. In the course of this chapter, I present several
scholars’ models of organizational culture. I also present my own model
of culture as a system of processes, a central tenet of this book. I include
several diagrams to help make the ideas more accessible.
Chapter 4, “Sense and Meaning,” explores the use of two words many
authors use almost interchangeably when discussing culture: “sense” and
“meaning.” Here, we explore in the context of this work, the subtle dis-
tinction between these words. The differences are important to under-
standing how organizational culture works and what are some of the
products it produces.
We spend a little time in Chapter 5, “Ontologies of Organizational
Culture,” thinking about some of the philosophical perspectives that are
important to the book’s particular conceptualization of culture. This will
be important for your understanding of the underpinnings that support
this specific framework of ideas and your practical application of those
ideas as we get into the latter parts of the book.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
Chapter 6, “Culture and Organizational Change,” demonstrates in a

very practical way how and why it is important to maintain a “culture
perspective” in your professional work. I will take you through an exam-
ination of John Kotter’s change management model as he presents it in
his book, “Leading Change” (Kotter, 1995). This chapter will describe
in some detail how and when you, as a consultant, should be putting
your attention on an organization’s culture during such a process.
In Chapter 7, “Creating Context: The Role of Sensemaking in
Producing Culture,” we take advantage of Karl Weick’s insightful work
on sensemaking in organizations (Weick, 1995) to understand the
dynamic processes used by members of an organization as they construct
culture. We will also take a look at some recent developments in neuro-
science that will help to expand your understanding and appreciation of
sensemaking and enhance your expertise when supporting the develop-
ment of organizational culture.
People use metaphor to explain and communicate ideas. The more
complex and abstract the idea, the more important the use of metaphor
becomes. In Chapter 8, “Metaphor: A Critical Cultural Tool,” we will
explore the use of metaphor for communication, cognition and gener-
ating the creative processes. All of which need to be part of changing
cultures.
Chapter 9, “Using the Ideas and Approaches: A Case Study,” pro-
vides a case study of a project I did in which I used the ideas and tools
outlined in the book to support a cultural change in an organization. It
explores the project’s background, the techniques I used, and presents a
discussion of the projects successes and failures.
Throughout the book, I provide descriptions of how I have consulted
in situations where there was a clear relationship to dealing with specific
aspects of a client’s culture. Likewise, I make suggestions about what you
might do in the context of developing or changing an organization’s cul-
ture. Chapter 10, “Working with Organizational Culture: Ideas About
Consulting,” gives some overall shape for the practice of these tech-
niques and some advice on the mind-set a consultant needs to adopt to
make them successful.
Writing this book has, for me, been a wonderful journey of insight
and discovery. I hope that it will provide you, the reader, with some of
the same pleasures.
6 J. MACQUEEN
References
Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail. Harvard
Business Review, 73, 59–67.
Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in social science. New York: Harper & Row.
Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
CHAPTER 2
A Culture Perspective: Growing Culture

in a Community Garden
Il fault cultivar notre jardin. (Voltaire, Candide, 1759)
If you change the way you talk about something, you will change the
way you think about it. If you change the way you think about it, you
will change the way you deal with it. That is the essence of everything
we are going to talk about in this book. Organizational culture is con-
structed with and through the narratives and conversations that we share
with each other (the anecdotes we tell, the expressions we use with each
other, how we treat each other, how we think about what needs to be
done in an organization, etc.). All of these are carried by the stories we
tell that communicate the meaning of what happens in our organizations
day to day.
These phenomena are present with us from the very minute we think
about creating an organization. For example, imagine forming some sort
of really simple organization. Perhaps, you’ve decided, because a lot of
your friends and neighbors have complained about not having enough
fresh vegetables, that you’d like to start a community garden. You know
there’s a perfect vacant lot just around the corner from you. You talk to
a few friends and neighbors and three or four of them are really inter-
ested in the idea. So, you and your friends get together to talk about this
more.
When you meet, everybody is congenial and polite. This turns out to
be a group that’s very good at listening to each other. So, you have a
nice, rich conversation. You decide among the group that a community

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25685-2_2
8 J. MACQUEEN
garden really is a good idea. You recognize, however, there are some
aspects of hosting this activity that are going to take some work:
Somebody has to make sure the space is actually available and that the
owner of the land is willing to let people use it for a garden. You have
to get the word out so the people in the neighborhood know that the
garden space is available.
Somebody wonders, if this scheme is really successful, who’s going to
decide who gets to be part of the group and who has to wait to get on
the list, if a list is how you’re going to handle this problem. And, by
the way, how will we make a decision about that? Someone else suggests
that the group should divide up and the responsibilities for these tasks
be distributed. And before you know it, you have a very basic frame-
work for initiating and operating your community garden. You have an
organization.
What you probably have not realized is you’ve been building the
culture of this organization from the moment you began meeting. This
is because organizing begets culture and culture begets organizing. That
is, you cannot organize without generating culture and culture strongly
influences what and how you organize.
The very idea of a community garden comes out of some aspect of
the culture in which you live now. The idea of community or communal
gardening has a long tradition in many cultures. You have simply bor-
rowed it for application in your neighborhood. The idea that a group
of people would get together to discuss this idea and move it along is
also based on our existing culture. The way you behaved together when
you met probably is reflective of a few cultural norms specific to where
you live. The way you decided to solve the problems of structuring your-
selves will undoubtedly become part of the way you do things going for-
ward, at least until the operation becomes big enough that you need to
find different ways of structuring how you do these things. The methods
that you chose to make decisions, finding consensus, for example (ideas
that everyone can live with) (Kaner, 2014), or voting (somebody wins,
somebody loses), or some combination of the two will likely live on in
the organization as an expression of “how we do things around here”
(Bower, 1966).
The more you do things that people feel have been successful around
organizing the more likely you are to continue doing them. For exam-
ple, let’s say you initially try to make your decisions by consensus—you
talk about an idea, negotiating and modifying the idea until everybody
2 A CULTURE PERSPECTIVE: GROWING CULTURE IN A COMMUNITY GARDEN 9
feels it works. If in the course of trying to make the decision this way,
the group gets stuck and is unable to reach a consensus, then someone
is likely to say, “let’s just vote on it.” If the group feels like that was a
successful process, chances are that this method will get used again and
again whenever decision making gets stalled. Without realizing that you
were shaping your culture, voting becomes part of the group’s culture:
its norms and traditions.
Imagine that in one of your meetings, an argument breaks out. For
whatever reason, one or two people become testy or maybe even bel-
ligerent. People walk away with a bad feeling. Perhaps a couple of days
later, one or two people call the person or persons who were more
aggressive than others and ask, very respectfully, that those people at the
center of the argument work really hard in the future to control their
tempers. This may result in a new variation on the norm of being con-
genial, that is, being “nice.” The group now probably realizes, not nec-
essarily consciously, that anybody who violates this piece of the culture
is likely to experience some sort of mild punishment. Being “nice” has
become an assumed value or a norm that is part of your organization’s
culture. (I will discuss more about how organizational values are formed
and the neuroscience behind it in Chapter 7.)
It’s quite likely that if the group continues to succeed and grow,
including bringing in new members, people will reflect on their experi-
ences as group members, and, consciously or unconsciously, figure out
what rules exist for getting along and making progress in this group.
Ultimately, either through being taught overtly or through learning by
example, new people will learn “how things get done” in this group.
As we have seen, what we learn, what we teach, and the understand-
ings we make of those things, becomes the culture of a given group.
That culture comes out of what we have brought with us from our exist-
ing meta-cultures to organize ourselves so we are able to work together.
The organization that we construct out of facing and solving our prob-
lems creates an increasingly specific organizational culture.
Like most, this group will probably continue to grow and take on new
tasks. If you and the group, for example, decide that you want to expand
your operations to provide more and different kinds of food not neces-
sarily available out of the garden, you might end up creating a co-op. My
experience is that the culture that you created while you and your group
were establishing the community garden will dictate much of how you
organize the co-op and the ways you manage more complicated tasks.
10 J. MACQUEEN
This will mean that the way you go about solving the problems of having
a more complex organization will create a more involved and complex
culture.
Holding a picture of these kinds of processes in mind whenever you
look at organizations/cultures and think about what’s going on with
them, represents what I would call having a culture perspective. That
is, you maintain an ongoing awareness of what organizational culture is
and how it works. You use that awareness to help interpret all that you
observe in any organization with which you are involved. A good deal of
what I want to help you do with this book is about developing that cul-
ture perspective.
At this point, you probably are asking, “What is organizational cul-
ture, exactly?”
In order to begin answering that question and set the stage for this
book, I want to explore some history and some definitions that are
important to having context for where we go next. These historical defi-
nitions are important because they tend to encapsulate the paradigms for
understanding organizational culture that are most generally in use in
today’s world.
The first of these is in a book by Terrence Deal and Alan Kennedy
entitled “Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life”
(Deal & Kennedy, 1982/2000). This book is of particular interest
because it is one of the first business-oriented books published on cor-
porate culture (along with an article by Andrew Pettigrew) (Pettigrew,
1979). Prior to these, the general field of culture was dominated by
anthropologists and sociologists. In 1982, an uncredited article appeared
in the popular business press suggesting that organizational culture had a
major impact on business performance. These publications set off a tidal
wave of interest in organizational culture by the business community.
Deal and Kennedy were among the first, along with Pettigrew, to take
advantage of that interest.
Deal and Kennedy define organizational culture as “values, heroes,
rites and rituals, and communications” (1982/2000). With few prede-
cessors in the realm of organizational studies, it is no surprise that their
definition of organizational culture reflects a bias for anthropology. This
is because the anthropological approach tends to be about studying
and reporting on what can actually be seen while observing a group (as
opposed to researching and applying more recent understandings for the
purposes of ‘improving’ a culture to improve performance).
In 1985, Quinn and McGrath put forth a more sophisticated defi-

nition of organizational culture (Quinn & McGrath, 1985). Their idea
is that organizational culture is “a collective belief system about social
arrangements that are deeply embedded values.” Again, this definition
reflects the influence of anthropology. However, it is framed more in the
context of group behavior and suggests more of the psychological and
sociological complexity that exists and can be observed in organizations.
Terms such as “social arrangements” and “deeply embedded” begin to
suggest relationships within a group over a period of time. (Several years
later, Robert Quinn teamed with Kim Cameron to produce a highly
regarded book, “Diagnosing and changing organizational culture: based
on the competing values framework.”) (Cameron & Quinn, 2011).
In 1985, Edgar Schein introduced his definition of organizational
culture:
A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its
problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked
well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new
members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those
problems. (Schein, 1985)
This idea changed the way many people think about organizational
culture. For the first time, the source of organizational culture began to
be understood as process. It also informs much of what is contained in
this book. As a paradigm, I find this definition to be the most robust
of any produced in this era or subsequently. Its fundamental idea is that
organizational culture is a set of assumptions which are, by definition,
taken for granted and therefore largely invisible to the group itself. Also,
it is based on the premise that those assumptions are learned as a result
of problem-solving.
This opens a set of questions about the essential nature of organi-
zational culture and, with that as a given, how to consult to the issues
that come up around organizational culture. Schein’s idea predicates an
approach that is fundamentally process-based. By this I mean, working
with those dynamic forces and activities that are naturally in play when
an organization’s culture is created rather than the more mechanical,
prescriptive approaches of some other scholars and consultants.
Schein’s definition also suggests that it is problem-solving processes
that produce the assumptions to which he refers. The targets of that
12 J. MACQUEEN
problem-solving are very basic group experiences, i.e., how will the
group handle the issues of adapting to those changes and forces that
happen outside of it and those changes that happen inside it. (When
you think about it, there aren’t many other kinds of issues with which
a group has to deal.) The resulting assumptions are the correct way to
perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems (Schein, 1985).
This gets us very close to the dictum that culture “is the way we do
things around here” (Bower, 1966).
I have built on Schein to form my own definition of organizational
culture. In doing so, I’ve wanted to express both my experience of
organizations and their cultures as well as what I have learned through
my study of a number of disciplines that may seem to be only tangen-
tially relevant to culture. Among these, systems thinking seemed par-
ticularly important because of the use of this discipline to explain and
support a great number of organizational phenomena (Eoyang, Olsen,
Beckhard, & Vail, 2001; Senge, 1994; Stroh, 2015). Over time, I’ve
noticed that the cultures of many organizations are filled with symbols
and symbolic references that have emerged without conscious direction
by the organization’s members and yet are sometimes also deeply mean-
ingful to the members of the organization.
My definition of organizational culture, with deep acknowledgment of
Schein’s work, is, “A symbol rich system by which people in an organization
construct and apply meaning about their work lives.” I’d like you to notice
that this definition is not about a “thing,” a static entity that can exist inde-
pendently of the people in an organization and its environment. Instead,
the definition is about a system whose elements are continuously interact-
ing with each other and the environment. This definition suggests that, in
its essence, culture exists as processes and can only be experienced as flow.
More specifically organizational culture is a complex adaptive system (CAS),
also known as a self-organizing system which, by definition, is always in pro-
cess. Olson and Eoyang offer the following definition.
Self-organization is the tendency of an open system to generate new

structures and patterns based on its own internal dynamics. Organization
design is not imposed from above or outside; it emerges from the interac-
tions of the agents in the system. (Olson & Eoyang, 2001)
One way of looking at this is that there is no such thing as organiza-

tional culture. There are only processes which produce the artifacts that
we can identify as the manifestations of a culture. The agents, the people

in the system, are interconnected and interactive. The emergent product
of the communication among the agents of the system is culture. The
idea that “people in an organization construct meaning about their work
lives” is meant to infer a process of social construction which happens
through the sharing of narratives about their understanding of reality.
In many ways, the paradigms that these definitions seek to create
are as similar as they are different. The definitions developed by Deal
and Kennedy (1982/2000) and Quinn and McGrath (1985) as well
as Schein’s and my definitions deal with the symbols of what becomes
important in an organization. Schein’s definition and my own tend to
focus on the processes through which these symbols are created and
adopted. The differences are important because the paradigms we adopt
in looking at cultures can dramatically influence how we understand the
organizational cultures with which we interact, how we perceive their
importance, their influence, and how we deal with them as managers and
consultants.
It is at this point that you are probably asking, so what? What is the
point? What is the value of introducing yet another definition, another
theoretical model of organizational culture? Why do we need new theo-
retical thinking about organizational culture? There must be hundreds of
theories of culture and probably an equal number of ideas about how to
apply those theories for whatever purpose, either to change the culture
or maybe just simply to understand and manage it better.
My first response to these questions has to do with the idea that we,
as organization development (OD) consultants, are really only effective
when we can identify and work with the processes going on in an organ-
ization. Schein’s and my definitions help to make those processes more
visible and to direct our influence in more precise ways.
My other response has to do with the issue of organizational change
and the often-stated idea that 75% of all change efforts fail. This idea has
one that is generally accepted without a lot of proof (Hughes, 2011).
Hughes’ article on the subject shows that most of these claims arise
because some scholar or practitioner is citing another’s similar assertion
even though neither has produced credible empirical evidence to back
up the claim. This has been true whether the authors are Michael Beer
(Beer, Eisenstat, & Spector, 1990) or John Kotter who seems to have
first popularized this idea in a Harvard Business Review article in 1995
(Kotter, 1995). As a matter of fact, Hughes speculates that the people
14 J. MACQUEEN
who continue to use the 75% figure are doing so to promote an inter-
vention or approach that will improve the success rate. (What Kotter
actually said was, “Well over 50% of the companies I have watched fail in
this first phase.” But the remark without citation or other forms of proof
persists and the 50% figure seems to have morphed into 75%.)
I find a much more reliable source for this kind of statistic comes from
an article by Smith (2002) in which he reports on a meta-study of 10 dif-
ferent types of organizational change interventions involving 49 individual
studies and over 43,000 different samples of effort. These change efforts
included most of the various change events with which an organization
may have to deal. The median success rate of all of these efforts was 33%,
which tracks with Kotter’s “ball park” statement. Success rates ranged from
58% for strategy deployment to 19% for culture change. Unfortunately,
Smith cannot tell us any of the details of how these efforts were imple-
mented which would be helpful for the following discussion.
All we can say is that the figure of a 25–30% rate of failure seems to
have a basis in people’s experience (including mine). Ultimately, we are
left with the question of why it matters how much change succeeds or
fails? It matters because in this country, as well as many others, we are
investing huge amounts of time and money trying to change our organ-
izations to make them more effective or efficient or, sometimes, simply
more pleasant places in which to work.
A more interesting and urgent question is, why do so many change
efforts fail? There are huge numbers of theories and studies related either
directly or indirectly to change effort methodologies that seek to explain
why so much change fails. Mostly, these explanations come down to
finding fault with leadership, communications, trust, or what many the-
orists and practitioners term resistance (a term which carries with it all
the baggage you might expect of an idea borrowed from the practices
of psychotherapy). All of these effects have to do with people, with their
responses to change or how they have been prepared (or not prepared)
for change, or how they may have been affected by the approach that a
particular consultant or manager used. Again, and again, it seems that
failure has been laid at the feet of the poor attitudes or psychological
states of the targets of the change and a nearly ubiquitous failure on the
part of managers and change consultants to manage “resistance.”
I’m going to express a different point of view. In my experience,
nearly all questions of partial or complete failure of a change effort
come down to some sort of conflict between an organization’s culture
and the proposed changes to the organization. You will recall that most
definitions of organizational culture come down to a set of beliefs, val-
ues, assumptions, and rules that govern virtually every aspect of how an
organization functions. For the moment, I’m going to ask that we stip-
ulate to the idea that organizational culture is in its broadest and tru-
est sense “the way things get done around here” (Bower, 1966; Deal &
Kennedy, 1982/2000).
Burnes and Jackson (2011) state,
A potentially significant reason for the failure of change interventions is a

lack of alignment between the value system of the change intervention and
of those members of an organization undergoing the change.
To extend this, I believe that poor alignment between a given change

effort and an existing culture (of which values are a significant element)
sets up a conflict. This conflict between what we’ve learned and believe
over the course of months or even years about “how we do things
around here” creates a cognitive dissonance between what we’re being
told to do now and what we’ve been told to practice as the right way to
do things all this time.
This goes beyond the conventional concept of a values system.
Instead, it is a way of viewing every aspect of how we function and oper-
ate in this system. This cognitive dissonance in turn creates resistance to
or rejection of the change. In other words, this leads to a failure to effec-
tively prepare the culture of an organization to align with the change.
Or, conversely, to align the change with the culture of the organization.
Such an alignment is critical to the complex task of ensuring the success-
ful implementation of any change.
In the following chapters, I will discuss in some detail the nature of
organizational cultures and how they are formed. I will also examine the
relationship between organizational culture and attempts to implement
and manage change processes in organizations.
References
Beer, M., Eisenstat, R. A., & Spector, B. (1990). Why change programs don’t
produce change. Harvard Business Review, 68(6), 158–166.
Bower, M. (1966). The will to manage: Corporate success through programmed
management. New York: McGraw-Hill.
16 J. MACQUEEN
Burnes, B., & Jackson, P. (2011). Success and failure in organizational change:
An exploration of the role of values. Journal of Change Management, 11(2),
133–162.
Cameron, K. S., & Quinn, R. E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organiza-
tional culture, based on the competing values approach (3rd ed.). San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Deal, T. E., & Kennedy, A. A. (1982/2000). Corporate cultures: The rites and
rituals of corporate life. New York: Basic Books.
Eoyang, G., Olsen, E., Beckhand, R., & Vail, P. (2001). Facilitating organiza-
tional change: Lessons from complexity science. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/
Pfeiffer.
Hughes, M. (2011). Do 70 per cent of all organizational change initiatives really
fail? Journal of Change Management, 11(4), 451–464.
Kaner, S. (2014). Facilitator’s guide to participatory decision-making. San
Francisco: Wiley.
Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail. Harvard
Business Review, 73, 59–67.
Olson, E. E., & Eoyang, G. H. (2001). Facilitating organization change: Lessons
from complexity science. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.
Pettigrew, A. M. (1979). On studying organizational cultures. Administrative
Science Quarterly, 24, 570–581.
Quinn, R. E., & McGrath, M. R. (1985). Transformation of organizational
cultures: A competing values perspective. In P. J. Frost, L. F. Moore, M. R.
Louis, C. C. Lundberg, & J. Martin (Eds.), Orgnizational culture (pp. 315–
334). Beverly Hills: Sage.
Schein, E. H. (1985). Organizational culture and leadership. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Senge, P. M. (1994). The fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building
a learning organization. New York: Currency Doubleday.
Smith, M. E. (2002). Success rates for different types of organizational change.
Performance Improvement, 41(1), 26–33. https://doi.org/10.1002/pfi.41404
10107.
Stroh, D. P. (2015). Systems thinking for social change: A practical guide to solv-
ing complex problems, avoiding unintended consequences, and achieving lasting
results. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing.
CHAPTER 3
A Mental Model
of Organizational Culture
Culture: a symbol rich system by which people in organizations construct

and apply meaning about their work lives.
If you are planning to work with organizational cultures, and I assume

you are or you wouldn’t be reading this book, you will need to be devel-
oping the “culture perspective” that I talked about in Chapter 2. In
order to do so, you need to create a mental model of organizational cul-
ture. My definition of organizational culture, a part of the basis of my
mental model, is above. Senge describes mental models as assumptions
and ideas about the nature of the world around us (Senge, 1990). An
idea about what organizational culture is and how it works might also
be considered a paradigm. Paradigms are cognitive frameworks shared
by members of any discipline or group. A paradigm about organizational
culture will serve to guide and inform our thoughts and actions as man-
agers, teachers, and consultants when we deal with the construct of the
culture of an organization. This chapter is about helping you develop
and clarify your mental model of organizational culture.
I am not suggesting that you adopt the model I present here without
question. I fully expect and encourage you to develop your own work-
ing definition of organizational culture. However, if you don’t yet have
a mental model of culture in your head, this is a place to start. If you do
have such a model already developed or developing, I strongly encour-
age you to think critically about your mental model using the material in
this book as a starting point for that examination. What makes sense to

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25685-2_3
18 J. MACQUEEN
you about any of the models you have encountered, including mine? Are
they congruent with how you feel when you join or meet a group, and
can see their behaviors and assumptions with new eyes? Does the model
help to explain what is happening in a group or organization in terms of
behaviors? If a particular definition or model predicates certain interven-
tions by a consultant, do those interventions match your values?
You should discuss these questions with others, and not just experts.
Talk with people who are simply interested. They will have substantial intu-
itive knowledge based on their experience. And, if you like, contact me.
Write me an e-mail. We will set up a time for a conversation. Do not settle
for one explanation of what is organizational culture and how it works.
We can begin with the definition of organizational culture above and
the idea of a “system.” Here, I am using the word system as shorthand
for “Complex Adaptive System” (CAS).
A complex adaptive system (CAS) behaves/evolves according to three

principles: (1) order is emergent as opposed to hierarchical, (2) the sys-
tem’s history is irreversible, and (3) the system’s future is often unpre-
dictable. The basic building blocks of the CAS are agents. Agents are
semiautonomous units that seek to maximize some major goodness for fit-
ness by evolving over time. (Dooley, 1996). (Olson & Eoyang, 2001, p. 7)
Olson and Eoyang (2001) say that agents may include ideas, people,
departments, individual actions, etc. For our purposes, we will do best to
think about the system elements or agents as people and their ideas. That
is, the constructs and attendant actions that make up the system. As they
interact (communicate with each other) they are continuously changed
by those interactions, which in turn change the nature of the CAS.
Because these agents are interconnected and their behaviors are inter-
dependent, these communications and interactions may eventually lead
to emergence, a phenomenon where new properties or structures arise
spontaneously. Because they are not planned hierarchically, you might say
that they arise from the bottom up. This is reflective of the language that
Seel uses to describe emergence: “A new pattern, at a higher level in the
system from the agents which created it” (emphasis mine) (Seel, 2000,
p. 4). Many scholars and practitioners work to keep the sense of anything
hierarchical out of discussions of CAS and emergence. It might, there-
fore, be more meaningful to say that the new structure emerges from
midst of the agents’ activity.
3 A MENTAL MODEL OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE 19
As we continue to deal with systems as representations or metaphors

for organizational cultures, I invite you to notice that we will be leav-
ing a certain amount of traditional linear thinking behind. Working with
complex systems predicates that we begin to think and communicate
with more complexity. You will find as a consultant, you become more
effective if you strive to stop thinking of yourself as being external to or
separate from the system in which you are working. Instead, recognize
that you become part of the system as soon as you begin working in it
so that you talk, think, experience, and feel from the first-person point
of view (Pearce, 1998). Working from the first-person point of view
will help you to be more empathetic with your clients’ experience and
encourage you to stay in the present, experiencing what your client expe-
riences it. This allows you to work with the client and the system with a
minimum of predetermined interpretations that will often get in the way
of effective consultative action. A first-person point of view also will help
you to check yourself when your biases based on previous training and
experiences do come up.
This way of first-person communicating and thinking about CAS
is what Tsoukas and Hatch refer to as second-level complexity (2001).
As we engage in the examination and analysis of organizational cultural
systems, I will take a narrative approach to that work because I am less
interested in uncovering empirical facts about organizational culture
than I am in creating culture’s verisimilitude, a plausibly authentic pic-
ture of what that culture is about, through a good story (Tsoukas &
Hatch, 2001; Weick, 1995). When it comes to shifting culture, people
and organizations, their perceptions and beliefs (which are the essence of
culture), are far more easily influenced by good stories containing a core
of truth than they are by presentations that include only facts.
Not only are systems more easily described in narratives (stories), but
they are more easily interpreted because we can ascribe motivation to
them in the context of the story. Tsoukas and Hatch illustrate this in the
following way: “The king died and then the queen died. is a story. The
king died and then the queen died of grief, is a plot” (Tsoukas & Hatch,
2001, p. 1002). The expansion of the story to include elements of plot
allows us to look more deeply into what is happening within the story.
This becomes important when we are examining an organizational culture
and asking the question of how the system got to this point and perhaps,
what are the narratives that contributed to building the current system?
20 J. MACQUEEN
Organizational systems are inherently narrative. We can observe them

moving from point A to point B and in doing so, imagine the story
behind their movement (Tsoukas & Hatch, 2001). This becomes impor-
tant when we are examining an organizational culture and asking ques-
tions about how did it become what it has become? How did it get to
this point? “How” is a very common question and one of great inter-
est when one begins to examine the behavior and effects of culture in
an organization. Our ability to infer motivation and method in the story
becomes critical to answering the question of how. This in turn allows us
to “engage parts of the system about the narratives they hold for either a
situation, a threat, a strategy or a breakdown” (R. Boucher, August 22,
2018 [Personal Communication]). The idea of narrative becomes even
more important as you begin to realize that human narratives, stories we
tell each other, are the primary vehicles for creating and shifting mean-
ing, and thus organizational cultures: a key theme of this book.
The premise that culture exists as a system has additional implica-
tions for how we understand culture. Culture is not a thing—it exists
only as process. It has no substance. While we can experience the effects
and products of culture as artifacts (tangible outputs) of the system’s
processes, those forces that we refer to as culture remain invisible. Rites,
rituals, values, beliefs, corporate heroes, recurring patterns of commu-
nication and assumptions about how things work and get done in the
organization have long been considered to be the core elements of
organizational culture by scholars such as Pettigrew (1979), Deal and
Kennedy (1982/2000), Cameron and Quinn (2006), and many others
including Edgar Schein (2016).
These artifacts are, in fact, the emergent and constructed products of
organizational culture. They are also often the focus of work for those
who seek to manage or change organizational culture. In other words,
if we change whatever the artifact might be (structure, procedure, myth,
etc.) we will change the culture as a result. This kind of focus seems to
me to be working in reverse of what it might otherwise produce more
effective and lasting results. Put another way, this focus of working on
producing artifacts seems to lead one to work on changing a product in
hopes of changing a process and its effects. What might really be called
for is working on a process to modify the product and effects generated
by that product (artifact).
This brings us to the elements of my definition and model of organi-
zational culture. I have described the system of organizational culture as
“symbol rich.” What do I mean by that and why is it important? Symbols

are visible products of the processes of culture, which we have defined
as cultural artifacts. As such they are often ubiquitous and usually easily
identifiable when you learn what you are looking for.
A symbol is something that stands for or suggests something else by reason

of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance; espe-
cially: a visible sign of something invisible: the lion is a symbol of courage.
(“Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary,” 2008)
A dove is a frequently invoked symbol of peace and all that word and
concept entails. Similarly, you will see in Chapter 4 an example of how a
practice by an accounting department of manually updating and balanc-
ing a firm’s general ledger at every month’s end became symbolic of a
previous accounting director’s values related to implementation and use
of an automated accounting system. Similarly, the building in which the
organization is housed and especially its interior design is often symbolic
of some aspect of the organization’s identity a component of its culture.
The employee handbook often is directly symbolic of an organization’s
norms and values.
Symbols become important for interpreting a culture because they
help us understand cultural artifacts. As artifacts of the culture them-
selves, they often point very clearly to the cultural elements or products
they represent. This makes them particularly useful for doing cultural
analyses in organizations (Smircich, 1983). This is a kind of analysis
of which I am particularly fond. It is almost impossible to do as a sur-
vey-based study, which often produces results based on some sort of cul-
tural typology about the nature of the culture in an organization. (“Here
in company X we are dealing with a type C culture. Therefore, if we
want to change it, we should take steps 1, 3, and 5 but not step 7.”)
These typologies are abstractions based on statistical results derived from
studying other organizations’ cultures, then aggregating and averaging
the results.
A symbolic cultural analysis on the other hand requires an approach
based in ethnographic techniques that might involve live interviews of
individuals and groups who are actually in or have direct contact with the
organization. The results are, therefore, very specific to the organization
and the culture that you are trying to analyze, revealing aspects of the
organization’s narratives. As a consequence, they are much more useful
22 J. MACQUEEN
to you and the client organization as tools for formulating and making
consulting decisions about working with that specific culture.
Beyond this, symbols can be used as cues for sensemaking in groups
and the subsequent construction of culture (see Chapter 7). I will sketch
this process later in this chapter and later describe it in detail (also in
Chapter 7). In the process of culture construction, symbols sometimes
do double duty. They serve as stand-ins for something that already is but
also as metaphors that help people in the culture grasp and communicate
some poorly understood or emerging aspect of the culture. Lakoff and
Johnson tell us, “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experi-
encing one kind of thing in terms of another” (Lakoff & Johnson, 2008,
p. 5). This is a function creating sense and meaning, not the creation of
symbols. This is especially true when we are trying to understand and
put words to abstract cultural concepts.
While it is possible to use a symbol as a metaphor, it is important
that in understanding how people construct and apply meaning about
their work lives, these two ideas, metaphor and symbol, do not become
conflated in the mind of the consultant. For example, we might ask a
politician or national leader to make their statements about a relationship
with another country, “a little more dovish.” The use of the symbol of
the dove is metaphorical, allowing us to understand the kind of language
we would prefer the politician use in terms of the symbol for peace.
We construct meaning first by figuring out what “is” (making sense
of some event or thing). This is particularly true in situations in which
what “is” has changed, creating an interruption in the flow of a group’s
work (Weick, 1995). We construct meaning by ascribing value to
the sense that we have made. In other words, what is the importance
of sense (how we understand something) for us and how important is
that sense? This ongoing process provides us with the context for how
we view our world. We make decisions and take actions based on that
context—how we understand, interpret the world, and act in and on it.
Schein refers to this context as taken for granted, unconscious assump-
tions about the correct way to perceive, think, feel, and act (Schein,
2016). In other words, context is how we apply the meaning that we
have made about what has happened in our lives. In the specific terms of
this book, what has happened in our work lives.
Edgar Schein is one of the foremost scholars of organizational
culture in the Western world today. His book, Organizational Culture
and Leadership (Schein, 1985, 1992, 2004, 2010, 2016) is a true
masterwork on the subject of organizational culture. If you have not yet

read it, I strongly recommend that you do. It is a book that far exceeds
the goals and purview of this one. It is also a book whose basic ideas
I have leveraged to create this current volume. Schein is the first of three
scholars whose work and models I want to introduce to you. The others
are Richard Seel and Mary Jo Hatch. Their ideas on this subject will help
to clarify and amplify my own.
Hatch, in comparing Schein’s work with a long list of other
scholars and writers, including Pettigrew, Deal and Kennedy, Peters
and Waterman, etc. notes that he is the only scholar (prior to her own
writing) to have “articulated a conceptual framework for analyzing
and intervening in the culture of organizations.” And that “Schein’s
formulation remains one of the only conceptual models ever offered”
(Hatch, 1993, p. 658).
First, I find Schein’s model particularly valuable because he identi-
fies the source of organizational culture as recognizable, tangible group
activities: the problem-solving and the learning that groups achieve from
solving problems.
Schein has defined organizational (group) culture as:
The accumulated shared learning of that group as it solves its problems

of external adaptation and internal integration; which has worked well
enough to be considered valid and therefor, to be taught to new members
as the correct way to perceive, think, feel, and behave in relation to those
problems.
This accumulated learning is a pattern or system of beliefs, values, and
behavioral norms that come to be taken for granted as basic assumptions
and eventually drop out of awareness. (Schein, 2016, p. 6)
We need to unpack this definition. Note that it is first about

“accumulated shared learning.” The implication of this idea is that cul-
ture is dynamic. It comes from solving problems; not just once, but
repeatedly so that the learning the group is doing is cumulative. As more
and more problems are solved over time, the learning that the group is
doing grows and is aggregated, expanding the depth and the range of
the group’s culture.
The description of the problems the group must solve is especially
interesting. Schein identifies these as “problems of external adaptation
and internal integration” (2016). If you think about that for a moment,
24 J. MACQUEEN
you have to ask, “what else is there?” Anything that occurs in the
group’s external environment will be something to which it has to adapt.
Any changes to its internal makeup or ways of operating must be inte-
grated into how the group functions. Even if the group’s response to an
internal or external stimulus or change is rejection, the group still finds
ways to integrate that response into the patterns of how it functions.
For example, let us say the boss has declared some sort of change to
the way the group is to operate: perhaps adopting a new set of proto-
cols or practices such as Agile. The group, as it collectively considers this
demand and the proposed changes, decides they don’t like it. In which
case, they may decide (not necessarily consciously), “Let’s all keep our
heads down, avoid acknowledging the demand for change, and this, too,
shall pass.” Many of us have seen such responses in organizations and the
demand for change did eventually pass. Keeping their heads down was
successful from the group’s point of view.
This suggests that the group’s strategy for dealing with the problem
worked. It can therefore be considered valid as a way to avoid the nec-
essary adaptation and integration required by a change. It is highly likely
that the strategy will be taught to new members as they join the group.
This may not be overt teaching, but conveyed through modeling and
peer pressure “as the correct way to perceive, think, feel, and behave”
(Schein, 2016, p. 6) around certain management demands for change.
Over time, the strategy and its associated patterns of behavior may be
validated again and again. It thus becomes “the way we do things around
here” (Bower, 1966), especially when the group is asked to implement
a change. It has become a basic, taken for granted assumption (Schein,
2016) about how we respond to requests or demands for change. We no
longer even have to think about what we will do when it comes up the
next time. The group has formed a cultural norm about how to respond
to change as part of their context for making decisions with regard to
those situations in which the question arises.
This illustration suggests a number of things to which a leader or con-
sultant needs to be paying attention if they are thinking about trying to
influence or modify a culture. First is the group dealing with internal or
external issues about which they are likely to be responding as a problem
they need to solve? In this case, the issue of how to handle a change in
the environment. Second, what is the nature of the solution that is being
developed, and how does it fit in with other existing elements of the cul-
ture? If the solution to the problem is contrary to effective operations or
functioning of the group, what action might be taken to influence the

group away from adopting this approach to dealing with the problem so
that the approach does not become embedded as a part of the culture?
These can be difficult and tricky questions to address. Particularly
because a good deal of the processing that will go into adopting an
approach to dealing with change that says, “let’s keep our heads down
and this, too, shall pass,” are about creating an informal consensus.
These processes are non-linear. They do not happen in a logical, predict-
able order. And they can be subtle, almost to the point of invisibility. It is
unlikely the group members will call a meeting to discuss this issue. The
consensus is likely to be reached through bits and pieces of conversation
that will be reflected back in terms of issues of identity and the mean-
ing of the action the group takes: How do we see ourselves individually?
Who do we think we are as a group? What do we think will be the likely
result of the action and its impact? All of these questions will most likely
find their answers drawn from existing elements of the culture, in what
Weick calls cues (1995). This, of course, makes the action taken by the
group more easily justified (“It’s how we always do it.”).
One of the thorniest problems about the cultural development of a
group such as this is that once the solution becomes adopted and rein-
forced, it becomes an underlying assumption about how to deal with
the problem. And therefore, by definition, the underlying assumption
becomes more or less invisible to members of the group. When this
has happened, it becomes very difficult to change. It is not available for
rational discussion and argument. It is now a part of the organization’s
cultural system, the organization’s DNA (Schein, 2016). By adding this
cultural element during a time of change, disruption, or stress, which
throws the system out of balance, it achieves equilibrium. And systems
that have achieved balance will tend to try to stay in that state so as not
to expend unnecessary energy.
The resulting behaviors can be interpreted variously as entropy (Ries,
1996) or resistance, depending on your mental models of organization
and culture. One is a psychological interpretation suggesting the use
of a problem-solving approach to correct it. The other is a cultural sys-
tem interpretation that suggests an approach that might be more about
finding ways to balance the system. Overcoming resistance in groups
is notoriously difficult and involves making individuals the target of
the intervention thus blaming them for “the problem.” Systems inter-
ventions generally do not work well when framed as problem-solving.
26 J. MACQUEEN
Instead this work is most effective when it takes advantage of energy

already in the system and seeks to redirect it. (See Chapter 10, the chap-
ter on consulting to organizational culture where there is a case demon-
stration of using a systems approach to this difficult issue in a business.)
A part of Schein’s approach that is helpful in explaining many of
these phenomena is the idea that cultures have structures. According
to Schein, cultural structures exist at three levels, each level becoming
increasingly difficult to observe and interpret.
The first level consists of artifacts: visible structures and processes and
observable behaviors.
The second level is espoused beliefs and values: these are ideals, goals,
values, aspirations, ideologies and rationalizations. These are things we
think we ought to believe but sometimes do not, often depending on
their source: did we come to them through cultural processes or were they
given to us by our leaders? Depending on that source and how we feel
about it, these ideas may or may not produce behaviors that are congruent
with the values, norms, and other artifacts of the culture.
The third level is composed of basic underlying assumptions, which are
unconscious, taken for granted beliefs and values that, determine behavior,
perception, thought and feeling. (Schein, 2016, p. 18)
Ultimately, an effort to shift culture must get to this level, though few
seldom do.
Notice in this description, the labeling of the levels suggests verti-
cal structuring which in turn suggests a metaphor of depth. In working
with this metaphor, Schein and many of his commentators have equated
increasing depth with decreasing visibility of the elements of the culture.
This has resulted in the invention by others of the unfortunate metaphor
of organizational culture as an iceberg. I have not heard nor read Schein
referring to cultures as icebergs. The use of this metaphor is to help con-
vey the idea that only a small percentage of an organization’s culture is
visible (the first level) because much of an iceberg rests below the water-
line (levels two and three).
I reject this metaphor on the grounds that if you train yourself
about what to look for and how to interpret what you are seeing, even
an organization’s basic underlying assumptions, the lowest level in the
description above, can become visible to you over time. Beyond that,
culture as iceberg does not fit with my own experiences of organizational
cultures. Icebergs, in popular imagination, tend to be regarded as cold
and rigid structures, essentially unchanging except in the face of heat

(melting) or violent, disruptive change (breaking apart). If you adopt my
belief in organizational cultures as complex adaptive systems which are
always in motion, adapting to the environment, and changing the envi-
ronment as much as they are changed by it, the basic image of the ice-
berg as an appropriate metaphor for culture is counterintuitive.
In the description above, the levels of culture might be linked by
reciprocating arrows that indicate a dynamic relationship between these
three levels. So, the levels of the culture and the various elements they
contain are constantly interacting with each other, which suggests they
are also changing each other in the process of that interaction. Viewed
in this way, Schein’s representation implicitly contains aspects of a model
that considers culture through the lens of a CAS. There are several ques-
tions and opportunities, however, that Schein’s model does not address.
Chief among these is the question of emergence and its effect on and in
the functions of an organizational culture.
The second model of organizational culture I am going to present
is Richard Seel’s. His definition and model of organizational cultures
as CAS is very helpful in addressing some of these questions. As such, I
regard his model as complementary to my own model as well as Schein’s.
Seel defines organizational culture as,
The emergent result of the continuing negotiations about values, mean-

ings and properties between the members of that organization and with
its environment. … Culture is the result of all the daily conversations and
negotiations between the members of an organization. They are contin-
ually agreeing (sometimes explicitly, usually tacitly) about the “proper”
way to do things and how to make meaning about the events of the world
around them. (Seel, 2000, p. 2)
You will probably recognize Schein in the use of the term “negotiations”
(Schein talks about reaching consensus) and certainly in the idea of
“the proper way to do things.” Seel and I agree about basic concepts of
culture and the idea of making “meaning about the events of the world
around them.”
It is through negotiations of how we interpret events in our daily lives
and our various ideas of what constitute proper responses that emergence
occurs. Olson and Eoyang attribute the differences among agents and those
ideas as being a primary force for emergence (Olson & Eoyang, 2001).
28 J. MACQUEEN
In Fig. 3.1, Seel provides an excellent description of how emergence

occurs in a CAS.
If you think in terms of the illustrative story I constructed for the
description of the formation of a cultural element in response to prob-
lem-solving in Schein’s model, you can see how people’s discussion of
“keeping your head down” (frame A), their ensuing tacit consensus
about the approach (frame B), gives rise to new patterns of thought and
behavior (frame C), and eventually, through continual reinforcement,
becomes a full-fledged cultural element which influences thought and
behavior in the entire group (frame D).
Seel also suggests that there are a few significant adjustments in con-
sulting practices and approaches that might be made if one adopts the
view of organizational cultures as CAS. “The complex systems approach
invites us to work in the system, to give up the illusion that we can
comprehend its complexity and to adopt more modest aims” (Seel,
2000, p. 6). I will have much more to say about this in the chapter on
consulting (Chapter 10). Whether you subscribe to the idea of culture as
CAS or not, you should consider the idea that you can interact with an
organization without functioning as a part of that system is a myth.
Seel suggests real changes in culture are the product of emergence.
According to him, this emergence is the result of conversations among
members of the organization about the meanings of their lives, their val-
ues and assumptions about the proper way to do things. Thus, it would
make sense that the core of our jobs as consultants should be about
finding ways to increase the connectivity among people in the organiza-
tion and to encourage those kinds of conversations as I illustrated in the
example of the marketing function (Chapter 10).
As I have said before, the model of organizational culture that I pres-
ent in this book is firmly rooted in ground prepared by Edgar Schein.
Seel helps to bridge some of the conceptual gaps between Schein’s and
my work by presenting a well-defined model of organizational culture as
CAS.
The third model I will discuss is by Mary Jo Hatch (1993), who also
addresses the dynamic nature of organizational culture. In her model of
culture, she brings focus to a set of ideas and the dynamic relationships
among them. She views Schein as leaving gaps from a symbolic-interpre-
tive perspective of examining and analyzing culture while stressing that
she views Schein’s work as having made significant contributions to the
understanding of organizational culture.
(A) (B)
(C) (D)
3 A MENTAL MODEL OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Fig. 3.1 Emergent process: a system of diverse agents (A), richly connected (B), gives rise to an emergent pattern (C),
and which feeds back down into the system (D) (Seel, 2000)
29
30 J. MACQUEEN
Hatch’s ideas about how the more symbolic aspects culture work,
which she refers to as “The Cultural Dynamics Model,” are developed
on the foundations of Schein’s work (Hatch, 1993). Her focus in this
case is the dynamic relationships among cultural elements of assump-
tions, values, artifacts, to which she adds symbols and the processes that
link them.
You have probably already noticed that Schein does not explic-
itly mention symbols as a key element in his model of culture. Hatch,
however, sees symbols and artifacts as very closely linked through the
processes that create them both as we shall see in Fig. 3.2.
Following this model, Hatch defines culture as “continuous cycles of
action and meaning making shadowed by cycles of image and informa-
tion” (1993).
You will recall, Schein says culture is created as a result of groups
solving problems. One product of solving those problems is a set of
assumptions about “the correct way to perceive, think, and feel” (Schein,
2016). The “correct way” implies some set of values. Values here can be
thought of as those beliefs people have about the way things should be,
not necessarily the way things are in actuality. Intuitively, we can under-
stand how assumptions about the correct way to do things will influence
Fig. 3.2 The cultural dynamics model (Hatch, 1993)

the group’s values. Conversely the values the group shares will tend to
influence their assumptions about what is correct.
Hatch talks about artifacts as “visible, tangible, and audible results
of activity grounded in values and assumptions” (Hatch, 1993, p. 659).
Schein goes somewhat further in his definition of artifacts and helps put
some additional light on Hatch’s claim about the relationship to assump-
tions and values:
Observed behavior routines and rituals are also artifacts, as are the organiza-
tional processes by which such behavior is made routine. Structural elements
such as charters, formal descriptions of how the organization works, and
organization charts also belong to the artifact level. (Schein, 2016, p. 17)
Thus, we begin to see conversations among people that talk about

how things should be organized, what should be served in the cafeteria,
and even what kind of building they should have, which are conversations
about the right way to do things and how things should be, are likely to
result in the emergence of certain artifacts.
If we were to overlay Hatch’s model with Seel’s, we can begin to
see that these two ideas have a good deal in common. Imagine that the
agents in Seel’s illustration are the values, artifacts, symbols, and assump-
tions from Hatch’s model. The ongoing and reiterative processes of real-
ization, symbolization, interpretation, and manifestation are those that,
in Seel give rise to the emergent pattern that feeds back down into the
system. This new model might provide us with a more complete idea of
how a cultural system might look and operate.
It also reveals, from the perspective of the consultant, issues with both
models. As consultants, we are best served by models that are instrumen-
tal at their core, that will serve as tools for our work. When it comes
to organizational culture, we are most aided by descriptions or analogies
that help us to develop clearer understandings of what we are working
on as well as how and when to work on them. Seel’s model provides a
good general description of what the process of emergence might look
like. However, his idea of what or who are the agents or what processes
they might be involved in is too general to be of any real use to the
consultant.
In a similar vein, Hatch works with an idea of cultural elements
that is too limited. Beyond the four that she has included, there are
also processes and elements of sensemaking, meaning making, identity
32 J. MACQUEEN
formation, rules and norms, and the whole process of teaching cul-
tural assumptions and meanings to new employees that have substantial
impact on the formation and development of organizational culture.
Having discussed Schein, Seel, and Hatch, we come to my model. In
presenting the models developed by Schein, Seel, and Hatch, my pur-
pose has not been to dispute or invalidate the importance of the contri-
butions of their thinking. Rather, I view them as complementary to my
thinking with the hope that, should you explore any of them further, you
will find ways to expand on Schein, Seel, Hatch, and MacQueen to find
ideas and techniques that make your own thinking and consulting more
robust.
My own model illustrates the processes in which the members of the
group or organization will engage to produce a culture such as the one
I defined earlier in this chapter. The drawing below traces the generic
processes a group will employ to stimulate the emergence of new organ-
izational culture. Because of my belief that a culture is a CAS, I have
employed the device of causal loop diagrams. Such diagrams are com-
monly used to describe the behavior of complex systems. In this dia-
gram, the elements named within the circles are processes. You might
think about them as memes for the activities in which people engage
to construct organizational culture. These processes are assumed to be
interactive and interdependent. Therefore, all of the lines connecting the
processes are meant to represent reinforcing action or feedback loops.
That is, the action and energy of any given process is transferred to the
process to which it is connected by the line. One process may reinforce
(feedback), influence, or alter the energy, quality, and impact of another
process to which it is connected. Likewise, the second process’s impacts
will influence whatever subsequent processes to which it is connected,
and so on.
Ultimately, the processes are all interconnected, gaining energy, and
are feeding that energy back into the interdependent processes in recip-
rocal fashion. The whole system gains energy and will eventually gen-
erate the emergence of some new entity, which then also interacts with
the rest of the system. The new entity will have its own unique way of
communicating with the rest of the system, adding energy and influenc-
ing what the system does and how it does it. (If this is confusing, take
another look at Seel’s diagram above.)
The energy that was growing in the system and produced the emer-
gence of the new entity did so because it had pushed the existing system
to the edge of equilibrium. When the system has more energy than it
can handle, or is sufficiently disrupted by external forces, it moves out
of equilibrium and into chaos. Emergence is the system’s way of absorb-
ing and redirecting enough energy to return itself to equilibrium, its pre-
ferred state for operating efficiently.
Most systems, including cultural systems, spend much of their time
and energy maintaining equilibrium. This makes them appear stable
when they are, in fact, constantly in flux. This is why so many cultural
systems are difficult to change or influence. While it appears they are in
stasis, they are actually quite active maintaining stability (Fig. 3.3).
Fig. 3.3 Culture as a complex adaptive system, Sub-systems in the cultural sys-

tem: A, B, C, and D
34 J. MACQUEEN
Emergent events in otherwise balanced systems tend to happen on a

cyclical basis. This means there are no real beginnings or endings in the
system. Each existing cycle always includes the basis for a new one. For
our purposes, however, it will be helpful to include and examine how a
cycle of emergence is provoked.
Schein says cultures are the result of problem-solving (2016). So,
something has to occur within the system that will predicate the group
needing to solve a problem. Generally speaking, it needs to be something
with an order of magnitude such that people notice there is a something
that needs to be resolved. The problem may be something that is a prod-
uct of emergence or, as is more often the case, something whose source is
external to the group, such as the boss’s demand for implementing some
sort of change as in the illustration I presented earlier, or other disrup-
tions both internal and external such as a market threat or opportunity,
the introduction of new technologies, or the addition or loss of staff.
The point in time in which the need to deal with the situation, the
dilemma, or opportunity becomes apparent, I am calling a disruptive
event. This event may occur suddenly or it may take some time for the
group to recognize its presence and its challenge to the group’s way of
doing things. In any case, it represents an interruption to the regular,
accustomed flow of the group’s process.
Interruption is a signal that important changes have occurred in the

environment. This is a key event for emotion is the “interruption of an
expectation.” It makes good evolutionary sense to construct an organism
[organization] that reacts significantly when the world is no longer the way
it was. (Weick, 1995, p. 46)
Once the disruptive event has occurred and is noticed by the group, the
group members will need to reflect on what has happened and will then
engage in some form of sensemaking (there is a detailed description of
this process in Chapter 7). This happens so that they can make decisions
to act in response to the disruption in a way that seems reasonable and
rational (at least to the members of the group). The group will then
assess the results of their action and ascribe meaning to those results as
well as to the action that they have taken (Sub-system A). (See Chapter 4
for discussion of the difference between sense and meaning.)
If the group is not pleased with the meaning they have derived from
the action, it is likely that they will once again engage reflection and
sensemaking, and possibly make a new or additional action to deal with

the disruptive event. The cycle is likely to continue until they have con-
structed meaning that they consider satisfactory, reiterating the cycle of
Sub-system A.
Subsequently, or sometimes simultaneously with iterations of the sen-
semaking cycle, they will engage in the construction or reconstruction
of group and personal identities (see Chapter 7) that are consistent and
congruent with the meanings they have constructed and applied in the
process of problem-solving (Sub-system B).
Because meaning and identity in these contexts are often abstract, the
group will engage in the construction and use of metaphors and stories to
clarify and define meaning and identity both for themselves and others
with whom they want to communicate (Sub-system B). (See Chapter 8
for discussion of the importance and mechanics of metaphor in culture
creation.) When the issues of meaning, identity, and their articulation
have been sufficiently resolved to the satisfaction of the group, they can
move on. However, it is possible that those results may stimulate other
rounds of reflection, sensemaking, and action, related to the problem,
reiterating the cycle or a portion of the cycle of Sub-system A which may
in turn influence further thought and revision in the cycle of meaning,
identity, and articulation (Sub-system B).
The group may move on to constructing or revising their assumptions
about the right and proper way to do things using the products of the
cycles we have just discussed. Eventually, they will create various arti-
facts, including values, rules of behavior, and symbols that are expressive
of their assumptions (Sub-system C). These may be used to influence
and modify those very assumptions, as illustrated in the diagram. (This
is essentially the dynamic process that Hatch examines in her model.)
The products of the assumptions/artifacts creation and discussions (Sub-
system C) also may influence the meaning/identity/articulation pro-
cesses (Sub-system B) and find their way into the reflection/sensemaking
processes (Sub-system A) as any of them may have been reiterated at any
point in the overall process.
All of the processes above are used to create and apply some solu-
tion to the problem presented by the disruptive event. They are also
used in an iterative fashion to evaluate the relative success of that solu-
tion. When and if the group determines the solution has been success-
ful, they can and will use what they have learned to teach the approach
they developed, and perhaps modified, to new people as they come into
36 J. MACQUEEN
the organization (Sub-system D). If the solution or its application at any

time was deemed not successful, using the application of the same system
of processes; that failure and its lessons, if they were painful enough (see
Chapter 7) will also be taught to new members of the group so they will
avoid the tactic in the future.
Ultimately, whatever will contribute to the success and survival of the
group needs to be learned and applied as the membership changes and/
or grows. In turn, what has been taught and learned then influences all
the processes in which the organization engages. These iterations of pro-
cess and learning make up the system that we refer to as organizational
culture.
There are additional things to be noted about my model before we
leave it.
First, organizational cultures are not unitary. When it comes to cul-
tures, the boundaries of what constitutes the group or the organization
are socially constructed. What this means is that for the members of the
group, the definition of the group is what they say it is. They may be the
quality team within the design group because they have evolved that as
their identity. Consequently, they will have developed their own varia-
tion on the culture of the larger entity from which they were formed and
work out on their own different, though related, assumptions and values.
This group’s individual culture will be formed and modified semi-inde-
pendently from that of the larger group.
If you are experiencing an image of nested Russian dolls, here, there is
good reason. That construct needs to be taken into consideration when
you are asked to work on modifying an organizational culture. How
much of it are you seeking to modify and are there subcultures whose
individual variants need first to be addressed before trying to influence
the whole?
Second, as I’ve tried to make clear in both the diagram and the nar-
rative of this model, the processes of culture creation are not linear. You
cannot expect a cause and effect type of response when you seek to add
or alter an element of a culture. You can only push on it in one place and
wait to see what happens.
Third, many of these processes will remain more or less invisible to
the consultant or manager because they are not linear and people do
not necessarily engage in them with much consciousness. As a consult-
ant, your awareness of people engaging in them will be dependent on
the extent to which you accurately experience yourself as part of and
engaged in the system. A skillful and aware consultant will learn to spot
when a group or part of a group is working on, for example, identity
issues or clarifying assumptions and learn to offer support for sorting the
meanings running around those conversations.
Fourth, because of the interdependencies in a cultural system, the rate
of change in the system as well as the results can be completely unpre-
dictable. The process of construction and adoption of new cultural ele-
ments can seem extraordinarily quick or painfully slow. A group may
respond to a disruption and create a new element to a culture in a matter
of hours or days. More often, however, it will take much longer. It typ-
ically depends on the homogeneity of the group in all its aspects, which
will affect the time it takes to reach consensus on the results of any and
all the processes mentioned above. This will be reflected in the number
of iterations that will take place in any of the cycles.
My point in saying so is, beware of promising your client a time frame
in which to expect to see and do a final evaluation of the work in which
you are engaged. Do periodic evaluations based on whatever you can
observe or have chosen to measure. Otherwise, counsel patience.
Over many years of doing systems analyses of organizations and their
problems, even before I began to apply the idea to understanding cul-
tures, I sometimes taught the use of this technique to other consultants.
Sometimes with especially difficult cases, we created very complicated
and complex diagrams using the causal loop approach when there were
many, many interconnected, interdependent agents in a single system.
The central question in those instances was, as it is here, how do you use
these diagrams to aid in your consulting?
There were always multiple answers to that question, most of them
highly specific to the individual case. However, the most consistent and
generalizable is about where do you start? Most consistently, that answer
is about looking for the point in the system where you are likely to find
the most leverage. That point is usually where you can observe the great-
est number of elements with the greatest number of connections. These
spots provide the most leverage because they are the points where, when
you try to shift one element you will usually have a relatively immediate
effect on the elements to which the one is connected and then you can
watch that effort move out from there. Like throwing a stone in a pool
and watching the ripples move out from there.
In the cultural CAS described above, I have most often found that
point, the point of greatest leverage, to be the interactions of Sub-system
38 J. MACQUEEN
B. If you are able to guide some aspect of what the group is doing at this
point, sometime not too long after the disruptive event has occurred, it
is often quite possible that you will see an emergence in the whole sys-
tem that bares some positive resemblance to what you and the group
members guiding the overall process had originally envisioned. The case
study that is the basis of Chapter 9 will provide some illustration of how
this might be done.
References
Cameron, K. S., & Quinn, R. E. (2006). Diagnosing and changing organi-
zational culture: Based on the competing values framework (Rev. ed.). San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Hatch, M. J. (1993). The dynamics of organizational culture. Academy of
Management Review, 18, 657–693.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2008). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary. (2008). Electronic Edition,
Version: 4.7 ed. Merriam-Webster, Fogware Publishing, Art Software Inc.,
Data Storage Research.
Pearce, W. B. (1998). Thinking about systems and thinking systemically.
Unpublished manuscript.
Pettigrew, A. M. (1979). On studying organizational cultures. Administrative
Science Quarterly, 24, 570–581.
Ries, A. (1996). Focus: The future of your company depends on it. New York:
HarperCollins.
Schein, E. H. (1985). Organizational culture and leadership. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.
Schein, E. H. (1992). Organisational culture and leadership (2nd ed.). San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Schein, E. H. (2004). Organizational culture and leadership. Jossey-Bass
Business & Management Series. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership (Vol. 2). Hoboken:
Wiley.
Schein, E. H. (2016). Organizational culture and leadership (5th ed.). Hoboken:

Wiley.
Seel, R. (2000). Culture and complexity: New insights on organisational change.
Organisations and People, 7(2), 2–9.
Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning
organization. New York: Doubleday/Currency.
Smircich, L. (1983). Concepts of culture and organizational analysis.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 28(3), 339–358.
Tsoukas, H., & Hatch, M. J. (2001). Complex thinking, complex practice: The
case for a narrative approach to organizational complexity. Human Relations,
54(8), 979–1013.
Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations (Vol. 3). Thousand Oaks:
Sage.
CHAPTER 4
Sense and Meaning
In this chapter, we will explore the question of meaning: What do we

mean by meaning? Having clarity about the answer to this question is
critical to how and why we work with organizational cultures and how
we understand the results of that work.
As you will recall, my definition of organizational culture is, “A
symbol rich system by which people in an organization construct and
apply meaning about their work lives.” Linda Smircich (1985) (whose
work I reference in Chapter 5) helps me to emphasize the importance
of meaning in organizations for the consultant.
Can we see organizations not only as places where we gather to get

work done, but as symbolic expressions, as displays of meaning as well as
representations of the search for meaning. (Smircich, 1985, p. 66)
Smircich is writing about looking at organizations through a lens

of cultural analysis, instead of organizational analysis, as a way to look
deeper into how an organization functions at a given level. I have planted
my definition of organizational culture firmly in this semiotic soil.
To do cultural analysis of organizational life means the following:
1. We realize that organizations are representations of our humanity;

they can be known through acts of appreciation.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25685-2_4
42 J. MACQUEEN
2. We realize that organizations are symbolically constituted worlds,

like novels or poems; they can be known through acts of critical
reading and interpretation.
3. We realize that organizations are symbolic forms like religion and
folklore; they are displays of the meaning of life (Smircich, 1985,
p. 66).
Though this idea has never seemed to be popular with many organi-
zational theorists or practitioners, I have always found it inspiring. I am
drawn to interpreting any aspect of culture and organization semiotically
as a way to gain deeper insight into my clients.
For example, the accounting system used by any organization is a
reflection of the values around the proper way to do accounting that
whoever chose the system holds or held. The system and its opera-
tion are therefore, a symbol of “how we do accounting around here.”
As such, they may reflect a great many values and cultural assumptions
related to accounting. Some of these may go beyond the functions of
that specific system. What I mean by this is, the activities of the peo-
ple who work in and/or with that system inevitably reflect those cultural
assumptions.
I once worked with an accounting department where the group
always kept a handwritten copy of the general ledger (GL). This was
a practice instituted by the first director of the department (long since
gone from the organization) who had insisted on keeping a manual GL
because he did not fully trust the electronic system he himself had cho-
sen and implemented. Nobody now in the department could explain
why they continued keeping a manual GL other than to tell me it was
the way they had always done it (a cultural assumption about the right
way to do things). A brief cultural analysis of the practice revealed that
it was symbolic of an historic distrust of electronic accounting systems.
This revelation made it easier for the “old timers” in the department to
let go of this archaic practice. The practice had acquired a new meaning
for them.
The idea of applying meaning to our work lives drives this chapter as
well as most of the book. Smircich’s work had a lot to do with generating
my early interests in this direction. My thinking was further developed
and reinforced by Barnett Pearce’s brilliant and inspiring book, “Making
Social Worlds” (Pearce, 2007). Pearce based this work on his the-
ory of the coordinated management of meaning (CMM). In Chapter 2
4 SENSE AND MEANING 43
of the book, he introduces the reader to an explanation of the construct

of social worlds. He describes how confusing it was for him to visit the
respective homes of his two sets of grandparents as a child. He noticed
how things were done very differently in each of their houses. This was
due at least in part to the fact that each set of grandparents espoused dif-
ferent religious faiths and so engaged in different rituals and practices. He
also noticed differences in other kinds of behaviors such as how loudly or
energetically they spoke, how the labor of the house was divided, etc. He
found this all very confusing. How could they all be part of the same fam-
ily and yet act so differently? (2007, pp. 38–39).
Pearce goes on to imagine a conversation between himself (now a
grandfather) and himself as this young boy.
I would want to tell this little boy four things. First, he should have been
confused when he moved through these different social worlds, because
they really were social worlds. All of us create worlds that are “complete”
or “whole” within their own horizons and are structured by a geometry
“oughtness” that tells us what things mean and what we should, must, or
must not do about or because of them. … Second, there are many social
worlds. His grandparents’ worlds are far more alike than not, and occupy
the smallest fraction of the great array of ways of being human. …Can he
see the social worlds of his grandparents as just two of the infinite number
of social worlds that exist or might exist[?].… Third, I tell him that each
of these social worlds is made. They are shaped by things that we do to
and with each other. They start and they end, and they change over time.
…Finally, I tell him that he, like everyone else involved is an agent in the
making of those social worlds. Although no one can “control” what hap-
pens, everyone in those social worlds affects what happens by their actions.
(Pearce, 2007, pp. 40–41)
For me, this is very much a description of organizational cultures.

Each culture, or subculture, constitutes a different worldview. A journey
among an organization’s different departments, or even different teams/
areas within a department, will yield to a careful observer subtle and
sometimes not-so-subtle differences in ideas about “how we do things
around here.”
Pearce goes on to describe how we, as participants in organizations,
families, or other groups, construct our own social worlds (cultures) with
others through communication we are coordinating in often uncon-
scious ways what we mean about things and events when we talk about
44 J. MACQUEEN
them. (I have described this process of coordination in Chapter 5 What I

find interesting—and a bit frustrating—is that Pearce never defines what
he means by “meaning.”) It is as if this word which has so much impor-
tance for him in describing the co-construction of social worlds is, or
should be, simply understood by everyone because of its common usage.
From Pearce, I went on to study Karl Weick and sensemaking. This
was not only out of a quest for a definition of meaning, but because I
intuitively understood that making sense of what’s happening around us
is critical to the creation of culture. Weick is one of the acknowledged
authorities on sensemaking. He describes the process this way:
Sensemaking involves turning circumstances into a situation that is

comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a springboard
into action…Sensemaking unfolds as a sequence in which people con-
cerned with identity in the social context of other actors engage ongoing
circumstances from which they extract cues and make plausible sense ret-
rospectively, while enacting more or less order into those ongoing circum-
stances. (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005, p. 409)
In other words, Weick is describing a process in which people in an

organization are imposing order and structure onto their understand-
ing of the events around them. They do this by identifying what is com-
mon to the current situation and events of the past, thus making them
comprehensible in the present. In describing this process, he makes
three points about the quest for understanding and a sense of stability in
organizational life.
First, sense making occurs when a flow of organizational circumstances

is turned into words and salient categories. Second, organizing itself is
embodied in written and spoken texts. Third, reading, writing, conversing,
and editing are crucial actions that serve as the media through which the
invisible hand of institutions shapes conduct. (Weick et al., 2005, p. 410)
Throughout Weick’s detailed and insightful descriptions of sensemak-

ing, he does not, as with Pearce, differentiate between meaningmaking
and sensemaking. Indeed, it often seems that he conflates these terms
to create variety in the text. If it were not for the fact that I have a defi-
nite need to create a substantive differentiation for my model and defini-
tion, I might accept the idea that sensemaking and meaningmaking are
essentially the same. In fact, I have come to believe that meaningmaking
is a subset and a product of sensemaking. This would certainly help to

account for authors using the same terms for what are ultimately differ-
entiated constructions.
Weick uses the idea that people apply a number of what he calls fil-
ters as heuristics for helping them to do sensemaking. These include
constructs such as paradigms, ideologies, arguments, and self-fulfilling
prophecies. These constructs help people more quickly identify cues that
can be used to link past experience with current experience, interpret
those experiences, and make sense of changes in the flow of their envi-
ronment. What I find particularly useful is understanding how those cues
and filters seem to contribute most to the creation of cultural narratives.
Personally, I have found that stories tend to be among the most
productive filters for sensemaking of almost any of the other tools that
Weick mentions. I suspect that this is because, as Weick points out,
“Stories are inventions rather than discoveries” (Weick, 1995, p. 128).
I suspect that most stories told in organizations to make sense of events
are based on other existing stories, probably in the cultural narrative as
a result of older sensemaking events. These stories often come pre-con-
structed with multiple symbols and a looseness of structure that are the
hallmarks of organizational narratives. This allows them to be adapted to
a particular situation as the interpretation that is being used for sense-
making evolves.
The requirements necessary to produce a good narrative provide a plausi-

ble frame for sense making. Stories posit a history for an outcome. They
gather strands of experience into a plot that produces that outcome. The
plot follows either the sequence beginning-middle-end or the sequence
situation-transformation-situation. But sequence is the source of sense.
(Weick, 1995, p. 128)
However, the story structure, beginning-middle-end, cannot exist if

one’s perspective is totally retrospective. “They lived happily ever after”
from a narrator’s perspective, at best happens in a kind of pluperfect state.
In attempting to make sense, people are always trying to work with a
present that is always in the process of becoming a future (see Chapter 5).
This idea emerges from a study of what Baumeister refers to as prag-
matic prospection (Baumeister, Vohs, & Oettingen, 2016). In this essay,
Baumeister cites a sampling study conducted to investigate the content
and time dimensions of everyday thoughts.
46 J. MACQUEEN
There were far more thoughts about the future than the past. Moreover,
when people did say they were thinking about the past, the most common
category they reported was “implications of the past for the future.” …
Replaying the past for its own sake was not entirely absent but quite rare.
… when people think about the past, it is mostly to assist them in prepar-
ing for the future. The past cannot be changed — but one can use infor-
mation and lessons from the past to make pragmatic improvements in the
future (which can still be changed). (Baumeister et al., 2016, p. 6)
It strikes me that there are substantial similarities between the pur-

poses and the processes of sensemaking with its use of cues and those
of pragmatic prospection, which relies on episodic memory to produce
its results. Both seek to structure and interpret events of the past so that
individuals can direct their behaviors so as to have a positive effect in the
future. Both authors talk about these results in terms of what is meaning-
ful to the individual(s) involved. So, if sensemaking and meaningmaking
are subsets and products of each other, how does that happen?
Sensemaking and meaningmaking are similar processes that exist along
a continuum of activity in a dynamic relationship. The goal of sensemak-
ing is to order and structure events retrospectively in for the purpose of
creating frameworks for specific (and more or less) near-term actions. Its
focus tends to be on the past, the present, and the near future. Its prod-
ucts are largely about what is tangible and what has utility.
The goal of meaningmaking, on the other hand, is to prospectively
create a range of possibilities for behaviors in the future (including inter-
personal, emotionally based behaviors). Its products are about the rela-
tionships that individuals have with the sense that they have previously
created. In doing so, the products of this process become more semiotic,
less tangible, and increasingly available for incorporation into culture.
The relationship of pragmatic prospection to retrospective sensemak-
ing is clarified in another study cited by Baumeister, Vohs, Aaker, and
Garbinsk (2013). In this study, they found,
…that ratings of the meaningfulness of life correlated with how much peo-
ple mentally linked the past, present and future (unlike happiness, which
was correlated positively with thinking about the present only) (Baumeister,
2013).… Another key finding indicated that linking “time zones” (past,
present, or future) increased meaning.… The least meaningful thoughts
were those that lack any timeframe, and the most meaningful were the ones
that combined past, present, and future. (Baumeister et al., 2016, p. 7)
In other words, imaginatively linking experiences across past, pres-

ent, and future tends to make them more meaningful to individuals. My
observation is that doing this activity as a social process amplifies the
effect for members of a group. This is especially true as they begin to
coordinate and share their ideas and conclusions about the experiences as
relationally structured and imagined in the three time frames.
It is interesting to compare these ideas about linking prospective
thoughts across time frames with David Cooperrider’s description of the
“Dream Phase” in the appreciative inquiry process.
As the various stories of the organizations history are shared and illumi-
nated, a new historical narrative emerges. This narrative engages those
involved in much the same way a good mystery novel engages a reader.
As participants become energetically engaged in re-creating the organi-
zation’s positive history, they give life to its new, most preferred future.
(Cooperrider, Whitney, & Stavros, 2008)
Cooperrider promotes this process as “personally and organization-

ally invigorating,” again emphasizing its social nature. This matches my
experience where, when I have asked people to do these kinds of activi-
ties in groups. They become very excited by the ideas they are generat-
ing as they agree, disagree, and build on concepts of the future they are
beginning to share. In fact, as a particular concept of the future they are
sharing takes on increased imaginative substance, I have witnessed people
get up and march around the room chanting the words they have used
to define that future (see Chapter 8).
Baumeister (2016) also helps us to understand issues around mean-
ingmaking and the processes of prospection. As he moves his investi-
gations into the realm of narrative thinking, he notes that narratives
are essentially stories. Stories are constructed by tying together actions,
observations, and experiences in time. Without time, these events cannot
be put together in any kind of meaningful way and they simply become
incoherent collections of details without causal relationship. Thus, our
ability to think in time—past, present, and future—results in our ability
to create narratives, stories, and plans that can become meaningful. This
idea echoes and reinforces Weick’s (1995) observations about narratives.
To bring this further into the realm of meaningmaking, I’m going to
call on the thinking of Carolyn Sortor (an artist living in Texas). In an
essay entitled, “What Do We Mean by ‘Meaning’?”,
48 J. MACQUEEN
I believe meaning resides in or arises from relatedness. …It’s human

nature to try to make sense of things, so even if there’s no one around to
explain the unfamiliar to us, we usually notice things about it, relation-
ships among its components or between it and the rest of our experience.
(Sortor, 2017)
We return to these elements and their interconnectedness again and

again. As we do, we begin to discern patterns in those relationships.
Those things that become most meaningful to us are those patterns that
contain the greatest number and concentration of related, intercon-
nected elements.
This is very Weickean thinking, though I would be surprised if Sortor
has read either Weick or Baumeister. Yet, she has brought the two lines
of thought together. We make sense of events by constructing relation-
ships among disparate parts of our experience, and we do so retrospec-
tively. From those constructions, we can create narratives that only gain
a satisfying structure (beginning-middle-end) when we think about them
prospectively and place them in the future. We can only do this because
we think about ourselves as having multiple possibilities in the future. We
thus create a relationship between ourselves, the narrative, and the future
(Baumeister et al., 2013). The more we mold and edit a story over time,
the more we strengthen and add to those relationships. In addition, the
more we build those relationships, the more meaning the story and its
events have for us.
Valsiner, a cultural psychologist (2007) notes that there is an ongo-
ing dynamic relationship between sense and meaning. As individuals
use sense to continuously modify meaning, we construct “potential
meanings encoded in language” (Valsiner, p. 370). These he describes
as, “ever-imprecise semiotic devices (actual meanings) which neverthe-
less fit the task of reduction of experiential uncertainty” (Valsiner, p.
370). This, ultimately, is the goal of both sensemaking and meaning-
making: To reduce the level of anxiety, we feel in unfamiliar situations.
As Valsiner says, “It can be said the great power of human language
in guiding human meaning-making lies in the vagueness of the actual
meanings that are constructed by persons in uncertain situations”
(Valsiner, 2007, p. 370).
Again, this thought echoes and reinforces Weick, who eschews accu-
racy in favor of achieving sense and meaning.
Sensemaking is about the embellishment and elaboration of a single point

of reference or extracted cue. Embellishment occurs when a cue is linked
with a more general idea. Because “objects” have multiple meanings and
significance, it is more crucial to get some interpretation to start with than
to postpone until “the” interpretation surfaces. (Weick, 1995, p. 133)
In other words, both Weick and Valsiner recognize that the dynamic pro-
cesses of sensemaking and meaningmaking rely increasingly on symbols
and symbolic construction for their impact and effectiveness.
What is the importance of this discussion beyond the theoretical and
semantic? The context of this book is always about linking theory to the
practice of working with culture and making conscious decisions about
our actions as practitioners based on those theories. I have encountered
situations where a group struggles with ideas that I expect will have
important impacts on their emerging culture. When this occurs, I often
ask participants what those ideas mean to them. The responses I usually
get are significantly different than if I had asked them, “Does that make
sense to you?” or “What do you make of that?” Inevitably, an individual
will pause to consider the question before answering. The response will
usually reflect how they consider themselves in some future state in rela-
tionship to the issue. It is often how they imagine the adoption of that
new idea affecting their behavior.
I have observed group exercises where the participants are asked to
construct images of a future state. New ideas and behaviors are being
formed and embodied so that the sense of commitment to ensuring the
success of those enactments and the individuals’ sense of responsibil-
ity for the success becomes nearly palpable (see Chapter 9). The social
energy and excitement generated by such activities often means that
within a short period of time the implicit agreements people have made
together around values and actions become assumed to be part of the
vision for the future and the appropriate way to behave in the culture.
References
Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., & Oettingen, G. (2016). Pragmatic prospection:
How and why people think about the future. Review of General Psychology,
20(1), 3.
Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., Aaker, J. L., & Garbinsky, E. N. (2013). Some
key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life. The Journal of
Positive Psychology, 8(6), 505–516.
50 J. MACQUEEN
Cooperrider, D., Whitney, D. D., & Stavros, J. M. (2008). The appreciative

inquiry handbook: For leaders of change. Oakland: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Pearce, W. B. (2007). Making social worlds: A communication perspective.
Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell.
Smircich, L. (1985). Is the concept of culture a paradigm for understanding
organizations and ourselves. In P. J. Frost, L. F. Moore, M. R. Louis, C. C.
Lundberg, & J. Martin (Eds.), Organizational culture (pp. 55–72). Beverly
Hills: Sage.
Sortor, C. (2017). What do we mean by meaning. Retrieved from http://www.c-
cyte.com/prose_essays/what_do_w_mean.html.
Valsiner, J. (2007). Culture in minds and societies: Foundations of cultural psy-
chology. Psychology Studies (September 2009), 54, 238–239.
Sage.
Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the pro-
cess of sensemaking. Organization Science, 16(4), 409–421.
CHAPTER 5
Ontologies of Organizational Culture
In Chapter 2, we began looking at how culture is always being created

in any group, especially an organization. By using a hypothetical com-
munity garden as an example, we saw that organizing begets culture and
culture begets organizing. At this point, I think we can say that while it’s
definitely true there is no culture without an organization, it’s also true
that there is no organization without culture.
I also introduced the idea of a culture perspective, a construct about
keeping culture in mind as you deal with organizations. We will examine
this further by looking at John Kotter’s well-known work on “Leading
Change” and suggesting how each of the stages that he recommends
have an effect on the culture of the organization on which you might be
working. Chapters 2 and 3 introduced definitions of culture produced
by some of the more influential figures in the culture literature. I intro-
duced my own definition of culture so as to provide a point of refer-
ence as we move ahead. Now, I would like to return to my definition and
explore the underlying theories that are suggested by it in more detail.
In 1985, Linda Smircich wrote
Can we stand back from organizations and see them differently? Can we
see organizations not only as places where we gathered to get work done,
but as symbolic expressions, as displays of meaning as well as representa-
tions of the search for meaning? (Smircich, 1985)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25685-2_5
52 J. MACQUEEN
I have used Smircich’s comment verbatim elsewhere in this book

because of its importance to my overall thesis of the contribution of cul-
ture to making meaning in organizations (Chapter 4). My experience has
been that we tend to ignore this aspect of organizational life. We tend
to think of organizational life as different from our daily lives in general
and in so doing ignore what is so important to all of us, the need to find
meaning in what we do day-to-day.
I also suspect that consultants, students, and scholars of organizational
culture have tended to shy away from the symbolic aspect of culture
because it may be considered too abstract and “touchy-feely” for many
of our audience. However, you may recall that many of the artifacts (the
physical manifestations) of organizational cultures are reflections and
representations of the values and underlying assumptions about how to
do things in those organizations. These include very tangible things like
structure, hierarchy, accounting systems, and IT systems, or at least how
we use those systems.
As a quick reminder, my definition of organizational culture is, “A
symbol rich system by which people in an organization construct and
apply meaning about their work lives.”
Something you should understand about this idea and the model that
derives from this definition is that it is multi-ontological. I have hesitated
to use the term because it seems to have been adopted by the software
industry in reference to a great variety of search and registry functions.
But Snowden rescues the word from this context stating that the IT
profession misuses the term as “an elevated version of taxonomy and is
in fact closer to onomastics than it is to ontology” (Snowden, 2005).
Snowden further claims that the use of multiple ontologies (you might
want to substitute the words paradigms or theories) is particularly helpful
when you are trying to understand or make meaning of complex ideas
(Snowden 2005). (Surely, there are few things that are more complex
than human systems and what they produce.)
Ontology is defined in the dictionary as:
1: a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of

being
//Ontology deals with abstract entities.
2: a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of things that
have existence. (“Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary,” 2008)
5 ONTOLOGIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE 53
The function of an ontology is described as:
• [Providing] a common background and understanding of a par-

ticular domain, or field, of study, and [ensuring] a common ground
among those who study the information.
• It is a way of organizing concepts, information, and ideas that is
meant to be universal within the field, and allows for a common
language to be spoken.
• It is a structural framework that allows the concepts to be laid out
in a way that makes sense.
• It helps show the connections and relationships between concepts
in a manner that is generally accepted by the field (www.yourdic-
tionarly.com/, 2019).
The ontologies that I reference and make use of in this book are the
following:
1. Complexity theory and, especially, complex adaptive systems are

related ideas about how elements of a system interact in a way that
is complex and dynamic rather than mechanical and hierarchical.
2. Social constructionism is an idea about how we perceive and
understand reality and meaning. This theory centers on the notion
that meanings are developed in coordination with others rather
than separately within each individual.
3. Embodied metaphor is the idea that metaphors have a func-
tion beyond that of a literary device. They are important ways
of “understanding one thing in the place of another” (Lakoff &
Johnson, 2003) through the neuro-processes of simulation (see
Chapter 8).
4. Identity construction is the shaping of a person’s values, beliefs,
practices, discourses, and knowledge, influenced both by cultural
systems and by individual actions. In this case, we will be focused
mostly on identity construction as a social function and activity in
the process of developing organizational culture.
5. I will also make extensive use, build on, and extend Schein’s
(2016) ideas about the nature of organizational culture.
6. Finally, process metaphysics, with which this chapter is primarily
concerned.
54 J. MACQUEEN
Process metaphysics is
The worldview that sees processes, rather than substances, as the basic
forms of the universe. (Whitehead, 1929; Bergson, 1946; James,
1909/1996). A process orientation prioritizes activity over product,
change over persistence, novelty over continuity, and expression over
determination. Becoming, change, flux as well as creativity, disruption and
indeterminism are the main themes of a process worldview. (Langley &
Tsoukas, 2010)
Ultimately, these ideas together represent a particular view of the uni-

verse and how it operates. Perhaps the oldest known proponent of pro-
cess metaphysics was Heraclitus (whom I also reference in Chapter 1)
when he said, “you can’t step in the same river twice.” This is because
the water that constitutes the river is always changing. The water that
rushes over your foot at one moment is not the same water that rushes
over your foot in the next moment. As a matter fact, the process philoso-
phers would say that the act of differentiating one moment from the next
is illusory. In this context, all that truly exists is the water rushing over
your foot.
Obviously, this way of thinking creates definite problems with our
concept of time. Within this ontology, time as we think about it conven-
tionally does not exist. Only the experience of things changing has rele-
vance or importance. From a consulting or management point of view,
it becomes important to remember that the organization or the culture
that you experienced yesterday, earlier today, an hour, or a second ago
is not the same organization you’re experiencing now. This is not to say
that what you learned about the organization yesterday, today, or an
hour ago does not have meaning. It simply calls attention to the fact that
you need to be aware of what you do, because applying what you learned
previously may no longer be relevant in the same way.
You should also note that when you stepped into that flowing water,
you and your foot were also changed by the water flowing over it. The
skin is probably colder than it was before you stepped in, traces of the
water will continue to stay on your foot, and you will forever carry with
you that experience and your memory of it. So, you cannot commit the
action of stepping in the same stream twice.
Making these ideas about process integral to how you work is not
easy. If you choose to adopt a process orientation in your practice, your
orientation toward the client organization will probably move toward
becoming much more spontaneous and improvisational. In addition, you

should probably strive to adopt, build, and practice mindsets that derive
from worldviews such as Taoism and Confucianism and their Japanese
cousin, Zen.
Process metaphysics encourages us to at least question many of our
existing paradigms about how we interpret our experiences of the world,
particularly with regard to time and permanence. For example, we tend
to think of organizations as entities: things with substance that stay more
or less the same over periods of time. At a minimum, we like to assume
that the “organization” we left when we went to lunch will be more or
less the same one that we come back to after lunch.
The word organization, is a noun and is also a myth. If one looks for
an organization one will not find it. What we will find is that there are
events, linked together, that will transpire within concrete walls, and these
sequences, their pathways, their timing, are the forms we erroneously
make into substances we talk about as organizations. (Weick, 1995; Weick,
Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005)
What Weick is suggesting is that these entities, these “things,” that we

like to call organizations are really the relationships and the iterations of
the moment to moment processes that make up our “over time” experi-
ences of the organization.
“What we think of as organization is what is left over as a trace memory

of yesterday’s organizing… by the time we recognize the organization is
no longer there. What is there is our transformation of it what makes it
recognizable — re-cognizable — is precisely its no longer existing (Taylor
and Van Every, 2000:163)” In other words, every night the organization
dissolves back into airy nothingness that needs to be re-accomplished
the next day, through conversations that convert textual traces back into
shapes and locations. (Weick, 2010)
These are the streams in which we cannot step twice.

There is, therefore, no such thing as an organization (or its culture),
only the processes that make it up.
Seeing process as fundamental, such an approach does not deny the exist-
ence of events, states, or entities but insists on unpacking them to reveal
the complex activities and transactions that take place and contribute to
their constitution. (Langley & Tsoukas, 2010)
56 J. MACQUEEN
So, “This all makes a kind of sense,” we may say in response, “but it
seems terribly abstract and difficult to think of as having much of any-
thing to do with reality.”
I would argue that even our contemporary idea of reality is one of
those paradigms I’m suggesting you may find yourself needing or want-
ing to question if you are going to develop the culture perspective I keep
talking about. One of the obstacles we face in overcoming this way of
thinking about the world is that many of us, as participants in European
culture, find that the “classical Cartesian-Newtonian mechanistic world-
view is so entrenched in our everyday thought” (Shotter, p. 76) that per-
ceiving and thinking from a different paradigm seems at best difficult, if
not impossible! The good news, however, is that the use of a paradigm is
habitual and like other habits can be overcome, with effort.
As we begin to work with this new idea, we begin to realize that one
of the things the “scientific method” of observation has been doing for,
and to, us is narrowing our focus. This is not altogether bad when what
you want to do is to observe some object or phenomena out of its natu-
ral context. Many scientific advances have been made through this prac-
tice. But because organizations are complex systems, it makes no sense
to try to examine a single element separate from others in their system or
the processes in which they are engaged together.
A process point of view invites us to acknowledge rather than reduce the

complexity of the world it rests on a relational ontology, namely the rec-
ognition that everything that is has no existence apart from its relation to
other things… Focusing on interactions is preferred to analyzing standing
actions… Process method metaphysics regards change as endemic, indeed
constitutive of the world. Every event reconfigures an already established
pattern, thus altering its character. (Langley & Tsoukas, p. 3)
In other words, process metaphysics suggests that meaning and sig-

nificance are only derived through the relationships that one element or
individual has engaged with another through processes. This reminds me
of the koan-like riddle the kids I grew up with used to ask each other as
a way to demonstrate their intellectual superiority: “If a tree falls in the
forest, does it make a sound if there’s nobody there to hear it?” That is,
does the sound have reality if it is not heard by a human being? Another
way to ask this question might be “does the sound have meaning or sig-
nificance if it is not experienced?” This is important because, as we shall
see, a core function of the formation of culture is the meaning we derive

from the events of our work lives.
Meaning is located in the process itself; it is made in an ongoing present

in which past experiences projected upon possible futures. Meaning is thus
not received from stable concepts outside the process such as from norms,
identity, or values, but rather is made within the process itself. This is what
makes sense making central to processes and the making of meaning and
ongoing activity central to understanding organization from a process per-
spective. (Hernes & Maitlis, 2010)
We can extend and clarify this idea through Gergen’s (2010, p. 61)
observations that actions are only meaningful in the context of relation-
ships—in the processes that incited them, and their interpretation by
another person.
In this context, we may need to fine-tune our understandings of the
roles of individuals, especially in the context of producing/creating cul-
ture. As Robert Chia writes,
Individuals themselves must likewise be understood as historical effects of

social relations and event clustering’s; socio-cultural practices and relation-
ships precede identity and individuality. An individual exists, not in order
to experience but because of experience. Experience is trans-individual.
The individual is not some prior constituted entity but an emergent prop-
erty of experience itself thus an individual’s identity and characteristics are
the “condensation of histories of growth and maturation within fields of
social relations. (Ingold, 2000:3).” (Chia, 2010)
To be clear, Chia is suggesting that our experience of individuals—

and especially individuals in organizations—is of their participation in the
processes that have provoked the emergence of what we tend to refer to
as an organization. Put another way, and put more firmly into the con-
text of process, individuals beget action, and action begets individuals. If
you get out of the habit of thinking in terms of entities, then everything
is constituted by something else (often in a reciprocal way), though
not necessarily in a physical way. What is a person without patterns of
thought and personality? You should be considering this because every
action does not have an equal and opposite reaction but multiple and
multidimensional reactions (Chia, 2010).
58 J. MACQUEEN
Gergen offers further clarification of this idea and demonstrates how

the meaning of individuals and their actions are produced because we
don’t exist in vacuums. Instead we exist in social relationships where we
coordinate our actions to give them meaning.
I have found it first useful to focus on actions that are typically attributed
to individual actors. We say, for example, that John is aggressive, Shirley is
kind, Harold his deceitful, and so on. We have, then, what would appear
to be meaningful units. However, let us ask whether one’s behavior is
aggressive if others find it playful, or whether one is kind if others find
one’s actions self-serving. Can the individual in himself possesses attrib-
utes; can a meaningful agent exist in a social vacuum? It seems far more
adequate to locate the attribute in the relationships between actor and
other. And if this is so than the identity of the unit — or the unitization
— is a byproduct of ongoing relational processes. An individual’s actions
begin to acquire attributes when another (or others) coordinate themselves
to the action, that is, when they had some form of supplementary action
(whether linguistic or otherwise). We may say that one’s identification as
an independent actor depends on coordinated action. (Gergen, 2010)
So, if I am sitting in my office behind a closed door, muttering to

myself so that no one can hear me, and I’m not writing anything down
or otherwise recording what I say, muttering to myself has no mean-
ing or impact on the organization. I am the tree falling in the forest.
However, if Linda comes in and discovers me muttering about her, we
are now engaged in a process together. If my muttering has something
to do with her—say that it’s something I’m angry about, she might
respond with her own angry remarks. This means that she has just coor-
dinated her action to mine and very likely created with me an aspect of
my identity as a nasty person. In addition, we probably instituted a pro-
cess of argument, which unless one of us decides to embark on action
that can be coordinated with the other to produce a different meaning
for the two of us (or whoever else walks into the room in response to the
noise). This process is likely to be seen as having some lasting impact in
the organization.
Most people will tend to look at these events and simply report,
“Linda and I had an argument and she is really mad at me.” If I do this,
I am reporting on the event rather than the process. When I do this,
I lose much of the detail and the insight I or we might have gained if
we had worked with what was going on as we went through the process
of co-creating a new version of ourselves that was about being in con-

flict. (W. Barnett Pearce, in his remarkable book, “Making Social Worlds:
A Communication Perspective” (Pearce, 2007) very effectively demon-
strates how these processes are working in our personal, professional, and
public lives and offers a number of approaches for unpacking and inter-
vening in those processes and the manifestations of those processes.)
Chia likens process thinking to that which underlies the creation
of certain forms of Asian art, particularly, Chinese calligraphy and its
techniques.
This continual contrast and tension between opposing tendencies “ena-

bles each successive stroke to attract in its wake the next line” so that “the
dashes, the oblique strokes, the curves in the verticals, in all the twists and
arabesques, are always determined by the propensity of the impulse of
energy” (Julien, 1995:135). (Chia, 2010)
What is important here is the idea that the impulse to create the line,
its manifestation on the paper, and its relationship to the next figure exists
in such a way that one leads to, indeed creates, the next line. Similarly, if
you’re working within the realm of process metaphysics with an organiza-
tion, there are no separate events (calligraphic lines)—only the seamless
flow of one process into another. We cannot conveniently bracket periods
of time to include beginnings, middles, and ends. Processes are intercon-
nected and tend to create each other in all directions.
Many of us are trained as consultants to work in the scientific method
largely based on Lewin’s techniques of action research (Lewin, 1947) or
various methods of survey methodology to get a sense of what is going
on with the client. The problem with this way of thinking is that such
positivist approaches tend to distance the consultant from the client sys-
tem. When we subscribe to this approach, we are encouraged implicitly
or explicitly to stand outside the process with the accompanying narrow-
ing of focus and loss of detail mentioned earlier (I will have more to say
about this issue in Chapter 10).
On the other hand, applying a process thinking mentality to our cul-
tural perspective allows us to join the organization’s process and to expe-
rience it in a way that reminds me of having binocular vision. That is,
the data that we are gathering does not fundamentally change. However,
using a process approach, our experience and understanding of that data
may be significantly enriched.
60 J. MACQUEEN
I recently injured my right eye and for a short period of time lost my
ability to perceive depth. I immediately noticed that I was having trouble
doing things like navigating stairs because the location of the edge of
the stair and the distance from the top of one stair to the top of the next
one was not clear to me. I generally felt less sure of my position in space.
(This is a very common experience for people who are only able to see
out of one eye.)
But when my eye healed and I could once again see with both eyes,
I had the experience of full binocular vision. It was a kind of revelation.
I cannot say that I felt like I was taking in more visual data—seeing more
actual detail—but I realized that the dimensionality of those details
that I had been taking for granted most of my life was stunning. Edges
appeared sharper, surfaces more textured; the arcs of curved objects
appeared more distinctly round. My emotional experience of the phe-
nomena was similar to the way I feel as I continue to practice looking
at things from a process point of view: the experiences seem to me to
be richer, fuller, and more nuanced. I was experiencing things in much
greater dimensionality than I have before because I was observing and
understanding it with both eyes and could act accordingly.
There is no one picture of the whole that either succeeds or fails to repre-
sents the totality of the whole (as if there ever was a static pool standing
still long enough to be pictured; rather the part of the whole exemplifies
or instantiates it through its own process (by “the convergence of their
action”.… Because the whole itself is not static either: is a process that can
be instantiated in many kinds of examples, or better through the move-
ment within and between many examples. (Mullarkey, 2010)
This is particularly true of organizational culture. It is, as Weick

described above, as “airy nothing” that becomes named, and located
in time, and is eventually reified—the sense of process being lost.
Addressing process metaphysics is essentially an exercise in trying to
figure out, “what is time?” in relation to organizations, people, and
events—reconfiguring our ideas about how we recognize and apply the
construct of time in our own thinking. In some ways, time is or can
be whatever we want it to be to suit our purposes in a given process of
understanding (Mullarkey, 2010).
One of the principal difficulties we face in learning to apply process
metaphysics in organizations and organizational cultures is that few of us
seem to have adequate forms of language to express or describe processes

to one another. My own recent and very experimental solution in work-
ing with client groups to do this is to encourage the use of what I am
calling “the language of becoming.”
In this practice, I asked group members in workshops during their
group debriefs to describe an interaction but to do it in the present
tense. To help facilitate this, I asked them to use gerunds instead of the
more typical past tense forms of verbs with which they are both more
familiar and more comfortable. Usually, a group member might say
something to the effect of, “I walked into the room and saw Roseann by
the desk.” Instead, and usually with some initial coaching until they get
the knack of it, they described the scene more in the following manner:
“I’m pushing open the door open and stepping in. I am seeing Roseann
standing on the right side of the desk. She is leaning on it with one hand
and smiling. This is making me wonder, ‘Why is she smiling?.’”
As you can see, this technique is slowing down the individual’s pro-
cess of recalling the event. This in turn encourages them to pay more
attention to the details of a given process than they might have oth-
erwise. As we will discuss later, this becomes a great help in adding
strength and depth to the sensemaking activity and thus to the construc-
tion of cultures. (We will discuss in detail the nature and processes of
sensemaking in Chapter 7.)
While the technique seems initially awkward and artificial (and it
certainly can be when you first begin to practice), many groups report
that they find it exciting to be more in touch with their experiences.
Furthermore, they report that they are more able to stay in the process
rather than standing apart and only observing it. Certainly, this has been
increasingly true for me as I practice this technique with my clients.
So, what does (or would) process organizational thinking look like? How
do (or would) we recognize it? The quick answer to that question is first
this: we must stop trying to recognize such thinking as if we actually knew
what thinking itself is. Practice ignorance, or unknowing. But this is not to
say that one should not apply philosophy at all to organizations, or even
that one should be against every illustrative use of philosophy per se. It is
rather to say that one should not allow any one philosophy to centralize
what organizations are (that is, to want to ontologize them.). We need to
converge all theories and avoid the essentialism offered by anyone — apply,
or use, as many philosophies as possible. (Mullarkey, 2010, p. 49)
62 J. MACQUEEN
This takes us back to the beginning of this chapter and the reasons for
reviewing the multiple ontologies that support the theory of a process
system model (Chapter 3) in the development of a culture perspective.
I hope you are doing better than I was when I first began reading
about process metaphysics. Finding it difficult in its seeming complexity
and the abstractions of its concepts and language, my head began to hurt
as I confused the map with the territory.
It is essential to recognize that abstractions are never present in the final

state, but rather are perpetually in the process of becoming. Nothing can
ever be as we perceive it nor can it become as we want it to be. Everything
is in the process of becoming, perpetually. (Hernes, 2010)
References
Chia, R. (2010). Rediscovering becoming: Insights from an oriental perspective
on process organization studies. In T. Hernes (Ed.), Process, sensemaking, and
organizing. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Gergen, K. J. (2010). Co-constitution, causality, and confluence: Organizing in a
world without entities. In Process, sensemaking and organization. Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press.
Hernes, T. (2010). Actor-network theory, Callon’s Scallops and process-based
organization studies. In Process, sensemaking and organizing (pp. 161–184).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hernes, T., & Maitlis, S. (2010). Process, sensemaking, and organizing. Oxford:
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL.: University
of Chicago Press.
Langley, A., & Tsoukas, H. (2010). Introducing “perspectives on process organi-
zation studies”. Process, sensemaking, and organizing, 1(9), 1–27.
Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in group dynamics: Concept, method and reality
in social science; social equilibria and social change. Human Relations, 1(1),
5–41.
Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary. (2008) (Electronic Edition,
Version: 4.7 ed.). Merriam-Webster, Fogware Publishing, Art Software Inc.,
Data Storage Research.
Mullarkey, J. (2010). Stop making (philosophical) sense: Notes towards a pro-
cess organizational-thinking beyond ‘Philosophy’. In Process, sensemaking, and
organizing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wiley.
Smircich, L. (1985). Is the concept of culture a paradigm for understand-
ing organizations and ourselves. In P. J. Frost, L. F. Moore, M. R. Louis,
C. C. Lundberg, & J. Martin (Eds.), Organizational culture (pp. 55–72).
Beverly Hills: Sage.
Snowden, D. J. (2005). Multi-ontology sense making: A new simplicity in deci-
sion making. Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics, 13(1), 45–53.
Weick, K. (2010). The poetics of process: Theorizing the ineffable in organiza-
tion studies. In Process, sensemaking, and organizing (pp. 102–111). Oxford:
Sage.
www.yourdictionarly.com/. (2019). Ontology. Retrieved from http://yourdic-
tionary.com/ontology.
CHAPTER 6
Culture and Organizational Change
Earlier in the book, I claimed that most organizational change fails

because of a conflict between the proposed change and the existing cul-
ture. In addition, many change efforts do not achieve their objectives
because of the tendency on the part of many managers and consultants
to ignore cultural issues in the context of John Kotter’s Leading Change
(1996), one of the most popular and enduring books in the field of
change management. Before doing so, however, I want to be very clear.
I don’t think Kotter’s ideas about changing an organization are in any
way wrong. In fact, I think most of his overall strategy is spot on. It is
only in his reluctance to address organizational culture as an integral part
of the process and the organization that constitutes any kind of oversight
at all.
Kotter’s is a kind of cookbook approach to doing organizational
change. In his book, he presents an eight-step model. The implications
of this approach are, if you follow it carefully, it will make your efforts to
change your organization much more successful than those who don’t
follow it. Kotter’s model has been enormously popular probably because
of this step-by-step approach. Still, it is not without its critics. The most
difficult of these criticisms is that it is often lacking in the specifics of
technique and approach (Appelbaum, Habashy, Malo, & Shafiq, 2012).
This is particularly true when it comes to advice he provides on issues
related to an organization’s culture. I am going to review each of the
eight steps. In doing so, I will be looking at how bringing the culture
perspective to each step enlarges one’s understanding of the overall

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25685-2_6
66 J. MACQUEEN
impact of each of them. I don’t want to claim that this assessment actu-
ally makes any improvement on Kotter. I simply want to point out that
there are issues that pertain specifically to an organization’s culture that
Kotter does not seem to be interested in demonstrating to his audience.
The eight steps of Kotter’s model of change are:
1. Establishing a sense of urgency

2. Creating the guiding coalition
3. Developing a vision and strategy
4. Communicating the change vision
5. Empowering employees for broad-based action
6. Generating short-term wins
7. Consolidating gains and producing more change
8. Anchoring new approaches in the culture.
We begin with step one, “Establishing a Sense of Urgency” (Kotter,

pp. 35–51).
Kotter’s premise is that many organizations are complacent about the
need for change. Certainly, that’s true more often than not. Otherwise,
any organization in need of change would undoubtedly be addressing
that need proactively. However, complacency is a cultural characteris-
tic, an artifact, common to many organizations. I would suggest apply-
ing the principles of cultural diagnosis to this artifact by looking to
understand the organization’s narratives regarding being complacent
and asking, “How?” and “why?” Working to change a pervasive sense
of complacency is an intervention in the culture. It should be addressed
with an awareness of the fact that is what you are doing.
My experience is that when the people in an organization tend toward
complacency, the organization is one in which people feel or have been
told they’ve been doing things right for a long time. Alternatively, they
haven’t received feedback that they haven’t been doing things properly,
and dissension from that view is discouraged within the organization.
Burnes and Jackson (2011) state that this is one of several culture
types that they have identified. Each one is defined by a differing set of
values that will tend to shift as the demands of their environment and its
impact on the organization shift over time. Of this one they say, “The
management style is formal and autocratic and employees are compliant
and conformist because they value uniformity and stability, they can also
be highly resistant to change”.
6 CULTURE AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE 67
In general, I am very cautious of organizational assessments built

on any kind of typology. This is because they tend to lead people into
believing that the stereotype is what they are dealing with rather than the
organic reality of their organization. This can lead to neglect of particular
details that are important for understanding and evaluating the organi-
zation that is actually in front of them in the moment. In this case, how-
ever, I think the general outlines of the type are valuable for recognizing
certain kinds of behaviors that often look like complacency.
Kotter makes a number of suggestions for tactics that may help to
change the sense of complacency (1996, p. 44). Ultimately, he seems
to land on the idea of creating a crisis as one of the more valuable tac-
tics in a manager’s arsenal. This may indeed have real benefit because a
crisis is by definition, a disruption to the usual flow of work. As Weick
points out (Weick, 1995), a disruption creates a situation in which peo-
ple must make sense of what’s going on, act on it, and make meaning
of that action and the results. These are core processes that may create a
new element of culture. What becomes important if one decides to take
advantage of a manufactured crisis is to facilitate the sensemaking and
problem-solving people are doing in response to the crisis. You should
then encourage them to make meaning of the actions that they take. In
doing this, you will then need to ensure those actions are in line with the
culture the client is looking to create and thus become part of the new
culture (see Chapter 7).
One other note about creating a crisis. This is sometimes referred
to as establishing a burning platform, a metaphor I find particu-
lar objectionable and one of which few people seem to know the ori-
gins. The image is derived from the story of an oil rig in the North Sea
that exploded and caught fire in 1988. 163 crew members and rescu-
ers lost their lives. Only 63 survived. Crew members had a choice
to stay on the burning platform of the oil rig or jump into the frigid
waters of the sea where, if not rescued, they could survive a maximum
of about 20 minutes. Convincing people that they are facing a dilemma
of organizational life or death unless they take some sort of unpleasant
action can often result in cynicism when the targets of this approach
learn that the stakes were not as high as initially thought and that they
have been manipulated by their leadership. An unfortunate potential
cultural artifact.
The second step in Kotter’s model is “Creating the Guiding Coalition”
(1996, pp. 51–66). Here, too, is a point where your culture perspective
68 J. MACQUEEN
should be especially activated. Any time a new group is being formed or

new responsibilities added to what an existing group is doing, a change
in the culture is being instigated. This is especially true if the coalition
is formed for the purpose of developing and guiding the strategies for
change. As we noted at the beginning of Chapter 2, any new group forms
culture as part of the process of organizing. Even if this is an established
group that is being directed to take on the task of guiding a change effort,
their normal processes are being disrupted in a substantial way and, more
importantly, their identities are changing because their roles are chang-
ing. Identity is an important element of culture. It is determined by an
individual’s attachment to an organization and the role that person plays
in the organization (Hatch & Schultz, 2002). Thus, the culture of this
group is changed when individuals’ roles change.
Simply forming the guiding coalition can be a very tricky busi-
ness because of the implications for culture, in and of themselves. The
qualities Kotter suggests for this team include: positional power, exper-
tise, credibility, and leadership. In my experience, bringing these qual-
ities together in any organization, especially in a relatively small group
of people, can be a difficult task. This becomes even more difficult if
you’re going to insist that these people be able to function as a team.
Kotter’s basic recommendation is to employ teambuilding. Remember
that there are particular cultures that produce and foster performing as
a team better than others. For many people, teamwork does not come
naturally—for any number of reasons.
Teams get built through the experience of consistently performing
successfully as a team and not through externally imposed exercises. The
development of teamwork is supported by an existing or evolving culture
in that group that supports collaborative action. The team we are talk-
ing about (the guiding coalition) may need your guidance for a time as
they learn what it means to work together. From a culture perspective, I
recommend helping them to create assumptions about what they are to
accomplish and how they will go about it (mission and goals). You might
employ some techniques that encourage pragmatic prospection (see this
chapter) so that they are actually doing neuro-simulations of what they
think might be some of their activities. (Neuro-simulation is a brain pro-
cess in which the receptors for certain physical responses are stimulated.
During neuro-simulation an individual may often have the sense of actu-
ally experiencing what is being simulated.) This also gets referred to as
developing a vision but what I am suggesting is a vision that is much
more personal and highly detailed than the usual organizational vision.
I once worked with a medium-sized organization in which most of

the senior and mid-level managers (who were the obvious choices for
membership in a change coalition) were all inappropriate for this task.
All of these managers had been with the organization a very long time.
During that time, they were working for different leadership and they
had received very little feedback on their performance. One of the results
was that they had generally come to the conclusion that what they had
been doing was the “right way to do things.” At the same time, most
of them had been promoted into their current positions with little or
no training in how to be a manager. (This is unfortunately a very com-
mon practice in organizations where you are promoted because of your
technical expertise, not necessarily because of your leadership or manage-
ment skills.) In addition, the different units each of them led were highly
siloed from the others.
Allon Shevat, an Israeli OD consultant, has pointed out, “Siloism is
the maximization of one set of goals to the detriment of a wider com-
mon good” (Shevat, 2016). One result of this was that, while these man-
agers were all perfectly friendly and congenial, when it came to matters
of consequence relative to the whole organization, they did not trust
each other. I noticed that when they were in meetings together they
often repeated themselves, had conversations that were circular in nature,
and often asked for clarifications on topics that their leader thought had
been thoroughly discussed previously. What I took away from this was,
not only evidence that they didn’t trust each other at some very deep
level, but that they believed when they were in meetings they were not
being heard. All of this indicated that these managers had developed a
culture among themselves, a subculture if you will, that made them very
ill-suited to being the guiding coalition for a major change effort.
The guiding coalition needs to be a collection of role models for the
rest of the staff during transition. They are highly visible and are the
embodiment of the values that are, or should be, at the core of the vision
for change. The entire organization will be looking at them closely to
see how their behavior represents the changes they are promoting. If the
members of the coalition are not doing this, neither will the rank and
file. Encouraging and modeling behaviors that would be critical to the
success of the overall change was not going to be feasible for this group
without substantial work on changing attitudes and beliefs.
While there were good candidates from other places in the organiza-
tion that could be brought onto this team, they lacked positional author-
ity and leadership credibility with much of the rest of the organization.
70 J. MACQUEEN
This meant they simply would not be good candidates for taking on the
hero type work that is usually associated with people in this kind of role
(Deal & Kennedy, 1982/2000). This meant that achieving the second
step of Kotter’s model took much more time than anybody had antic-
ipated in order to achieve the stated criteria for assembling a guiding
coalition. It also required substantially more coaching, facilitation, and
training activities than had been anticipated. These activities produced a
sense of substantial delay while the corrections were being pursued and
the coalition made several false starts. Ultimately the impact of the delay
was generated by a failure to pay attention to one important aspect of
the culture in the organization: the assumptions about what constituted
effective leadership.
Kotter’s third step is Developing a Vision and Strategy (Kotter,
pp. 67–83). Vision and strategy are very important (vision without a plan
of action is hardly useful) but in terms of developing your own culture
perspective, it truly is at the core of paying attention to what’s going on
in the culture.
Vision refers to a picture of the future with some implicit or explicit com-
mentary on why people should strive to create that future… By clarifying
the general direction for change, by saying the corporate equivalent of “we
need to be south of here in a few years instead of where we are today,” it
simplifies hundreds or thousands of more detailed decisions.… It motivates
people to take action in the right direction even if the initial steps are per-
sonally painful, and it helps coordinate the actions of different people even
thousands and thousands of individuals in a remarkably fast and efficient
way. (Kotter, p. 68)
What Kotter is saying is that vision creates a context, a container

which, when coupled with strategy, allows people to take action with a
certain amount of confidence that they are on the right track together.
They do not have to be constantly checking in with each other especially
on larger decisions. Take for example, Dr. Martin Luther King’s great,
“I have a dream” speech. In it, he makes an outline with a few very tell-
ing details and metaphors that creates a desirable picture of the future for
his audience.
A good vision is aspirational. It is a set of ideas that suggests a future
state in which everybody can see themselves and see themselves as doing
better. Often, the is stated in metaphorical terms. This is what is usually
termed a generative metaphor (Bushe & Marshak, 2008; Schön, 1993).

The role of metaphor is to help us understand and experience often very
complex and abstract ideas in terms of something more concrete (Lakoff
& Johnson, 2003). A generative metaphor is one that excites new ideas
and leaves room for their further development either in concrete ways
or using additional metaphors (Barrett & Cooperrider, 1990; Bushe &
Marshak, 2008). From a cultural point of view, a good vision can begin
to alter fundamental, taken for granted ideas about what the organiza-
tion is and how we behave in that organization.
Because metaphors are embodied, i.e., we experience them physically
through neuro-simulation (Bergen, 2012; Lakoff & Johnson, 2003).
When this is accomplished, our desire to inhabit the organization of the
vision becomes enhanced. We become more willing to question and shift
those cultural assumptions that are keeping the organization in place,
that is, those underlying ideas that are the source for our organization’s
complacency. As Kotter says, people need to be motivated to take action
“even if the initial steps are personally painful” (1996, p. 69).
Step 4 in Kotter’s model is “Communicating the Change Vision”
(1996, pp. 85–101). Whether you are reading Kotter in parallel with this
chapter or following along through memory, I want you to see this sec-
tion as having substantial implications for culture. In doing the actual
work, it presents a real opportunity to make a shift in the culture of an
organization.
Based on the problem statement regarding the alignment of change
and culture, our goal is to help align the culture and the proposed
change. Communicating the change vision is a critical element for
achieving that particular goal. Recall too, that organizational culture is
generated socially. It is an emergent product of the organizational sys-
tem. That emergence happens when the elements of the system are com-
municating with each other on a regular basis (Olson & Eoyang, 2001).
What the vision is and how it is communicated are critical. Kotter
talks in some depth about why communicating the vision for change is
so difficult and why it so often fails. He mostly chalks this up to lack
of preparation on the part of the guiding coalition, underestimating the
task, some lack of skill, and simple arrogance.
So why do smart people behave this way? Partly the culprit is

old-fashioned condescension. “I’m management. You’re labor. I don’t
expect you to understand anyway.” But more important we don’t
72 J. MACQUEEN
communicate because we can’t figure out a practical alternative: Put all

10,000 employees through the same exercise as the guiding coalition? Not
likely. (Kotter, p. 88)
What needs to be done with communicating the vision for the change
is to begin to shift the “fundamental, taken for granted, ideas about what
the organization is and how we behave in that organization” (Schein,
1985). The guiding coalition did this for themselves probably over the
course of weeks or months. While I do not believe asking the general
population to go through the same process is necessary, applying some
of the basic processes of constructing culture will be helpful to accom-
plish the desired cultural shift. This requires a fundamental shift in how
we are thinking about communicating vision.
Communicating something as intellectually and psychologically com-
plex and impactful as a vision for change means that we need to pay
attention to both what is being communicated and what the audience
does with the information they are supposed to be receiving. They need
to be given time, opportunity, and support for making sense of the
information they have heard and begin to make meaning of its potential
impacts on their work lives. Failing to do this means that the audience is
often just getting the information about the change without allowing for
people to experience or express their feelings about how their lives may
be changing (see Chapters 3 and 7). The feelings are an important part
of their understanding and need to be brought into the conversation to
help ensure acceptance of the vision.
I suggest inviting people to participate in groups small enough for
individuals to communicate directly with each other. These meetings
should be conducted with the support of a facilitator trained to handle
these processes. When they have had some initial opportunity to do this,
it can be helpful to ask people what they will personally take responsibility
for doing to make the vision a reality. If the change will require acquisi-
tion of new skills, it can be very helpful to introduce some experiential
training of those skills so that people can have some embodied under-
standing of what’s going to be required of them. These new ways of
working might have to do with new processes, procedures or operating
different equipment that will change the way they work together.
You may not be able to do in-depth training on any of these. This
may not be practical at this stage. However, the employees will need to
have some idea of what they’ll be asked to commit to. They will need to
begin to envision what life will be like after the change has taken place.
It is difficult to imagine something totally new, so they will need some
experience in advance of what things might be like. They will need to
have their own individual visions that fit into the larger vision with which
they have been presented (I have found some of the process and tech-
niques of appreciative inquiry, especially those outlined in “The Dream
Phase” to be helpful with these processes.) (Cooperrider, Whitney, &
Stavros, 2008).
You and the leadership should prepare for instituting a program of
coaching to be implemented by supervisors for those they supervise.
They will need to begin reinforcing the commitments people made to
make the vision a success. The structure for this activity needs to be
built throughout the organization so middle managers coach supervisors
and more senior managers coach the middle managers, etc. This coach-
ing should happen at least every four to six weeks (as opposed to the
annual review type of coaching which is seldom done soon enough or
with enough regularity to be valuable to the organization.) I also suggest
using the “Triple Impact Model” (Patwell & Seashore, 2006) as a basis
for training those who will be coaches because it will help to empha-
size people employing their own agency for initiating action and taking
responsibility for that action.
Two more truly important ideas about communicating and teaching
that Kotter proposes in this section are, “Walk the talk, and lead by
example” (Kotter, pp. 95–97), and “Listen and be listened to” (1996,
pp. 99–100). It seems that, at this point, the first suggestion could
almost go without saying. But as Deal and Kennedy point out, the effect
of the leaders’ behavior on a culture cannot be underestimated (Deal &
Kennedy, 1982/2000). Think of leaders walking the talk about change
as a kind of disruption (see Chapter 7). When people observe this behav-
ior in their leaders they will make meaning of what they observed and
begin the process of incorporating that meaning into the culture by hav-
ing conversations about what they have seen and eventually teaching it
to others. Encouraging this behavior is not an easy task. It often involves
making substantial inner changes around identity in terms of their roles
and a willingness to engage in coaching as mentioned above. It will be
important that you contract with leaders in the organization to do this,
emphasizing the importance of how their individual modeling of appro-
priate behaviors plays into the success of the effort.
74 J. MACQUEEN
In like fashion, creating a practice of listening to others (what Schein

talks about as “Humble Inquiry”) (Schein, 2013) sets up a pattern of
walking the talk if the behaviors are properly supported with training and
coaching. This has the potential for substantively altering the assump-
tions about good communication in your organization. If this is done
during the change process, the activities will enhance the change process
and might otherwise constitute a lost opportunity.
The potential for seeing and using the culture perspective becomes
especially acute in Step 5, “Empowering Employees for Broad-based
Action” (pp. 101–115). We will begin this discussion where Kotter
begins his discussion, that is, what is empowerment?
If I hear the word empowerment one more time, “someone recently told
me, “I think I’ll gag.… It’s become a politically correct mantra,” he said.
“Empower, empower, empower. I ask people what they mean by that
and they either become inarticulate or they look at me like I’m an idiot.”
(1996, p. 101)
Kotter never provides us with a definition. However, one that

I particularly like comes from the field of community psychology,
“Empowerment is viewed as a process: the mechanism by which people,
organizations, and communities gain mastery over their lives” (Block,
2009; Christens, 2012). My own definition is, “The ability to exercise
one’s own agency,” personal agency being the mechanism of empower-
ment. I believe that we can never empower anyone else. They can only
empower themselves. Unfortunately, we have numerous opportunities,
and tend to be pretty good at, disempowering people by not encour-
aging or insisting that they exercise their own agency or removing the
opportunities for choice about that exercise. Kotter delineates multiple
ways in which we can effectively empower people.
Major transformation rarely happens unless many people assist. Yet

employees generally won’t help or can’t help if they feel relatively power-
less hence the relevance of empowerment.… The purpose of stage 5 is to
empower a broad base of people to take action by removing as many bar-
riers to the implementation of the change vision as possible at this point in
the process. (Kotter, 1996, p. 102)
Kotter’s list of potential solutions for empowering “a broad base of

people” includes the following: removing structural barriers, providing
needed training, aligning systems to the vision (by which he means pri-
marily HR systems), and dealing with troublesome supervisors. All of
which can have substantial cultural implications, especially the last one.
But Kotter has missed the most important of these barriers: lack of trust.
Unless managers and supervisors believe they can and will trust employ-
ees to take appropriate action in implementing the change vision, they
will not “empower,” encourage, or sometimes even allow employees to
take the initiative to do so. This concept of empowerment is all about
taking initiative and accepting responsibility for the actions that an indi-
vidual takes out of their sense of agency and their desire to “gain mastery
over their lives”.
Likewise, if an employee does not trust that they can take initia-
tive and act on it without support, censure, or punishment from their
supervisor or manager when they stumble or fail, they simply won’t do
it. When employees do not believe they can empower themselves, the
tasks involved in creating and implementing organizational change fall
to a select few. This, of course, undermines the purpose of this stage of
Kotter’s model.
Trust or lack of trust in an organization is definitely a cultural
phenomenon, an artifact. It is something members of the organization
learned through solving, or attempting to solve their problems of adap-
tation and integration. You’ve probably been in organizations where,
while people did not seem to be overtly fearful of their bosses or col-
leagues, the conversations and discussions never seem to rise to the level
of robust. Perhaps it was an organization in which deference to the hier-
archy struck you as a little extreme, or certain topics simply were never
discussed. You may have noticed there were common complaints about
what amounts to micromanagement or lack of innovation and creativity.
All of these are suggestions that taking risks is not a part of “the way we
do things around here” simply because it does not feel safe to do so.
This becomes further complicated because organizational change,
especially structural change, tends to be corrosive of employees’ trust in
managers. In reviewing the literature on trust, Morgan and Zeffane note,
“empowerment is an ongoing interpersonal relationship that fosters
mutual trust between employers and employees” (Morgan & Zeffane,
2003). Pay attention to the use of the idea of mutuality. In other words,
if I realize at some level, that you don’t trust me, I probably won’t trust
you. They state that there are five components of trust: integrity, com-
petence, consistency/fairness, and openness. They also state, “trust
76 J. MACQUEEN
begins where prediction ends. …a trust focus is a key to change mastery”

(Morgan & Zeffane, 2003).
If you are like me, you might begin to feel a bit overwhelmed by
the cultural tasks associated with major change. However, you should
take heart in realizing that many of those tasks will have been under-
taken if you have been applying a culture perspective while following
Kotter’s process. Doing so, will have you already working on various cul-
tural issues to help effectively prepare the organization for the change.
Because cultures are complex adaptive systems, a little push that you
give a culture in one area results in changes in another, often in ways
that seem unrelated even though they may end up producing simi-
lar emergent (though sometimes unexpected) results as in the Butterfly
Effect (Varvoglis, 2014).
How do we apply the culture perspective to Step 6, Generating Short-
Term Wins? (pp. 117–130). The answer is in the coaching suggestion
Kotter makes on page 127.
This is what we are trying to do and this is why it is important. Without

these short-term wins, we could lose everything. All that we want to do
for our customers, shareholders, employees, and communities becomes
problematic. So, we have got to produce these results.
This is a strong values statement. Statements about values are always

connected to the culture. If the employees are genuinely connected to
these values, how to honor and fulfill them are powerful motivators as
tools for coaching.
By now, you’re probably putting together ideas about how culture is
constructed and maintained in the narratives we tell each other and our-
selves about “how we do things around here”. The narratives that most
likely support the efforts to ensure short-term wins derive from the work
that was done to overcome whatever it was in the culture that was driv-
ing and perpetuating the sense of complacency. It also, and perhaps more
importantly, might have been done as a part of what became the vision.
The vision of the change is inherently narrative. In the best of all pos-
sible worlds, it tells the story of why this change is necessary and how
it’s going to happen. For that vision to become part of the culture of the
guiding coalition and, hopefully, the larger organization, it needs to be
repeated and continues to be repeated as the process goes forward. At
the point when you are looking to establish those short-term wins, the
ideas in the vision may have become assumed: they are like wallpaper.
They become part of the scenery and go unnoticed. An idea like, “Of
course, we’re going to work extra hard to achieve those short-term
wins. We’ve always said that we were going to do that. We’ve always
known that it was important,” may need to be brought back to people’s
attention.
Assuming you were successful in making the vision part of the cul-
ture to begin with, this should not be difficult. It will be a case of help-
ing people to remember more of the details of the vision and working
with them to fine tune it. If the resistance to the effort is short-term, and
based in fatigue, it is more easily overcome if the idea of short-term wins
has been adopted in the vision. It may, however, be more closely tied to
the idea that the change council, managers, and employees simply believe
the organization cannot produce major change and achieve excellent
short-term results. If that is the case, then your task at this stage is likely
to be considerably more difficult. It will likely involve going back to
steps five and six and taking corrective measures that involve revising the
change vision and doing additional communication activities.
This points out one of the important ideas about vision that Kotter
made earlier in this chapter.
[Vision] simplifies hundreds or thousands of more detailed decisions.…

It motivates people to take action in the right direction even if the initial
steps are personally painful. (Kotter, 1996, p. 168)
My addition to that is, vision creates a context which, when coupled

with strategy, allows people to take action with a certain amount of con-
fidence that they are on the right track. In this case, I want to reinforce
the old admonition to “begin with the end in mind” (Covey, 2013). If
the change vision has indeed been given the care and attention needed to
make it part of the culture, everyone will keep it in mind for the duration
of the project.
In many ways, Step 7 “Consolidating Gains and Producing More
Change” is the most culturally insightful section of the book. I say this
because this section is all about interdependencies. Complex adaptive
systems, a primary characteristic of organizational culture, are defined by
the fact that the elements of a culture are interactive and interdependent.
This might be a good time to remind you of one of my basic premises
illustrated at the very beginning of Chapter 2: the processes of building
78 J. MACQUEEN
culture and building organization are inseparable. As I’m certain you are
realizing, change and growth in organizations are dependent on change
and growth in their cultures. The processes of cultural change interact
continually with those of organizational change. The results of both pro-
cesses often are mirror images of each other.
Kotter’s description of interdependencies in the tangible world of a
corporation reflects many, if not most, of the interdependencies in the
cultures of the organizations: “What happens in the sales department
has some effect on the manufacturing group. R&D’s work influences
product development. Engineering specifications affect manufacturing”
(Kotter, p. 134). Each one of these areas undoubtedly has its own sub-
culture by virtue of the fact that each one of them deals with a different
kind of task, probably different kinds of equipment, or at the least differ-
ent kinds of software, different populations with different outlooks and
different assumptions about, “how we do things around here”. Viewed
from this perspective, transformational change can indeed seem over-
whelming, especially because one implication of interdependence is that
a change in one often triggers changes in others. Culturally, all will need
some attention.
For us, there are ways of addressing the cultural aspects of a change
that cannot be accomplished in the same way you might address the
more mechanical parts of an organizational change project, though both
need to be addressed. For instance, you might be looking at the use of
new equipment with the implementation of new procedures where fol-
lowing those procedures with some exactitude is important. These often
may be addressed by training, though you will want to try to determine
which aspects of the training people receive will need to touch on peo-
ple’s behavior and beliefs.
Where the change issues are as much about changed behavior and
changed attitudes as they are about the use of new equipment, an under-
standing of those basic values, beliefs, and behaviors can be applied in dif-
ferent settings. Paying attention to the assumptions embedded in training
for the new technology is important. You can help to ensure that those
underlying assumptions do not contradict those in the cultures of the
groups that will be employing them. Conversely, you should understand
how you might help to shift those groups’ values and assumptions to
match those required in the training. Technical training is often provided
by a manufacturer and applied as one size fits all to the customer. The
assumption that this can be done without repercussions may be false.
I once consulted to a manufacturing company that had imple-

mented an Enterprise Reporting System (ERP) in the days when such
things were relatively new. The consulting firm that had recommended
and installed the new system, set it in motion and, for all intents and
purposes, departed, assuming that the training that they had done was
complete and robust. Not long afterward, however, senior management
realized there were delays somewhere in the system that were resulting in
delays in the times customers were receiving products. Tests of the ERP
did not reveal any obvious problems so it was determined that the prob-
lems must rest with the employees.
I was called into help and determined that the problem was to be
found in the communication between fulfillment and logistics/shipping.
I soon realized that the workers in fulfillment had somehow managed
to hold on to their old computers. They were doing their work in the
same ways they had always done it because the old way allowed for inter-
actions among them that were precluded by using the new tools. They
were then entering the results into the new computers with the ERP
installed, thus causing the delay.
It turns out that while they had been trained on the use of the new
system and the new computers (hence their ability to manually move
data from the old computers to the new) no one had ever explained to
them why it was important to switch to the new equipment. No amount
of “training” was likely to be sufficient to convince them to change the
behavior they successfully had been using to do their jobs for years. So,
the practice of moving the data manually was viewed by this staff as a
success and incorporated into their subculture. This was a company that,
to their credit, tried never to coerce their employees to do anything.
So, it took the engagement of multiple managers and even the CEO to
convince these employees that the new way of doing things was going to
be best for the company.
The anticipated or the actual implementation of some set of changes
will serve as an interruption. One can then assist a group in making
meaning of those changes, getting them to imaginatively apply those
changes and their meanings to their own particular situations in sug-
gesting that they make commitments to support and implement those
changes and what those changes mean to them (see this chapter). The
presence of the change or the organizational vision can be a powerful
factor in creating behavioral consistency among individuals and groups.
In my experience, it also will tend to make acceptance and integration of
80 J. MACQUEEN
new tasks easier. Also, I have found that putting individuals from differ-
ent departments or divisions together for the assimilation activities can
go a long way toward reducing siloism.
What I have not addressed here is the question of celebrating suc-
cesses with which Kotter opens this chapter. While I would agree that
the lavish celebrations Kotter describes in the beginning of this section
would definitely seem to be overkill for acknowledging “short-term
wins,” the need for finding ways to acknowledge success in the passing
of a milestone is important. Deal and Kennedy (1982/2000) describe a
number of ways in which such practices become ritualized and produce
generally positive results in particular cultures. Remembering that cul-
ture is constructed based on solving problems and the meaning that peo-
ple make of that effort suggests the more effective use of this moment in
the life cycle of a change is to take the time to do “lessons learned” so
that those approaches can be as, Kotter (1996, p. 123) suggests, “driven
into the culture”.
Throughout this chapter on short-term wins, Kotter makes consistent
reference to the importance of leadership’s role of relating tasks in pro-
jects to the overall vision. I want to take a moment and reinforce that
advice. Not only does it serve the purpose of making everybody’s job a
little easier, it also serves to build trust and increase the sense of empow-
erment in the organization. Finally, it has the potential of building a cul-
ture perspective so people will approach behaving in this way mindfully,
which ultimately means that the behaviors can be repeated and if they’ve
become part of the culture, will be repeated.
Kotter’s Step 8 (1996, pp. 131–144) is one of the most culturally per-
ceptive sections in the book. This is because it focuses on interdepend-
ence. Organizational culture is a complex adaptive system and is at least
partially defined by the interconnection and interactivity of its diverse
parts (Olson & Eoyang, 2001). There are two problems Kotter is trying
to address in this section: the first is the effect of change practices on
culture and the overall progress of the change project. “Until changed
practices attain a new equilibrium and have been driven into the culture,
they can be very fragile” (Kotter, 1996, p. 133). The second problem is
the loss of momentum that organizations often face after initial wins in
the first stages of change.
Kotter ties problem two to problem one and identifies the increas-
ingly complex, interdependent nature of a changing organization as a
root cause of both. He is, of course, correct in this. Because it can be
difficult to identify tasks and procedures that end up being duplicated

or made obsolete until later in the process. For example, the need for
data or reports transmitted from one department to another may some-
times become obviated because of changes in structure or technology.
However, it is not unusual to see the employees who previously put
those reports together continuing to do so, and the managers who set up
their production schedules based on those reports continuing to believe
that the reports are needed. The resulting confusion and busywork can
slow down both operations and the progress of implementing changes
that were intended to produce greater efficiencies.
One of Kotter’s solutions to the overall issue is to get the leaders out
of the weeds. In other words, ensure the leaders are paying attention to
the larger scope of their responsibilities and the bigger picture of the
organization. That means they have to be willing to delegate responsi-
bilities for details and the day-to-day work that represents progress on
the change efforts to lower levels of management. There are two cultural
issues lurking here. The first has to do with roles and identity. “The way
we do things around here” may involve an assumption that senior man-
agers and executives are responsible for and have a finger on everything
that happens within their purview. This is a practice commonly known as
micromanagement.
If this is the case, micromanagement is an assumed way of functioning
for managers at whatever level, it may be important to provide support
for changing that piece of the culture. Day-to-day work may be restruc-
tured to support the new paradigm and managers’ identities may be
tied to the idea that they effectively can and should manage at a higher
level of detail. That change will initiate sensemaking processes and activ-
ities and your role as consultant is to help ensure those processes take
place and maximum advantage is gained from the time and the effort
expended on sensemaking (see Chapter 7).
The second issue may also be trust and empowerment. This is a cultural
issue because often lack of trust is not an isolated, individual phenomenon
but an organizational one. Unfortunately, trust, or lack thereof, is seldom
effectively dealt with in a training session. More often, the individuals on
all sides of a trust issue will need help to work together toward a resolu-
tion. This is an especially resource-intensive activity and I have occasionally
recruited volunteer coaches for this work. These are usually people from
the organization who understand the vision and can successfully commu-
nicate and reinforce the vision with others.
82 J. MACQUEEN
Kotter’s final recommendation with regard to interdependencies is

to eliminate those which are unnecessary. I certainly support this admo-
nition. However, it can be difficult to determine which are unneces-
sary and which, if any, are beneficial. Obviously, some criteria may be in
order. A key problem simply may be identifying what interdependencies,
beneficial or not, exist. To this end, I suggest something that probably
sounds counterintuitive in the context of Kotter’s thinking and his advice
in this section. Because systems thrive and produce greater emergence in
the presence of increased communication among the elements of the sys-
tem, I recommend finding ways to increase contact among people in the
changing organization.
I suggest doing this by setting up a number of temporary interde-
partmental groups and teams whose purpose is to generate increased
communication throughout the organization especially with regard to
redundant activities. The people on these teams are more likely to dis-
cover and report on those outmoded administrative types of interde-
pendencies than higher-level managers. Beyond this, they may hear and
tell others about successes in other departments that generally may not
get communicated out to the broader organization. During change pro-
jects, this can be great for morale boosting. The presence of these teams
can be particularly helpful in communicating “the big picture” at various
levels and conversations about goals and values can be helpful in break-
ing down organizational silos. Thus, you and your client may not want
to wait until Step 7 to institute these teams but get them going around
Step 3. All of this can be helpful in keeping the momentum going in
order to consolidate gains and produce more change.
The discussion of the final stage of Kotter’s model, Step 8, Anchoring
New Approaches in the Culture (1996, pp. 145–158) begins with a con-
firmation of a part of my thesis for this book. That is, most change fails
because of poor alignment between culture and the change effort.
When new practices made in a transformation effort are not compati-

ble with the relevant cultures, they will always be subject to regression…
Because the new approaches haven’t been anchored firmly in group norms
and values. (Kotter, 1996, p. 148)
Why does Kotter leave this to the very end of his program? He
observes an interesting dichotomy between the choice to construct new
culture or pursue structural transformation. He notes that there are a
number of common ideas that the first step in a major transformation

should be to alter the existing culture because the change effort then
becomes easier and more likely to succeed. You might draw the conclu-
sion that I subscribe to this theory. To the contrary, I do not and in a
minute, I will tell you why. Kotter says,
Culture changes only after you have successfully altered people’s actions,
after the new behavior produces some group benefit for a period of time,
and after people see the connection between the new actions and the per-
formance improvement. Thus, most culture change happens in stage 8,
not stage one. (Kotter, 1996 p. 156) (emphasis mine)
This sets up a polarity of ideas about timing that is inherently false. It

is not that you do not work to change the culture in stage 1 or in stage
8. I have been suggesting that culture change is happening all the way
along. The choice is whether you pay attention to it or not. You can opt
to make your choices intentional and ensure you give them shape and
direction, or not.
There are two reasons for thinking this way. The first is, as a consult-
ant or change agent, anything and everything you do, intentional or not,
tends to provoke changes in the culture of an organization. It’s much
better to stay aware of this fact and make your interventions consciously,
mindfully, and intentionally. It is much better that you not turn around
one day and say “Holy cow! What have we done?” when we have pro-
duced some unintentional and unexpected result in the culture. (Not
that this is totally unavoidable, but you can at least not be taken com-
pletely by surprise.)
I also agree with Kotter to a limited extent about seeing connections
between new actions and performance improvement. Construction of cul-
ture is dependent on some disruption in social processes. There is a valid
need for people to struggle with problems such as having to deal with new
procedures, new structures, new equipment. Resulting changes in the cul-
ture are going to occur in real time, not after the fact of implementation
when we’ve had time to see and assess results. It is better to take advan-
tage of those disruptions as they occur, to plan for them rather than wait
until you’re done introducing them into the organization and then work
to reconstruct the cultures that were generated out of those efforts.
I am sympathetic, too, because as Kotter observes by tracing the path
of an individual through his or her indoctrination into the culture,
84 J. MACQUEEN
Culture is powerful for three primary reasons:
1. Because individuals are selected and indoctrinated so well [into

an organization].
2. Because the culture exerts itself through the action of hundreds
or thousands of people.
3. Because all of this happens without much conscious intent and
thus is difficult to challenge or even discuss. (Kotter, 1996, pp.
150–151)
All of this relates back to “solving problems of inclusion and integration”

(Schein, 1985) in ways that are largely outside of conscious perception.
The lack of discussion around hiring and employee indoctrination to which
Kotter refers by way of example makes it even more difficult to construct
new culture mindfully, which happens through conversation and discussion.
In my experience, these actions truly benefit from as much social and con-
scious consideration as possible when they are initially undertaken.
When shared values are supported by the hiring of similar personalities into
an organization, changing the culture may require changing people. Even
when there is no personality incompatibility with a new vision, if shared
values are the product of many of years of experience in a firm, years of a
different kind of experience are often needed to create any change. And
that is why cultural change comes at the end of the transformation not at
the beginning. (Kotter, 1996, p. 155)
Many of us or perhaps even most of us have firsthand experience of

people who have been with an organization so long and are so entrenched
in the existing culture, that they seem to fight tooth and nail against any-
thing that may be different from the way they have always done things.
This is because what is new is probably in conflict with everything they
have learned during all the time they’ve spent in the organization. I have
worked with people whose so-called resistance was so entrenched that my
own visceral response was, “Can’t we just get rid of them?”.
For many organizations, this is not an option. Smaller organizations
simply can’t afford that kind of action. Even when buyouts or early
retirement packages are lucrative and generous, trying to alter culture
by eliminating those who are carriers of the old culture is problematic.
You may be able to shift the existing culture by getting rid of the more
adamant supporters of that culture, but it probably will not be in the
way you may have imagined. Getting rid of people, even in the most
humane way, tends to leave the rest of the population with a bad taste
in their mouths. Based on my observations, the so-called survivors will
tend to see these actions as being somehow retributive. Thoughts like,
“the package was pretty good this time but what about next?” tend to
be part of the conversation, the narrative that is building in the organiza-
tion. The work that you put into building trust will rapidly be corroded
and will become the new culture.
The wonderful thing about constructing new cultures is that if you
take pains to ensure that the process is not coercive in any way, there will
be many people who are advocates of new ways of thinking and will in
subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle ways, seek to bring in the people
who otherwise are outliers.
Trust the process.
I can’t help but wonder if the language that Kotter has adopted when
speaking of culture in this section has not gotten in his way. I want to
make very sure it doesn’t get in ours. For example:
The challenge is to graft the new practices onto the old roots while killing
off the inconsistent pieces. (Kotter, 1996, p. 151) (emphasis mine)
Even with all these efforts killing off the old culture and creating the new
one was difficult to accomplish. (Kotter, 1996, p. 155) (emphasis mine)
Culture is not something that you manipulate easily. Attempts to grab it
and twist it into a new shape never work because you can’t grab it. (Kotter,
1996, p. 156) (emphasis mine)
All three of these statements make use of some very powerful

metaphors. This is important because not only do we use metaphors
to understand often very abstract concepts, we use them constantly to
clarify meaning, so they often influence our thinking in subtle and yet
profound ways (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003). In addition, recent neuro-
research has demonstrated that metaphors are often embodied (Bergen,
2012) which means that our brains simulate the physical experiences sug-
gested by the metaphor in ways that feel very real.
“Graft” suggests cutting one thing and inserting another into the
cut—something rather surgical in nature. “Killing off” speaks for itself
in terms of violence. “Grab and twist” suggests equally violent actions.
“Manipulate” suggests a certain level of psychological violence as in
86 J. MACQUEEN
the following dictionary definition: “to control something or someone

to your advantage, often unfairly or dishonestly, to change by artful or
unfair means so as to serve one’s purpose” (“Merriam-Webster’s 11th
Collegiate Dictionary,” 2008). These metaphors are antithetical to much
of what I know about the life cycle of developing healthy cultures and
the consultant’s role in supporting that life cycle. Let’s begin with the
issue of manipulation.
Much of what I practice and advocate for in developing new culture
is based both in my experience and my study of Dialogic OD (Bushe,
2013). I know that it is common practice for many consultants work-
ing with the best of intentions to manipulate the groups they work with
to come up with the results that are desired by the client. Often this is
very difficult for the consultant not to do and often can happen uncon-
sciously, especially when it comes to facilitating culture construction.
Sometimes avoiding manipulation simply is finding and asking the
questions that the group needs to work on. Many times, groups don’t
easily come up with questions about their experiences let alone the
meaning of those experiences on their own. However, with a great
deal of thought and a little practice, consultants can find their way to
asking questions that will help a group respond to disruption in their
organization and will help them make sense and meaning of their expe-
rience. Consultants may also be helpful selecting and defining the met-
aphors that broaden those meanings without being manipulative or
coercive. For now, I encourage you to think about Kotter’s use of the
word manipulation in reference to culture with a certain amount of cir-
cumspection (“Culture is not something that you manipulate easily.”)
(Kotter, 1996, p. 156).
Likewise, the words “grab and twist” as ways of thinking about how
you will deal with cultures in the future are difficult. While Kotter is
quite right in saying you can’t grab culture (it has no substance) I know
from my own experience and from talking extensively with other consult-
ants, that it is easy to find oneself desiring to be able to grab and twist
a culture into a particular shape. While you cannot literally twist a cul-
ture, the metaphor you use for how you address dealing with a culture
you’d like to change is important. What and how we think about things
has an unfortunate way of becoming a reality that we wouldn’t otherwise
choose.
This brings me to the metaphors “graft” and “kill off” as applied to
organizational culture. As we’ve already discussed, culture exists as a
system (another metaphor) which suggests that at its essence it exists

as processes and can only be experienced as flow. This in turn suggests
that culture doesn’t change as much as it can be augmented through
processes of emergence, accrual, and confluence. It is a bit like “trying
to change the path of a flowing river or creek. It is done gradually and
with the knowledge that processes must continue flowing on while the
changes are being implemented” (Moore, 2018). So, while a group may
be able to construct elements that add to a culture those elements come
together with existing elements of a culture much in the same way that
two rivers may come together. If you have seen pictures of places where
two rivers join, sometimes you’ll see that one river has one color and the
other river has another and for a while after they flow together those two
colors remain separated in the river. But before too long both streams
are mixed and you are no longer able to tell the difference between the
water of one river in the water of the other. So, are those two rivers
changed? Of course, they are, but it is not a process of grafting. Perhaps
the better metaphor is mixing cultures but that doesn’t quite have the
same sense, does it? Maybe blending cultures.
I also don’t believe that it is possible to kill off a culture, much less
a portion of a culture. This is for the very reasons that Kotter describes
in this section. The assumptions and values that characterize any culture
tend to be wonderfully persistent, even if none of the people who helped
to create that culture or sustain it and teach it to others are still in the
organization.
So how does a culture die? Cultures “die” only when the attributes
that were developed because of some successful project solving problems
that are the source of a culture’s assumptions are no longer valid or use-
ful. And then they may be replaced by others through some version of
the processes that I will describe later in the book.
Kotter’s final comments on Step 8, “Anchoring New Approaches in
the Culture,” have to do with how ill-advised it can be to assign respon-
sibility for a culture change to VPs of Human Resources. And he is right.
That is, unless the VP of HR was a member of the original change coa-
lition and is widely recognized and appreciated for her or his role there.
This is not often the case and so it is not surprising that culture change
attempted in this way so often fails. In the best-case scenario, supporting
culture change along the way with the overall change was included in
the original vision developed by the change coalition and will ensure that
this happens.
88 J. MACQUEEN
Ultimately, organizational culture and the power to change it rest

with those who own it—the people of the organization. For any change
in an organization to be successful and to produce effective results, one
needs to exercise intentionality and have a plan for pursuing that change.
This is why Kotter’s book has enjoyed so much deserved success. What
I’m hoping to add is the particular emphasis on culture—the culture per-
spective—and with that, the idea that you change culture with the deep
involvement and active participation of the organization’s population.
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Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
CHAPTER 7
Creating Context: The Role of Sensemaking

in Producing Culture
So, how do people in organizations actually go about creating this

sometimes-mysterious set of assumptions about how to think, feel,
behave, and generally interpret their environment? These assumptions we
refer to as culture? If we examine in more detail what goes into answer-
ing questions and resolving issues of external adaptation and internal
integration, what do we learn about the broader process? (Schein, 2016).
This chapter is about how the process of sensemaking is critical
to creating culture in groups and organizations. Karl Weick perhaps
the world’s leading authority on sensemaking in organizations says,
“Sensemaking… Involves identity, retrospect, enactment, social contact,
ongoing events, cues, and plausibility.” This is a set of elements that are
vital to the construction of culture as much as they are to organizing.
As I indicated earlier in the book, the processes of organizing and con-
structing culture are so entwined and interdependent as to be virtually
indistinguishable.
Sensemaking is a process, an activity in which groups and individuals
engage almost all the time. Whenever there is a change of interruption in
the organization’s activities, no matter how tiny or isolated, members of
the group will engage in sensemaking. That is, how will we adapt to or
integrate what has happened? This is because any interruption to an indi-
vidual’s or group’s flow of process means that we are required to make
decisions about how we continue, or do not continue, with whatever
it is we were doing. This often is a social activity because our individ-
ual identities are tightly bound with that of the group. Thus, changes

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25685-2_7
92 J. MACQUEEN
in a groups’ identity resulting from a change in the organization or its

processes animate the need to confirm our own personal sense of identity
in the face of that change.
Expanding the concept of sensemaking beyond the realm of formal
organizations, Snowden characterizes sensemaking as “the way that
humans choose between multiple possible explanations of sensory and
other input as they seek to conform the phenomenological with the
real in order to act in such a way as to determine or respond to the
world around them” Snowden (2005). Weick adds to this “To engage
in Sensemaking is to construct, filter, frame, create facticity, and render
the subjective into something more tangible” (1995, p. 14). Weick also
notes that sensemaking is a process in which people construct cognitive
maps of their world. In other words, when something happens we ini-
tially view the results as a kind of puzzle. We want to figure out what
happened, why it happened, and what to do next. The details surround-
ing an event are often overwhelming in their number and are sometimes
contradictory in their meaning. Thus, we need tools and methods that
will help us figure out what details are relevant to understanding the
context in which they occurred, and what is their impact on the environ-
ment in which we operate now.
When it comes down to it, we are noticing that the circumstances
in which we have been operating have changed and our actions may
no longer make sense in the new context. It may be that the context is
changed a little or great deal, it makes no difference. For example, I may
have noticed that the set of activities which make up my morning routine
before I get down to work have gradually expanded. Once, I was able to
complete that routine and be at my desk working by 8:30 in the morn-
ing. Now, however, I don’t seem to be able to get to work until almost
10:30. In light of this, I will need to make some changes to how I do
things before I get down to work in the mornings.
In another example, you receive notice that you are being laid off and
have a limited amount of time to find a new job. On a larger scale, your
team has received word that it is being disbanded and that you will indi-
vidually be reorganized into different groups responsible for different
tasks and activities throughout our organization. Each of you, individu-
ally and as a group, needs to decide how you will handle the new situa-
tion and what those changes will mean for you.
In each case, our context for action has been interrupted and because
“interruption is a signal that important changes have occurred in the
environment, that the world is no longer the way it was” (Weick, p. 46).
7 CREATING CONTEXT: THE ROLE OF SENSEMAKING IN PRODUCING CULTURE 93
Our expectations of how we normally are to go about our business no

longer make sense in the new context. In almost every instance, this pre-
sents an occasion for sensemaking.
At this point, you may be saying to yourself, “This is all very well
and good, but what does it have to do with organizational culture?” By
way of explanation, I want to remind you of Schein’s definition of organ-
izational culture:
A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its
problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked
well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new
members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those
problems. (Schein, 1992, 2016)
As you will see, sensemaking is a process of adding to the group’s

assumptions and practices for solving problems “of external adaptation
and internal integration” (which is pretty much everything, if you think
about it). These assumptions are the context that a group uses for its
work. The context enables a group to understand the environment and
situations in which it is functioning collectively. In this way, the changes
a group makes to its thinking during sensemaking, if they work “well
enough to be considered valid” can be passed along to new members
when similar disruptions occur and become a new element of culture.
Because sensemaking is a nearly automatic response to any change or
disruption, almost anything that gets done to or in an organization can
become part of the culture. For example, suppose a manager attempts
to impose a change on an organization and its members decide, based
on the sense they have made of what the manager says she wants to do,
that the best way to handle it is “keep our heads down and this, too shall
pass.” If that approach is successful, “keeping our heads down” may
become a cultural assumption—a part of the groups’ context about how
to deal with certain types of change that will be repeated in similar situa-
tions and taught to new members over the course of time.
Weick identifies seven properties that are key to sensemaking. We shall
cover each of them in turn. These properties of sensemaking include:
1. It is grounded in identity construction;

2. Involves thinking retrospectively;
3. Is enactive of sensible environments;
4. Is a social activity;
94 J. MACQUEEN
5. Is ongoing;
6. Is focused on and by external cues;
7. And is driven by plausibility rather than accuracy. (Weick, 1995, p. 17)
In the best of all possible worlds, these seven properties might some-
how link so that we could look at them as an ordered process in which
one leads to the next. However, that is not the case. When a group is in
the process of sensemaking, each one of these properties has a role to
play, often at different times in different ways. Each may have a different
level of importance as they are employed by a group to right itself after
an interruption to the flow of its work.
The above list of seven properties is meant to serve, “as a rough
guideline for inquiry into sensemaking in the sense that they suggest what
sensemaking is, how it works, and where it can fail” (Weick, 1995, p. 18).
The importance to us as consultants as we strive to develop a culture per-
spective is to recognize each of these elements and their contribution to
the creation of culture. We must recognize how each presents us with
opportunities to support the group or organization as it constructs its
cultures. We also should recognize that engagement in these properties
represents systemic action. By this, I mean that the action and products of
each property are interactive and interdependent with every other prop-
erty on the list (see, for example, Chapter 3 for further illustration).
An important addition to Weick’s seven properties is reflection. I
am deliberately using this term to be in opposition to Weick’s original
term for another of his properties, “retrospect.” Retrospection suggests
remembering something in a conscious and focused way. Reflecting,
while it may involve retrospection or remembering, connotes think-
ing about something in a more diffused fashion. Reflection, in addition
to producing memory, may also produce other kinds of thoughts and
insights. Reflection and its products need to take place before sensemak-
ing can begin and often as sensemaking continues.
Reflection involves not only recalling past experience, but can also
kick off a second-order change in the conception of self or the seemingly
tangential reframe of a problem “one has been stewing upon.” The
“default network” of the brain is a set of regions (especially the medial
prefrontal cortex, inferior parietal lobule, and lateral temporal cortex)
that play a significant role in our ability to recall past experience, antic-
ipate future experience, and experience identity, consciousness, and
self-awareness (Buckner, 2012).
The default network activity has been identified through MRI scans
and similar techniques and led Buckner (2012) to these conclusions
about reflection. He found that the default network is spontaneously
active during passive moments, or periods of reflection. Buckner sug-
gests that the portions of the default network that become active during
reflection include processes such as accessing information from long-
term memory and “manipulation of this information for problem solving
and planning mental images and thoughts” (Buckner, p. 4). Apparently,
we organize these materials during times when the brain is not other-
wise active solving problems that require longer-term thinking. As we
proceed, it will be clear to you that the functions of the default network,
activated during reflection, produce types of cognition that are critical to
the process of sensemaking.
1. Grounded in Identity Construction. As we begin to go through the
seven properties in detail, I want to point out that a primary process of
all organizational cultures is the construction of identities. These include
the identities of both the individuals and of the group as a whole (Hatch
& Schultz, 1997, 2002). In terms of the individual (Weick, 1995),
points out that
identities are constituted out of the process of interaction. To shift among

interactions is to shift among definitions of self. Thus, the sense maker is
himself or herself an ongoing puzzle undergoing continual redefinition,
coincident with presenting some self to others and trying to decide which
self is appropriate. (1995, p. 20)
In other words, we, as group members, are continually and often sub-
consciously trying out ideas about our identities with others in the group
until we come up with some collection of ideas about which we get good
feedback and adopt as “this is who I am in this group”.
At the same time, we are putting out ideas about the identity of the
group until we achieve a similar consensus among the group mem-
bers. As those ideas crystallize, we try them out with members of other
groups. We collect feedback about those responses, and finally settle on
something that seems to work among ourselves and with other groups,
typically groups within our own organization, as well as managers, and
stakeholders.
This is a fluid and iterative process. New information about our-
selves and our group is continually generated and gathered from the
96 J. MACQUEEN
environment which then needs to be incorporated in our definition of

both group and individual identities. If this new information is deeply
affective or especially surprising, its impact on the individuals may be
profound. When this is the case our sense of ourselves may be seriously
disrupted. As individuals, we may no longer have a sense of who we are
in the context of the organization. We may, in fact, have lost track of our
concept of who or what is this organization? At that point, we are likely
to begin to engage in serious sensemaking.
We begin to pursue the processes of identity construction by observ-
ing ourselves and others for cues about who they think they are and how
they conceive of the organization. We look for cues in people’s behavior
and in our memories of what it was like before. Eventually, we construct
a new consensus about our collective identities. In other words, we have
made a kind of sense about what happened to us as an organization in
terms of identity and are ready once more to move ahead.
A group’s identity and their individual personal identities are impor-
tant pieces of context. Knowing who we are and who others think we are
is the basis for how we perform many activities. Imagine what it would
mean to not have that piece of context. People no longer know what is
expected of them and, perhaps, what they should expect of others with
regard to working together. Reporting relationships, for example, may
now be seriously confused, depending on the degree of disruption.
This is also a significant opportunity to employ our roles as consult-
ants. We can work with groups to rediscover and reestablish their iden-
tities. We do this by facilitating inter-social conversational processes
among individuals and among groups such as described by Barnet Pearce
(2007). This will help people discover the cues, as well as note and sort
the feedback they get as described above. We might also choose some
more conventional and familiar approaches such as “visioning” that will
help the group to achieve many of the same results. In doing so, we con-
tribute to the construction of a group’s or an organization’s culture.
2. Retrospective. “What’s past is prologue.” Shakespeare (1623) has
Antonio say this to Sebastian in Act II, Scene 1 of The Tempest. Antonio
is working to justify a proposed murder of Alonso, the king of Naples
and Sebastian’s father. In doing so, he is suggesting to Sebastian that
Antonio’s own murder of his brother, Prospero, had been justified by the
political success that Antonio has subsequently enjoyed. What Antonio
is saying is that events of the past are predictors of the future and that
the sources of current action are embedded in past events. While this
is important to our consideration of sensemaking with regard to what

Weick calls cues, it is its implied reference to process metaphysics that
will be of greatest interest to us here.
In most cases, it is what we were doing immediately before the
change or the interruption that is provoking our current engagement in
sensemaking. It was part of a flow of ongoing action and events, each
of which carried with it its own meaning based on what had gone on
before. When our flow of context is interrupted, we need to reconstruct
it, so that the actions we take moving forward have some connection to
the past and make sense in the present. In order to make this reconstruc-
tion, we seek to remember details of what was happening, what we were
doing, and what sense it made at the time. Weick (1995) would say that
we are retrospectively collecting cues and placing them in cognitive and
psychological frames (also retrospectively created) or actively collected
from our existing environment in the present.
People look back over their past experience to discover ‘similar’ events and
what those previous events might suggest about the meaning of present
events. Past events are reconstructed in the present as explanations, not
because they look the same but because they feel the same. (Weick, p. 49)
As we shall see in the section on plausibility, the question of “feel

the same” is critically important when we are reconstructing and mak-
ing sense of a context. This is because most of our contexts are not
closely observed in any way that might count as factual observation. A
context is made up of thousands of details and stimuli, far too much for
the conscious mind to be observing on an ongoing basis. In fact, what
we are looking for in the process of retrospection is to extract cues,
bits of memory and observations of the present, that we carry with us
as impressions. These impressions serve as the building blocks we use
to construct or reconstruct a context and develop a larger sense of what
may be occurring and the impact of what has recently occurred in the
present.
We take these cues and organize them within frames so that we can
begin to see the relationships among those cues from the past. Thus,
we provide them sense and meaning for our understanding in the pres-
ent. “Frames tend to be past moments of socialization and cues tend to
be present moments of experience. If a person can construct a relation
between these two moments, meaning is created” (Weick, p. 111).
98 J. MACQUEEN
For the consultant, this provides a sense of direction for facilitating

the process IF the consultant can be centered and present enough in the
group’s flow to understand the source and nature of those frames. The
consultant needs to have developed sufficient trust with the group that
she can suggest that they explore more possibilities than those frames
they have so far selected if she feels doing so may be necessary and/or
valuable. It is critical that the group experiences the consultant as being
in the flow with them so as not to interrupt their current flow of activ-
ity. She must understand she is being invited into the activity of making
choices around frames and cues and the group must have no cause to feel
they are being manipulated.
This is an extremely powerful and important intervention because the
sense they make of what has happened to them, where they are now, and
where they may need to go (their new context) will undoubtedly become a
part of their new worldview—their culture—influencing the belief systems
and activities not only of the group as it exists now but as it evolves in the
future. It is important to realize there is more at stake here than putting up
a plausible version of the past for use in the present. Our contexts also con-
sist of ideas, or mental models, of the present and the future.
With retrospection, we are always looking at things in the past.
Everything in the tangible world is, to some extent, in the past. While
we may acknowledge that everything exists in the flow of time, we
mostly remember (or think we remember) things as events. An event is
a story constructed with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Its details
are included or excluded based on how we have constructed the story.
We make sense of things based on how we have previously configured
events. Therefore, all of our stories are likely to be incomplete in one
way or another, altering their meaning.
As Weick has it, we apparently organize our sensemaking around the
projects in which we are currently engaged. These are likely the projects
that were interrupted and ones to which we are anxious to return. Each
project in our memory is made up of multiple events, each of which can
have meaning attached to it. So, we find that “retrospective sense mak-
ing is an activity in which many possible meanings may have to be syn-
thesized, because many different projects are underway at the same time
reflection takes place. The problem is that there are too many meanings,
not too few” (Weick, 1995, p. 27). Weick suggests that what many peo-
ple want in the situation is more information but that is not necessarily
what they need.
Instead, they need values, priorities, and clarity about preferences to help
them be clear about which projects matter. Clarity on values clarifies what
is important in lapsed experience which finally gives some sense of what
elapsed experience means. (1995, pp. 27–28)
But what if values related to the particular subject are part of what has
been disrupted? Values are, after all, part of the context we use for making
decisions and taking action. It seems reasonable that if the values available
to us through retrospection are inadequate for the task of providing guid-
ance, we will need to develop our context through some other means and
construct values that can more specifically be applied to our situation.
Weick’s near-exclusive focus on retrospection for sensemaking might
benefit from some expansion. This is not to suggest that there is anything
in anyway wrong with Weick’s theories, but there have been some recent
advances in the areas of psychology and neuroscience which may further
inform our understanding of sensemaking processes. Recent research in
psychology has opened up newer fields of study, one of which is known as
pragmatic prospection. These are studies regarding how people think about
the future and use that thinking in the context of sensemaking. I believe
our cultural contexts involve elements not only of the past, but the present,
and the future. Many of the elements involved in pragmatic prospection
are vital to the processes of sensemaking. This is not to suggest that I find
anything wrong with Weick’s work. It is simply that prospection research is
relatively new and I believe enhances what Weick has to offer.
Psychology’s main theories explain human behavior by pointing to

the past: childhood experiences socialization reinforcement history. …
Yet recent evidence has suggested that people do not spend much time
thinking about the past: remembering, replaying lessons or traumas, and
so forth. The past may well be important and we do not intend to say that
psychologists’ research focus on the past has been wasteful, but it misses
a big part of mental life and psychological processes. According to recent
data of our own (Baumeister, Hoffman, Somerville, and Vohs, 2016), peo-
ple think about the future two or three times as much as the past. They
also report that their thoughts about the past are more often because of
its implications for the future. We have come to suspect that predicting the
future is genuine human activity and a somewhat important one, is not the
main goal of prospection. The more common and basic form of thinking
about the future is anticipating what one will have to do, decide, perform.
Prediction is real but secondary. (Baumeister & Vohs, 2016)
100 J. MACQUEEN
A key component of these processes is episodic memory. This is

memory of events that have actually happened to you as opposed to
those you may have read, heard about, or imagined (Schacter, Gilbert, &
Wegner, 2011). What is particularly interesting to us here is the structure
of episodic memory and how it is used by the brain. For example, your
memory of your 12th birthday does not exist as a single, literal repro-
duction of that scene that takes place in your mind (Schacter & Addis,
2007). Instead, your brain constructs that scene from bits and pieces of
recalled information (episodes) from various sources including,
outputs of perceptual systems that analyze specific physical attributes of

incoming information and interpretation of these attributes by conceptual
or somatic systems. These constituent features of a memory are distrib-
uted widely across different parts of the brain, such that no single location
contains a literal trace of engram that corresponds to a specific experience.
(Schacter & Addis, p. 774)
This is a remarkable feat, especially considering that those compo-

nent pieces of memory remain encoded and stored all over the brain and
available for use in other situations such as thinking about the future as
well as making sense of the present. Both imagining the future and con-
sidering the present, which we’ve already established as being important
to our personal contexts and to the construction of our cultures, take
advantage of episodic memory.
Pay particular attention to the phrase above, “outputs of perceptual
systems” because this is an important piece of what we do when we think
about the future. The processes of episodic memory that we employ
in thinking about the past are the same processes we use when think-
ing about the future. What this means is that when we think about the
future and possible events in the future, we simulate them in our brains.
For example, when I smell lilacs in the present, I am instantly reminded
of my grandmother’s garden in Wyoming which was full of lilac bushes.
In the spring, the air was redolent with that scent and when I catch a
whiff of it, I am immediately in that garden in a way that feels almost
physically real to me, at least for an instant.
If I am imagining someplace that I would like to go in the future,
I can summon that memory of lilacs to populate the simulation of that
place I’d like to be and it becomes much more real to me. For exam-
ple, if I wanted to visit Philadelphia, a place I’ve never been, I might
build a mental image based on photographs held in episodic memory. If

I then supplement these photographs with my sense memory of lilacs,
my mental simulation of that scene in Philadelphia could be quite vivid.
Likewise, if I find myself thinking about work tomorrow, I can simulate
a sense of what those events are going to look like using images of my
office and perhaps what it will feel like to work on the kind of material
I’m anticipating working with, or even the people with whom I expect to
be working. If I’m going to be working with people that are new to me,
I can summon the experiences that I’ve had working in a new group.
What is it like working with somebody entirely new? Somewhere in
my brain I have encoded the excitement, the anxiety, the physical and
emotional discomfort I’ve felt working in a new group previously.
Having simulated this experience, I can begin to make decisions about
how I want to handle it this time around. This prospective thinking is
now part of my context. The more my context has been changed by
whatever the events are in my recent past (the ones that have disrupted
my context and the flow of my work), the more important it is for me to
make sense of where I am now and make decisions for the future based
on it. In effect, because I’m using episodic memory, I am “remember-
ing” the future.
From the point of view of organizational culture, we are constructing
these images of what we will be like in the future as a group. The ten-
dency is for group members to share these constructions among them-
selves and to strive to enact them into the present. The more common
term we apply to this kind of thinking and the simulations we make
around them is constructing, or evolving, organizational vision (a recog-
nized component of organizational culture). The strength of our visions,
those simulations that help to guide our futures as groups by creating a
context for how we make group and individual decisions for action are
ultimately based in our use of episodic memory.
Should you decide that a group would benefit from facilitation in
support of this kind of effort, I have found that timing and choice of
approach can be critical to success. In many cases, setting up a formal
session devoted to this task is often quite successful. You might begin
by asking the group to imagine events from their past and to state these
events’ meaning(s). Then ask people to actively imagine some version
of the future. You might consider asking them to draw pictures of that
future or suggest that they are in that future state and a reporter has
come to do a story on how the organization has changed.
102 J. MACQUEEN
I have found, however, that some groups raise significant objections

to engaging in this kind of structured, preplanned, activity. These activ-
ities often require a certain level of playfulness of the group. Group
members sometimes object to this because they believe that playfulness
in their particular situation is inappropriate or may find it threatening
because they may be asked to operate outside of their comfort zone. If
this is the case, and I am sufficiently tuned into the flow of the group’s
work, I will ask questions about the scenarios/simulations of the future
that are being generated and encourage people to populate the simula-
tions with more and more detail. Both approaches accomplish the same
end. The increased detail in the simulation helps to make it more vivid
and more meaningful for the group by adding more layers of episodic
memory. This in turn makes this vision more useful, strengthening the
emerging culture and the group sense of identity.
One final aspect of the retrospective work of sensemaking to which we
want to pay attention is people’s recollections of emotions. Specifically,
the emotions they experienced as they went through whatever the
interruption was that triggered the need to do sensemaking in the first
place. Baumeister, Vohs, Nathan DeWall, and Zhang (2007) makes
a compelling argument for emotions as a feedback system. Many peo-
ple (including many psychologists) have long believed that emotions
cause behavior. For example, fear and/or anger we may believe causes
a fight or flight response in the individual or individuals experiencing
those emotions. However, as Baumeister points out, we go to films that
portray images and scenes that stimulate these same emotions. While
we may feel anxious, excited, or angry, it is rare that we threaten other
patrons of the theater with fisticuffs or bolt headlong toward the exits.
Instead, we encode the images that we have seen and the sensations they
stimulated in episodic memory to be assembled for future use in the
event something like what we saw on the screen actually happens to us so
we will know how to respond. This would not be so different from how
we might use observing a similar incident at some distance in real life.
Baumeister et al. (2007) found,
Many emotions do not cause behavior… Instead, they facilitate learning

lessons and forging new associations between affect and various behavioral
responses. Emotional experiences operate to stimulate cognitive process-
ing after some outcome or behavior. They facilitate learning lessons and
forged new associations between affect and various behavioral responses
subsequently these associated affective traces may shape behavior without

having to develop into fully fledged conscious emotion. Ultimately and
critically people learn to anticipate outcomes and behave so as to pursue
emotions they prefer. (p. 168)
In other words, we learn and apply approach and avoidance behaviors

and lessons based on memories of past action. We apply these ideas pro-
spectively to what we anticipate may come as a result of actions in which
we may or may not choose to engage. That choice, when it is processed
and agreed upon by a group, is often turned into a kind of principle that
is applied to a particular action or class of actions more generally. This
enables them to say, “because we know that such and such an activity
results in a certain kind of outcome, on principle, we do not engage in
that activity”.
If this agreement persists in the group over time, we often refer to it
as a “value” that is held by the group. Values are something that both
practitioners and scholars refer to as key component pieces of organiza-
tional culture (Cameron & Quinn, 2011; Deal & Kennedy, 1982/2000;
Hatch, 1993; Martin, 2002; Schein, 2017). What is important to note
here is that values can and do arise from the spontaneous interactions of
the group and are not necessarily dependent on their introduction and
reinforcement by leaders. Not that values reinforcement by leaders are
not important. It can be critically important for the development of a
culture. But leadership, while important, is not the sole source of val-
ues in an organization. As we have just seen, values may be spontane-
ously generated out of a group’s experience. This is often the case for
much of what comes to constitute an organization’s culture. For success-
ful construction and shaping of culture, it is imperative that both leaders
and consultants stay extremely aware of these kinds of activity and stand
ready to reinforce or discourage them as may be desirable and necessary.
3. Enactive of Sensible Environments. The first of several questions
to be answered in this section is, what does Weick mean by the heading,
“Enactive of Sensible Environments”? Weick (1995) has anticipated this
question, at least with regard to the idea of enactive: “I use the word
enactment to preserve the fact that, in organizational life, people often
produce part of the environment they face (Pondy & Mitroff, 1979,
p. 17)” (Weick, p. 30). Weick provides several examples of what he
might mean by invoking more common forms of the verb to enact. He
talks about legislators enacting laws and managers who often apply or
104 J. MACQUEEN
enact policy. “Both groups construct reality through authoritative acts”

(1995, p. 30). What this comes down to is the idea that we are creating,
or constructing, our own realities through our ideas and actions. In this
case, we do this by taking some idea that we have produced in the course
of sensemaking, such as a vision, a plan, or a value, incorporating it into
the mental model of our context and/or organization, and reifying it.
(This is also known as social constructionism.)
By “sensible,” I take him to be using a root form of the word which
means that something is able to be perceived by the senses or the mind.
Couple this with “environments” and what Weick is suggesting is that
the activities of sensemaking are constructing a social environment (men-
tal context) that is in some way tangible or perceivable. For example, the
process of constructing a value which I described above produces a belief
in the way something ought to be done. This belief (or assumption) can
then be observed in the group’s activities.
Another way to get at this may be through Shakespeare (1603) in a
scene from Hamlet where Hamlet is in conversation with Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern:
Hamlet. What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune
that she sends you to prison hither?
Guildenstern. Prison, my Lord?
Hamlet. Denmark’s a prison.
Rosencrantz. Then is the world one.
Hamlet. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and dun-
geons, Denmark being the worst.
Rosencrantz. We think not so, my Lord.
Hamlet. Why, then ‘tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or
bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison. (Hamlet, Act II,
Scene ii)
It is interesting to note here that Hamlet’s father has recently died. It

is therefore logical to assume, that in the wake of that shock, Hamlet is
engaging in sensemaking and has chosen the metaphor of “Denmark is a
prison” as a way of establishing a new context for himself. Given all that
we know about Hamlet already in the play (and will soon learn about
him), the question of how literally does he take this metaphor is certainly
open to debate. But his statement, “To me it is a prison,” certainly sug-
gests a psychological reality.
It is not necessary for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to accept Hamlet’s

construct of Denmark as a prison as their own for Hamlet’s sensemaking
to be enactive of a sensible environment. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
are in a social relationship with Hamlet. Therefore, they are participants
in whatever he believes regardless of the extent to which they accept it.
(Another aspect of social constructionism.) If we had been given the
opportunity to observe these three over time, we might observe them
shifting their relationships as they discussed and argued about whether
or not Denmark is a prison. During the course of those conversations,
it could well happen that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern come around
to Hamlet’s point of view, all three beginning to think of Denmark as a
prison. In that event, not only would we more fully see Hamlet’s metaphor
enacting a sensible environment, we would also witness the construction
of an element of culture among these three individuals. As we shall see in
the section on metaphor, metaphors stimulate physical as well as mental
responses in individuals (Bergen, 2012; Lakoff & Johnson, 2003).
4. Social. We are looking at sensemaking in organizations because sen-
semaking is integral to understanding the construction of organizational
culture. Organizational culture, its creation, its development, and how it
is changed is, by definition, a social process. Weick notes,
The word sensemaking tempts people to think in terms of an individual

level of analysis which induces a blind spot we need to catch early on.
When discussing sensemaking it is easy to forget that ‘human thinking
and social functioning… [are] essential aspects of one another’ (Resnick,
Levine, and Teasley, 1991, p. 3). (Weick, 1995, p. 38)
If we are using sensemaking to reestablish a context, that context is

inherently social. It is made up of people and their interactions with us
and with each other. We are constantly paying attention to these interac-
tions in order to gather clues as to what will be appropriate behavior for
us. We pay attention to the rules people follow which were established by
other people (often managers and supervisors) by which we abide because
of some consensus the group has reached both explicitly and implicitly.
We are always on the lookout for the opinions other people hold of us
and each other because those opinions impact the what’s and how’s of
our behavior. In other words, the opinions of others are part of the con-
text in which we make decisions about our behaviors. As Weick says:
106 J. MACQUEEN
Sensemaking is never solitary because what a person does internally

is contingent on others. Even monologues and one-way communica-
tions presume an audience. And the monologue changes as the audience
changes. (1995, p. 42)
This is not to suggest that a requirement for successful sensemaking is a

consciously arrived at set of “shared understandings” or the creation of a social
construction. At its simplest, a group may simply be looking for shared experi-
ence through which they can strengthen their identities. This means that they
can say and agree to the fact that, “we went to that meeting.” It does not
mean that they necessarily have to agree on the meaning of that meeting.
Although it may become necessary to have that agreement should a
decision or course of action require the group have a sense of the context
of that meeting.
For the consultant, the implication is that she will need to encourage
as many of the sensemaking processes as possible to be explicitly social
and inclusive of as much of the group as possible. She should ensure
that those who were not in attendance at a given event can meet with
some members who were present to receive and understand first-hand
what was discussed. When these conversations begin again, this helps the
folks who missed the last meeting to be less disoriented when the group
reconvenes (and those who were a part of that process may be less frus-
trated by those who were missing before). These events usually are the
activities of a defined group and a part of the consultant’s job is helping
the whole group participate in them. This should happen so that their
sensemaking experience is uninterrupted and can proceed on-track with
other group members.
5. Ongoing. Sensemaking is an activity that is part and parcel of every
moment of organizational life. Our friends who were organizing the
community garden found themselves engaged in sensemaking from the
moment that they began to consider forming their organization. From
the moment they began to think about engaging in that work, they were
beginning to think about its impact on their identity which would be in
some way different from the identity they had as individuals outside the
group. Their way of doing things without the others would be disrupted.
Sensemaking never starts. The reason it never starts is that pure duration
never stops. People are always in the middle of things, which become
things only when those same people focus on the past from some point
beyond it… To understand sensemaking is to be sensitive to the ways in

which people chop moments out of continuous flows and extract cues
from those moments. (Weick, 1995)
Part of what Weick is asking us to do, (and especially if we happen to

be consultants), is to remember that time exists as a continuum. What
I mean by this is that those pieces of time that we like to bracket and
call “events” are not, in any reality, separated from those bits of time
that bookend those “events.” (What Pearce calls punctuation [Pearce,
2007].) However, actions that take place within events are often made
meaningful by separating them. In other words, placing them in the
context of a discreet series of actions often feels helpful to the sense-
makers. The issue that we may need to confront as consultants is, when
we do this is, do we restrict the frame of the context in which we are
assigning sense or meaning to an artificially limited span of actions and
obstruct the groups sensemaking?
The implications of doing so are that we may need to come back
and reconsider the sense that we have made out of an event in order
to make it useful to us in the present. Because we have foreshortened
our definition of the duration of the event we are interpreting, we may
have failed to include salient activities and interactions in our consider-
ation. The consequence is, we may misinterpret the event’s meaning or
implications. In other words, we may need to keep making sense of our
sensemaking. The consultant’s job in this situation is to help the group
pay attention to longer durations in the flow of time. That is, to try and
make sure those “events” the group is bracketing off, or “punctuating,”
are appropriately tied to other “events” that exist in a given duration.
Another reason that sensemaking is ongoing is that we and our con-
texts all exist in time’s flow. An important implication of this idea is that
we are always experiencing the processes of ongoing change. This means
that what we are experiencing and doing is constantly being interrupted.
Obviously, the severity and impact of these interruptions vary tremen-
dously. When the interruption is experienced as less dramatic, people in
the group may not feel the need to initiate sensemaking in any major
way and may ignore the disruption of context completely. What I have
observed is that the effects of these interruptions are often cumulative
and tend to build one upon the other until the overall effect is such that
those changes can no longer be ignored.
108 J. MACQUEEN
At this point, people’s need to restore or build anew their context is

significant. The degree of sensemaking in which they need to engage
when this happens can be as disruptive as the sum of all the disruptions
they were ignoring. What I have found useful in a way that encour-
ages the development and management of culture is to create a practice
that starts usually on a weekly basis and happens at longer intervals as
the group develops proficiency. In this practice as it begins, the group
reflects on the week’s events and identifies what they may have felt to be
a disruption. They think about how and why it was a disruption and con-
sider what cues they can use to reestablish their contexts. As they begin
to look at longer periods of time, they may also want to consider what
disruptions led to new context making (new sensemaking that furthers
their intentions) and what disruptions took them seriously off track.
With this ongoing use of sensemaking, a group can become more
sensitized to and aware of disruptions in their environment, less anx-
ious about changes, and better able to observe the continuity of flow of
change in their environment.
6. Focused on and by Extracted Cues. If extracted cues are a focus of
sensemaking, what are extracted cues? “Extracted cues are simple, famil-
iar structures that are seeds from which people develop a larger sense of
what may be occurring” (Weick 2005). These “seeds” can be anything:
a recalled bit of conversation, a calendar appointment, a memo, the stra-
tegic plan, etc. What is important to realize is that once planted in a sen-
semaking process, they often take on a life of their own as they grow and
stimulate new thinking not just about what has happened, but about the
future.
This probably is, in fact, another instance of pragmatic prospection
(Baumeister, Vohs, & Oettingen, 2016). A principal difference here is
that the thinking related to cues is not consciously directed by the indi-
vidual(s). Instead, I believe the selection of cues occurs less as a result of
consciously scanning the external environment, and more as a sub-con-
scious social function of selection and stitching together of episodic
memories. This scanning and selection process activates the hippocam-
pus and generates prospective simulations as part of the processes of con-
structive memory (Buckner, 2012; Gaesser, Spreng, McLelland, Addis,
& Schacter, 2013; Schacter & Addis, 2007).
These simulations can be quite vivid and become more so as indi-
viduals revisit and develop them more fully as a group. As a matter of
fact, simulations represent the equivalent of rehearsals or practice for
an activity. The more that we practice what we are mentally simulating

(adding detail to the mentally simulated scenes), the more real the simu-
lation becomes in our minds. As this continues we become ready, and, in
fact, consciously or unconsciously motivated to enact the content of the
mental simulation. This enactment may resemble a self-fulfilling proph-
ecy. In other words, the idea or ideas contained in the seed of the cue
contain and are developed as the prophecy; the simulation promotes the
behavior of fulfilling it.
As you can see, sensemaking and this use of extracted cues are crucial
to the continued growth of an organization and its cultures. This is par-
ticularly true if the processes I have just described are nurtured as a social
rather than an individual function. When these processes are engaged in
by the group they become more meaningful (as described earlier) and add
substantively to a group’s culture. People take pride in their imaginative
achievement and their interpersonal relationships become stronger. This
applies equally to their belief in their ability to repeat the process of learn-
ing, and their sense of identity as a group is strengthened.
I do not see an active role for the consultant with regard to this activ-
ity other than modeling the leadership and the deliberate practice of
learning. I do believe it is important for the consultant to be attentive
to what cues the group is extracting in the course of its sensemaking.
Depending on what you see developing from a given cue, you need to
be prepared to support, and perhaps guide, whatever path that develop-
ment takes. Of course, this is all dependent on your sense of what in the
emerging culture will serve the organization. These “seeds” that are the
cues the group is extracting may develop into beautiful plants or nox-
ious weeds and even our evaluation as to whether it is a plant or a weed
demonstrates bias of all kinds is built into all our contexts. This is par-
ticularly true of those seeds that become values and you need to stay
alert to the form the cues the group is extracting appear to be taking.
A particular word of caution: remember that culture is a system.
Systems and their outputs/results are always unpredictable (Olson &
Eoyang, 2001; Stroh, 2015). Anything that you influence in the group’s
sensemaking may have surprising and unanticipated consequences.
Consider your consultative actions with great care and be prepared to
take corrective actions quickly if it appears that your influence is having
any sort of effect that might be contrary to the health and overall good
of the organization.
110 J. MACQUEEN
Weick uses a story to illustrate and “capture a truth about sensemak-

ing.” I find the story compelling and revealing to the point that I want
to use it here.
The young lieutenant of a small Hungarian detachment in the Alps sent a

reconnaissance unit into the icy wilderness. It began to snow immediately,
snowed for two days, and the unit did not return. The lieutenant suffered,
fearing that he had dispatched his own people to death. But on the third
day the unit came back. Where had they been? How had they made their
way? Yes, they said, we considered ourselves lost and waited for the end. And
then one of us found a map in his pocket. That calmed us down. We pitched
camp, lasted out the snowstorm, and then with the map we discovered our
bearings. And here we are. The lieutenant borrowed this remarkable map
and had a look at it. He discovered to his astonishment that it was not a map
of the Alps, but a map of the Pyrenees. (Weick, 1995, p. 54)
Weick concludes the story with this comment:
Strategic plans are a lot like maps. They animate and orient people. Once
people begin to act (enactment), they generate tangible outcomes (cues)
in some context (social), and this helps them discover (retrospect) what is
occurring (ongoing), what needs to be explained (plausibility), and what
should be done next (identity enhancement). (Weick, 1995, p. 55)
7. Driven by Plausibility Rather Than Accuracy. I want to remind you

at this point, that we are looking at sensemaking because its processes
are key to the construction of culture in organizations. As such, these
processes tend to be social. We do them in groups. I also want to remind
you that I have equated sensemaking with constructing, or reconstruct-
ing, people’s sense of context. This context is used for understanding
their situation at any given time and choosing what action to undertake
in that moment. When faced with this situation and having been through
the processes of sensemaking, they often feel themselves on the horns of
a dilemma as to whether developing accuracy or the plausibility of their
conclusion is more important for supporting their decisions.
Accuracy connotes that an idea is possessed of valid, provable, identifi-
able truths in all particulars of one’s analysis. So, if the interpretation one
is constructing is to be considered accurate, the details of that context
need to be demonstrably true. When it comes to creating an inter-so-
cial context in which people can understand what’s going on in their
environment, make decisions, and take actions, accuracy seems to me to

be both unachievable an undesirable.
It is unachievable because the primary building blocks are bits of epi-
sodic memory that we bind together in a constructive memory process.
Several pieces of constructive memory can be stitched together in the
brain to form an episode.
The disparate features that constitute an episode must be linked or bound

together at encoding; failure to adequately bind together appropriate
features can result in a common phenomenon of source memory failure,
where people retrieve fragments of an episode do not recollect, or miss
recollect, how or when the fragments were acquired, resulting in various
kinds of memory illusions and distortions. (Schacter & Addis, 2007)
This is the neurological basis for the unreliability of memory. Schachter

goes on to note that it is equally common for people to store similar epi-
sodes in areas of the brain where they can overlap. When this happens, it
is usual for people to recall general ideas common to several episodes but
fail to remember specifics. This results in recall that gives us the gist of an
idea but not specific details.
In many cases, the gist is good enough or sometimes better when it
comes to creating a context in which we need to make decisions. Groups
make decisions based on some set of principles and in creating a con-
text based on the gist of what we remember, most of those principles,
though not the details, will be in evidence. In addition, remember
that the organization and the people in it are constantly changing: My
thoughts about what and how we should decide an issue and what action
we should take will most likely be different today than they were yes-
terday. If the context in which I make those decisions is tied to some
rigid idea of accuracy, I may feel compelled to adhere to that idea and
restrict myself from considering other ideas. I may reject newer consider-
ations that have evolved from the changing flow of different discussions
or evolving events because they have not been verified as accurate. In this
situation, accuracy (or perceived accuracy) may not be desirable. Ideas
that are plausible—those that seem logical, reasonable, or workable—
may be preferable.
In the event that accuracy is deemed necessary over simple plausibil-
ity, documentary evidence is sometimes a good solution and may be able
to be obtained, depending on the situation. This choice creates a whole
112 J. MACQUEEN
new round of issues for a team working to create a context. First, there
will be the question of which documents to select and on what basis.
Second, more consensus will be needed to be built around the meaning
of those documents. If you’ve ever been part of processes like this, you’ll
recognize that they can be very time-consuming. Your product will ulti-
mately be just as subjective, in spite of the documents you are working
with, as your collective memories are about the project. Third, by the
time you have achieved accuracy, the problem and its context may have
changed. If you are the consultant to this group, you may need to raise
the question, “Is time of the essence here? If so, are we using it well?”
In working to evaluate the accuracy versus the plausibility of the con-
text you have been constructing, your group needs to remember that
accuracy and plausibility exist along a continuum. It’s not all one thing
or another. However, it’s also important to recall that many of the ele-
ments the group has been using to get to this point are not in and of
themselves constant or consistent or, therefore, accurate. A significant
amount of what has been concluded is based on cues, and we have
already seen how the meaning of a cue may be utterly transformed by
circumstances and people’s processing of it. Likewise, parts of the con-
text we are forming are based in our individual, group, and organiza-
tional identities which shift according to the evolving contexts of our
relationships as they are influenced by our environments.
Weick makes the point that “sensemaking is about plausibility, coher-
ence and reasonableness. Sensemaking is about accounts that are socially
acceptable and credible” (1995, p. 57). To achieve this, we do a great deal
of filtering information. In the course of this filtering, often in the pursuit
of accuracy, it is possible that we will filter out and lose information that is
important to creating what is the essence of sensemaking and context: a
good story. What tends to be lost, and what may well be more helpful,
…are the symbolic trappings of sensemaking, trappings such as myths,

metaphors, platitudes, fables, epics, and paradigms. Each of these resources
contains a good story. And a good story, like a workable cause map, shows
patterns that may already exist in the puzzles an actor now faces, or pat-
terns that could be created anew in the interest of more order and sense in
the future. The stories are templates. They are products of previous efforts
at sensemaking. They explain. And they energize. And those are two
important properties of sensemaking that we remain attentive to when we
look for plausibility instead of accuracy. (Weick, 1995, p. 61)
I want to add to this, those elements Weick identifies as “trappings” in

the stories we construct for sensemaking are the very building blocks
of culture. Once constructed, it is not uncommon for them to be used
repeatedly because we have found them to have meaning and thus
become important to our sense of “how we do things around here.” For
you as a consultant, your task is probably no more than to raise the issue
of accuracy versus plausibility and provide perspective.
Speaking of perspective, I’m going to offer some perspective on
Weick and sensemaking from the point of view of a more traditional OD
approach to the issues that give rise to the sensemaking impulse. That
is, the subject of change and transition and its effects on groups. For
this, I am going to draw on the works of several well-known writers in
the field: William Bridges (2007), Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (1971), Kurt
Lewin (1951), and Virginia Satir and Banmen (1991). What follows is a
synthesis of these authors’ works I originally produced a number of years
ago and have since used in my practice and as a standalone presentation
with consistent success. The drawing that I use to illustrate the concept
(Fig. 7.1) was first suggested to me by Sam Kaner during a splendid lec-
ture he gave on group dynamics sometime in the late 1980s.
The Old The New

Way Way
ASSIMILATION
VERTIGO RECOVERY
NEW VISION
LETTING
GO
BALANCING
Fig. 7.1 Organizational sensemaking and transitions

114 J. MACQUEEN
Lewin suggests that change in organizations is cyclical. He conceived

of organizations as becoming frozen in the way they think about and
practice doing certain kinds of things. Lewin’s cycle consists of unfreezing
the way the organization has learned to do certain kinds of things, change
how they conceive of and do these things, and refreeze those practices
until the need for change arises again. Bridges points out that while it
may be true that the tangible aspects of the organization have changed,
the people in the organization go through internal, dynamic psycholog-
ical transitions in response to those changes. I want to point out that
all four authors tend to present change in organizations in terms of big
changes, ones that produce major disruptions and significant emotional
responses. On a personal level, these might include the death of a loved
one (Kübler-Ross), a divorce, loss or change of a job (Bridges), or major
shifts in the dynamic aspects of a family (Satir). Each of these suggests a
shift from a “status quo ante” to a “status quo post,” what I have identi-
fied in the diagram as “The Old Way” and “The New Way.”
Let us begin with “The Old Way.”
As I have tried to indicate in the drawing, “The Old Way” is a time
of relative stability in the organization. Things just kind of go bumping
along: not exceptionally good, not exceptionally bad, but generally sta-
ble. This is prior to those events that precipitate what Weick refers to as
the disruption and in this model, I call “The Change.” Here I am sug-
gesting significant change that will disrupt the processes of an individ-
ual and/or an entire organization. On the individual level, these might
include such things as getting a new job. For an organization this might
include, the arrival of new staff members, assignment of new roles, new
leaders, the imposition of new processes or technology, new procedures,
or new expectations on the part of management. This list only scratches
the surface of potential events for you to imagine.
Following on the heels of “The Change” comes a phase, I have often
referred to as “Vertigo” because it is a time when many people in the
organization will be experiencing a good deal of emotion. This is rep-
resented by the jagged line, which I use to suggest the significant emo-
tional ups and downs that people often go through in this period. The
range of things that people may be experiencing include: shock, anger,
anxiety, excitement, grieving the loss of what is familiar, disorientation,
loss of identity, depression, and resistance to thinking about or doing
things in a new way. In a given organization, different people may be
experiencing different things at the same time. Individuals may even be
experiencing different, seemingly conflicting feelings simultaneously,

such as depression and excitement. I call this phase “Vertigo” because
people who are going through this phase sometimes tell me, “I can’t tell
which way is up.” A pretty fitting metaphor.
This sense of severe disorientation is exacerbated by the loss of con-
text about which I have spoken extensively in this chapter. If you try to
think imaginatively and empathetically about what goes on in this phase
of the cycle, I’m certain you will better understand why people’s sense of
context may become so fragile.
Toward the end of the “Vertigo” phase, there comes a process that is
almost universally termed, “letting go” or “letting go of the old.” This
refers to the time when people as individuals or a group begin to relin-
quish their attachments to those aspects of “The Old Way” that have
disappeared or are forever changed. Accomplishing this process is vitally
important to people’s ability to continue through a transition cycle.
Failing to achieve letting go of attachments to “The Old Way” means
that people will continuously revisit the emotionalism of the “Vertigo”
phase. Groups and individuals who have yet to accomplish “Letting Go
of the Old” are often easy to spot. They are the people who seem stuck
in the past, often expressing nostalgia and a sense of loss for “the good
old days.” This can be extremely problematic in terms of both culture
and productivity because these people will tend to become very disen-
gaged from their work, and if there are enough of them and the attitude
persists long enough, it is an emotional stance that can be taught to and
emulated by new members of the organization.
Imagine for a moment that you are running and take a great leap, like
a broad jumper. Or perhaps you are standing on something with some
height—a chair or the second rung of a ladder perhaps—and decide to
step off to the ground or the floor. For a moment, while you are com-
pletely in the air, your body will experience a brief sense of vertigo.
When you hit the ground, especially if you’ve done the broad jump-
ing routine, you will very likely struggle for a moment to stay on your
feet. In either case, you will work to find and maintain your balance.
“Balancing” is what I am calling the phase represented by the wavy line
at the bottom of the transition cycle.
Bridges has called this phase “The Neutral Zone” and it is, in many
ways, his primary contribution to the transition literature. He describes
the neutral zone this way:
116 J. MACQUEEN
This is the psychological no-man’s-land between the old reality and the
new one. It is the limbo between the old sense of identity and the new.
It is the time when the old way of doing things is gone but the new way
doesn’t feel comfortable yet. (Bridges, 2007, p. 8)
I have called this phase “Balancing” because that is my sense of what

people are doing during this time. They are working to reorient them-
selves to a changed situation and reestablish or create a new context
from which they can operate. During this phase, people often experi-
ence a sense of inertia or difficulty moving forward, aimlessness, and/
or tentativeness. If you have been river rafting, you may recognize this
as analogous to what your guide does after taking you down some rela-
tively significant rapids. The guide may often find a pool or quiet spot at
the end of the rapid where you can “eddy out,” rest, and recover as the
water goes “round in a gentle, circular motion.” This is also the phase
in which people often begin the activities of sensemaking. The psycho-
logical equivalent of “eddying out” is reflection which, as you will recall,
requires enough quiet to activate the default network and start up the
sensemaking processes.
You might also recall that one of the key processes in sensemaking is
what Baumeister et al. (2016) calls “pragmatic prospection” or think-
ing about the future in practical ways. Earlier, I tied the ideas of vision
and visioning to this process. Satir (1991), in one of her more impor-
tant contributions to describing transition talks about the necessity of
finding or establishing a “New Vision.” This new vision (or visions) is
critical because it establishes a framework or context for making deci-
sions about how we will move into the future, make decisions, and act.
Without it, groups and individuals tend to stay stuck in the neutral zone
where expectations (and as a result motivations) are minimal. It becomes
a space in which it can be okay to eddy out for a very long time.
As the “New Vision” takes hold, people begin to move into the
“Recovery” phase during which they will begin to enact the new vision.
(In the diagram, I’ve indicated this phase with a wavy, upward line that
I hope suggests that progress through the period is continuous though
not always easy or constant.) The first thing you, as a consultant, are
likely to notice is that the group displays new or renewed energy and
enthusiasm for their work and activities. They may also display a great
deal of creativity as they explore different ways of achieving the new
vision. This gives way to experimenting with the alternative ideas and
methods that they have generated for enactment of the vision. As the
group learns which are the most successful approaches to enactment,

they practice those methods until they feel secure in the routine that it
becomes.
At this point, the new practices (and indeed the entire process of
transition) have been assimilated and become part of the culture. When
this happens, the group has created a status quo post or, as in the dia-
gram, “The New Way.” People can now say, “When it comes to making
changes to the organization, our processes, and practices, this is how we
do things around here”.
Important to this, of course, is that the consultant has taken the time
to work with the employees and management to help them remem-
ber and articulate the processes they have been through and what they
learned from the experience. The consultant also needs to remember that
working with a group on going through transition also entails working
with them on sensemaking. Helping the group to do these things will
be an important part of ensuring that what they have learned becomes a
part of the culture.
References
Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2016). Introduction to the special issue: The
science of prospection. Review of General Psychology, 20(1), 1.
Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., Nathan DeWall, C., & Zhang, L. (2007). How
emotion shapes behavior: Feedback, anticipation, and reflection, rather than
direct causation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(2), 167–203.
Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., & Oettingen, G. (2016). Pragmatic prospection:
How and why people think about the future. Review of General Psychology,
20(1), 3.
Bergen, B. K. (2012). Louder than words.
Bridges, W. (2007). Managing transitions: Making the most of change (2nd ed.).
New York: Gildan Media.
Buckner, R. L. (2012). The serendipitous discovery of the brain’s default net-
work. Neuroimage, 62(2), 1137–1145.
Cameron, K. S., & Quinn, R. E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organiza-
tional culture, based on the competing values approach (3rd ed.). San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Gaesser, B., Spreng, R. N., McLelland, V. C., Addis, D. R., & Schacter, D. L.
(2013). Imagining the future: Evidence for a hippocampal contribution to
constructive processing. Hippocampus, 23(12), 1150–1161.
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Hatch, M. J., & Schultz, M. (1997). Relations between organizational culture,
identity and image. European Journal of Marketing, 31(5/6), 356–365.
Hatch, M. J., & Schultz, M. (2002). The dynamics of organizational identity.
Human Relations, 55(8), 989–1018. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872670
2055008181.
Kübler-Ross, E. (1971). On death and dying. New York: Macmillan.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in social science. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Martin, J. (2002). Organizational culture: Mapping the Terrain. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
Satir, V., & Banmen, J. (1991). The Satir model: Family therapy and beyond. Palo
Alto: Science & Behavior Books.
Schacter, D. L., & Addis, D. R. (2007). The cognitive neuroscience of construc-
tive memory: Remembering the past and imagining the future. Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 362(1481), 773–786.
Schacter, D. L., Gilbert, D. T., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Semantic and episodic
memory. In Psychology (pp. 240–241). New York: Worth Publishing.
Schein, E. (1992). Organisational culture and leadership (2nd ed.). San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Wiley.
Schein, E. H. (2017). Organization development: A Jossey-Bass reader. San
Francisco: Wiley.
Shakespeare, W. (1603). Hamlet.
Shakespeare, W. (1623). The Tempest.
Snowden, D. J. (2005). Multi-ontology sense making: A new simplicity in deci-
sion making. Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics, 13(1), 45–53.
Stroh, D. P. (2015). Systems thinking for social change: A practical guide to solv-
ing complex problems, avoiding unintended consequences, and achieving lasting
results. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Sage.
CHAPTER 8
Metaphors: A Critical Culture Tool
Throughout this book, I have emphasized the social nature of these

processes that combine and interact to produce organizational cultures.
Since cultures and their contents are highly symbolic, as we discussed,
their content and meanings tend to be abstract. How do people in an
organization communicate their emerging, often intangible, and highly
conceptual thinking to one another as they find their ways to greater
and fuller levels of consensus? The short answer is that they use meta-
phors and a shared metaphorical vocabulary to communicate and further
develop cultural concepts among themselves.
Most dictionaries define metaphor as a figure of speech and figura-
tive language (“Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary,” 2008).
For many people, this is exactly how they think of metaphor—as a rhe-
torical device emanating from the poetic imagination. This under-
standing of metaphor implies that metaphors have a limited use and
meaning. Professors George Lakoff and Mark Johnson revolutionized
our understanding of metaphors with their book, Metaphors We Live By
(1980a). They introduced a new understanding of how metaphors work
with the idea that “the essence of metaphor is understanding and expe-
riencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (Lakoff & Johnson,
1980a, p. 5) (emphasis mine). They demonstrated the use of metaphor
is so common as to be pervasive in everyday life. Not only do we speak
in metaphors, we think in them.
When I conduct workshops on organizational culture, I often ask
the participants to think of as many metaphors as possible based on a

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25685-2_8
120 J. MACQUEEN
particular scheme. For this exercise, the scheme works on the conceptual
metaphor, “argument is war” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980a, p. 4). I start
the group off by giving some examples: “His criticisms were right on
target.” “I’ve never won an argument with him.” “He shot down all my
arguments.” These examples help people to understand how we often
experience the act of arguing in terms of images associated with war and
battle. I then ask people in groups of five to seven to generate lists of
their own metaphors that describe arguing as war. By the end of three to
five minutes, each group will be able to read out a list of at least six met-
aphors with relatively few duplications among all the participants.
I then will ask the participants how they are feeling physically, empha-
sizing the word “physically”. People will inevitably talk about feeling
tense and anxious. Many will clench their fists or fold their arms tightly
around their chests as a demonstration of how they are feeling (note that
gestures also qualify as metaphors, demonstrating through often gener-
ally understood movements and poses, what they are trying to express
but for which they may not feel they have adequate words) (Cienki &
Müller, 2008).
Next, I tell the group I want them to come up with a new set of met-
aphors. This time, I ask them to base what they generate on the scheme
“argument is dance”. I intentionally do not give them any examples
because I want them to generate new metaphors for themselves. At first,
the group is mostly silent as they try to wrap their minds around what
is, for most of them, an alien concept. Slowly the conversation builds as
people begin to get the gist and offer each other more and more ideas.
I give them slightly more time than I did in the first round. When
I ask for the results, they are fewer and offered more tentatively. This
is because the group has been creating a new conceptual system on the
spot. Most of them do not have much experience of creating a new con-
ceptual system. Most of our conceptual systems are built up over many
years. They appear to us to be ready-made because they are produced
out of our own cultures, sometimes at the organizational level but more
often at the level of national or regional culture.
As members of the workshop share and write down their creations
and discoveries, the mood is decidedly different. They have been finding
examples of new metaphors such as, “we partnered in the argument,”
“we danced around the argument,” “he stepped on the toes of my argu-
ment,” and “we argued in time to the music”. Many people find these
new metaphors to be surprising and entertaining. In fact, some people
8 METAPHORS: A CRITICAL CULTURE TOOL 121
occasionally go so far as to spontaneously stand up and provide demon-

strations of their metaphors.
When I ask the group how they are feeling, especially in contrast to
the first round of metaphor generation, people tell me they feel more
relaxed, lighter, and more energized. If I have not done so already,
I explain how one aspect of culture consists of shared assumptions about
common and/or appropriate ways to think, feel, and talk about things
in an organization. I ask people how many of the cultures in their own
organizations seem to have the “argument is war” metaphor as a default
assumption around how people think about arguing. I cannot remember
a time when all of the hands in the room did not go up. I then ask peo-
ple to think about their own organizational cultures and what it would
mean for them if they could exchange the default way of how people
think, talk, and act relative to conflict as expressed through the metaphor
of argument is war, with a new default metaphor of argument is dance.
I am most often met with a kind of stunned silence as people contem-
plate an almost unimaginable possibility.
There are three points I take away from this demonstration. One,
metaphors are powerful influences on the creation and communication
of organizational culture. Two, as such, metaphors are important in
determining how we think, feel, and act in our world. Three, metaphors
are embodied: They come out of and exercise influence on our physical
experience and interpretation of the world.
We have been working with metaphors throughout this entire book.
Most often we use them without an awareness that what we are doing is
using a metaphor. We use them extensively every time we ask, “What Is
organizational culture?”
The authors I have cited throughout the book use metaphors and
metaphorical constructs to define culture. Schein, for example, talks
about “shared basic assumptions,” and “shared accumulated learning”
(Schein, 2017). We understand the concepts of assumptions and shared
learning because we have experience of them and can apply those con-
cepts to Schein’s definition. (I will explain more about how we create
language and especially metaphorical language out of our physical experi-
ence later in the chapter.)
The same way of understanding complex and abstract ideas holds true
for other definitions we have read in this book. Seel and I talk about cul-
ture as systems (Seel, 2000). Smircich talks about organizational culture
in terms of symbols (Smircich, 1983). Hatch talks about culture in terms
122 J. MACQUEEN
of continuous cycles of action and meaning making (Hatch, 1993).

We have talked about how some have described culture as an iceberg.
Schein, in the sixth edition of his book (2016) talks about organizational
culture as a pond. Each description is an idea of culture stated in terms
of something else—the very definition of a metaphor.
If it is difficult for us to define and describe the experience of an
organizational culture from the outside, imagine how much more diffi-
cult it must be for people on the inside of an organization to describe its
culture? This is especially true if they are constructing a new or modified
culture and trying to talk about the nature of it to other people. The
concept of culture and the concepts that are the emergent descriptions
of cultural elements can all be very abstract and difficult to describe, let
alone define.
And so, we resort to metaphors because they allow us to understand
abstract concepts in terms of concrete experiences (Bergen, 2012; Lakoff
& Johnson, 1980a). For example, if you live in or have spent very much
time in the United States, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “lost in the
weeds”. It is an idiomatic expression applied to a person who is trying
to solve a problem but is overcome by the details or complexity of the
problem. You probably understand the meaning of this phrase because
you have heard it often or picked up its meaning from the context of
the conversation. But think for a moment. You have undoubtedly seen
a patch of tangled weeds that were so thick and intertwined that the
prospect of seeing through them to find some small object is impossible.
Even worse, there was a situation in which you were actually in such a
patch of weeds and had to crawl through them to find that small object
and then find your way out again.
This, by the way, is an example of a conceptual metaphor, where one
concept is used to help explain another concept. It is one of three basic
types of metaphor we will explore in this chapter. The others are embod-
ied metaphors and generative metaphors. Embodied metaphors are ones
that have their genesis in physical experience and which you can under-
stand because you have had that physical experience. Generative meta-
phors are metaphors that have the ability to shift the frame through
which we understand an idea.
The fact that you can apply the memory of a physical experience
imaginatively to a real situation begins to demonstrate the essence of
metaphor, why it works, and why it is valuable as a tool for understand-
ing complex ideas and abstract meanings. Ultimately, this will take us
into an exploration of embodied metaphors, the processes that produce
them and how they work neurologically so that we can produce and
understand metaphorical ideas.
Before we go any further, I want to make it clear that this chapter
is not intended as reading for members of a group who are themselves
involved in shifting or creating organizational culture. Rather, this chap-
ter is for you, the consultant, who may be faced with the challenge of
helping people to clarify and communicate their versions of emerging
culture. They will do this through the attempted construction of their
own metaphors and may be coming up empty handed or simply not get-
ting their ideas across to others. The more you understand how people
create and use metaphors, the more likely you are to be able to assist
with this task effectively.
The use of metaphor is ubiquitous in our culture as well as most other
cultures.
People use metaphor to think with, to explain themselves to others, to

organize their talk, and the choice of metaphor often reveals — not only
their conceptualization — but also, and perhaps more importantly for
human communication, their attitudes and values. (Cameron, 2008, p. 197)
You do not need to go further than a quick perusal of your local news-
paper, a popular magazine, or even the social media to which you may
subscribe to see evidence of the importance of metaphors in everyday
communication. The following list is drawn from a Sunday edition of the
New York Times (I have italicized the metaphors for emphasis):
the researcher, a towering figure in the cancer world

the development of breakthrough drugs
did not follow financial disclosure rules
put a positive spin on the result
held secret meetings
Basra has escaped the terrorist violence that has wracked the country
for years
sewing panic in the hills
they have roughed up the guards
are now gearing up for
a top official
‘Obama care’ is toxic in West Virginia
officials wrestle over what to do
how Albany weighs down City Hall (New York Times, 2018)
124 J. MACQUEEN
As you begin to understand what constitutes a metaphor, you, too,

will begin to see and hear them everywhere if you don’t already.
What does this have to do with organizational cultures? At this point,
I want to emphasize metaphors’ relationship to culture in general and
by extension the organizational cultures. A short way back, I used the
term conceptual system. The metaphors we use in everyday speech can
be understood by most of the people with whom we communicate. This
is because they are drawn from conceptual systems that exist in our larger
meta-culture and are familiar to the people in social proximity to most of
us. In turn, this allows us to communicate with each other using a com-
mon system of concepts and metaphors. This is the case with the list of
metaphors from the newspaper. Most of us (at least in the United States)
understand those metaphors because we share a common system of ref-
erence and understood meanings for them.
With regard to metaphors, our conceptual system tends to group
metaphors according to their implied meanings and functions. Lakeoff
and Johnson (1980a) suggest that within the realm of conceptual meta-
phors, there are basically three subcategories of metaphors. The first are
orientational metaphors, ones that structure non-metaphorical ideas in a
linear fashion (for instance, more is up, good is up, and rational is up).
Examples might include, “my income went down this year,” “her posi-
tion is higher than mine,” “our quality of life has definitely gone up,”
and “he rose above the emotionality of the argument”.
Second, ontological metaphors are those that endow an idea, thing or
substance with a status that it does not have on its own. Metaphors like
this might include: Ideas are entities and words are containers, and the
mind is a container. They also include, the mind is a machine, the mind
is a brittle object, and vitality is a substance. Metaphors in these catego-
ries might include, “I can’t seem to get that idea across to her,” “you
have to commit these dates to memory,” “their cogs are really churning
trying to solve that problem,” “her mind fell apart under the pressure,”
and “his energy seems to be running out”.
Structural metaphors are the third. These metaphors involve using
the structure of one kind of experience to express or understand another
experience. These metaphors include, understanding is seeing and life is
a gambling game. The first of these might be statements such as, “they
need to have the big picture,” and the second, “they need to buy into
what we’re doing and get some skin in the game”.
As a consultant facilitating this work, it may be essential that you

understand both the theory of a conceptual system and the specifics of
your client’s conceptual system as derived from their specific culture
and expressed metaphorically. Also essential to our conceptual system
(or even cognitive system) is that metaphors have entailments. In other
words, there are consequential relationships implied in the metaphor. We
see these in metaphors that include, time is money, (“I need to be careful
how I spend my time”) time is a limited resource, (“I can’t afford to take
the time off”) and time is a valuable commodity, (“This approach will
save you a lot of time in the long run”).
Important to understanding the human conceptual system and where
our everyday metaphors come from is that they provide metaphorical
definitions. Most of the ideas for which we use metaphors as definitions
are abstract. The definitions they provide are usually partial, inconsistent,
and overlapping. We are willing to accept these definitions because they
are metaphorical and as humans we are satisfied and often happier with
filling in whatever details are needed out of our own experience.
Metaphorical definitions include many of the following for defining
the concept of “ideas.” Ideas are organisms, especially with respect to
life-and-death. Some examples include these that follow. Ideas have life
spans: “The atomic bomb was born at Los Alamos.” Ideas are plants:
“She grew the idea for the book from that lecture.” Ideas are products:
“We can refine that idea to make it more usable.” Ideas are commodities:
“I think you can sell that idea to the boss.” Ideas are resources: “I’ve got
an idea that will get us out of this mess.” Ideas are money: “I think that
idea is worth something.” Ideas are cutting instruments: “That’s a very
sharp idea.” Ideas are food: “I need to chew on that idea for a while.”
Ideas are fashions: “Her approach is really in style right now”.
As you can see, none of the metaphorical definitions suggested above
for the abstract concept of “idea” are complete or even consistent. It is
likely, in the course of your work with groups shifting organizational cul-
tures and producing new cultural assumptions, that you will be helping
them to gain consensus around some very abstract ideas and concepts.
It is extremely important to note that abstract concepts are defined in

terms of the system of related metaphors in the conceptual system. The defi-
nitions are given for general concepts, not individual words. No lexicon for
individual words and phrases will be adequate for definitions of this kind.
126 J. MACQUEEN
Such definitions must be made in terms of metaphors on the conceptual

level, and not in terms of words in the linguistic level. (Lakoff & Johnson,
1980b, p. 201)
Some of the content of a particular conceptual system can be drawn

from the jargon used by a specific group. Some of it may be expressed
in metaphors specific to that group. For example, I once had a client
whose staff were housed in multiple buildings. Two of the buildings
housing staff from different units of a single division were across the
street from each other but joined on the second floor of each building
by a pedestrian bridge. When people in the one building talked about
ideas or work product generated by groups in the second building it was
often referenced, somewhat disparagingly, as having come from “across
the bridge”. Knowing and understanding some of the unique aspects of
the client’s conceptual system and how metaphors derive from it will be
invaluable to you for interpreting how things work in an organization.
In my systems model of organizational culture (Chapter 4), you
might remember the particular cycle of the interactions that include
“meaning,” “identity,” and “metaphors/stories”. One of the implica-
tions of the inclusion of the processes I’ve labeled as metaphors and sto-
ries is the idea that metaphors and stories are working in at least two
directions. One direction we might think of as outward facing: People
make meaning, construct identities, and assumptions about how they are
to perceive and act relative to their organization. Since those concepts
are often abstract, they may need to make metaphors to convey those
ideas to others.
Cultural assumptions, values, and attitudes are not a conceptual overlay

which we may or may not place upon experience as we choose. It would
be more correct to say that all experience is cultural through and through,
that we experience our world in such a way that our culture is already pres-
ent in the very experience itself. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980a, p. 57)
We might also think about the processes of metaphor construction as

being inwardly directed in that the group may well be making new met-
aphors to make sense and give shape to their experiences in a way that
conventional existing metaphors cannot do.
Organizational culture is constructed of the physical experiences
that we encounter in our organizations (Bergen, 2012). Because of
the way our brains work, biological and linguistic experience is not
easily separated. While these experiences might sometimes be classified as

imaginative or intellectual, we will see how their expression as metaphor
is produced by the same sensory-motor system we use to interact with
the world, hence embodied.
We resort to metaphors when we are trying to create something new
or beyond what we are certain of with others (Boucher, 2014). When
group members are an integral part of the processes that are altering
their organizational culture, new metaphors are generated for the pur-
poses of communication and forging internal understanding. This is
especially true as new cultural concepts increasingly become the sources
for behavior. When new sources for behaviors are made explicit, the
resulting descriptions are often developed in metaphors through the pro-
cesses of embodiment.
Embodiment is a term usually understood as indicating that some-
thing intangible has been made physical—or given a body. Part of the
idea here is that metaphors, certainly intangible ideas, actually begin
in the body. As Bergen says, “Embodiment [is] the idea that meaning
might be something that isn’t just distilled away from our bodily expe-
riences but is instead tightly bound by them” (Bergen, 2012, p. 12). To
better explain this, we will draw on the Neural Theory of Thought and
Language (NTTL) which helps explain what is happening as we produce
metaphorical language from physical experience in that most important
part of the body, the brain.
“We think with our brains, that is, thought is physical and is carried
out by functionalist neural circuitry” (Lakoff, 2012, p. 1). Brains are
organs and thinking is a physical activity. Our brains work by taking in
information from other connected organs: eyes, ears, muscles, skin, etc.
Information (stimuli) is transmitted to our brains by nerves, otherwise
known as our neural network. Our brains, in turn, interpret the stimuli
they have received and send messages (stimuli) back to those organs so
that we sense or experience the stimuli at what we perceive to be the
source, that is, sight through the eyes, sound through the ears, smell
through the nose, bodily movement through our muscles, or touch
through our skin. This happens, even though the actual receptors of
those sensations are in the brain.
Memory of the sensations and the body’s responses to them are
made and stored in the brain for later use, especially in the hippocam-
pus. When those memories are recalled, the neurons that fired to create
those experiences will fire again—stimulating those same sensations in
128 J. MACQUEEN
the organs in which we experienced the original/actual sensations (see

Chapter 7 for more detailed accounts of these processes).
In similar fashion, the neurons that we use to accomplish goal-related
behaviors, such as grasping an object, fire in an integrated fashion to
achieve that goal. This means the eyes see the object, the muscles in
the hands and arms are directed to reach for it, and close the fingers
around the object so that the goal is attained. These activities are coor-
dinated in the parietal lobe which also controls a number of language
functions (Schacter, Gilbert, & Wegner, 2009). Employing Hebbian
learning where the repetition of the grasping activity produces strength-
ened synaptic pathways (“Neurons that fire together wire together,”)
makes duplication of the grasping motion increasingly easy and familiar.
A memory of what it looks and feels like to grasp something is formed.
We, then, have something that can be simulated. That is, an expe-
rience that we might say is imagined, where the neurons that were
involved in grasping the first time it was done fire to recreate a sense
memory of that experience again (see Chapter 7). So, while the same
sensory-motor system involved in the grasping action is activated and
felt, it may not be at the same level that would cause actual movement of
the arm of the hand.
Taken together, the grasping activity and the ability to simulate that activ-
ity suggest that our brains have formed what we might now call a “concept,”
that is, the singular complex idea of grasping a thing (Gallese & Lakoff,
2005). This “concept” may or may not have language associated with it. If
there is a need for language to express “grasping,” people will often attach
what they feel is appropriate language. There are some functions that con-
trol language that are located in this same area of the brain which helps to
explain some of their accessibility to motor functions (Schacter et al., 2009).
Two more classes of neurons are at work in this idea of neural con-
ceptualization. They are mirror neurons and canonical neurons. Mirror
neurons are motor cells in the brain that control muscle movement.
These particular neurons are also stimulated to perform or simulate some
movement by the sight of the same movement performed by others
(Jarrett, 2013). In other words,
Mirror neurons are a class of neuron that modulate their activity both
when an individual executes a specific motor act and when they observe
the same or similar act performed by another individual. (Kilner & Lemon,
2013, R1057)
Canonical neurons are a class of neurons that fire when we see an

object with which we are familiar, when we reach for that object, or even
when we hear the name of the object (Garbarini & Adenzato, 2004). For
example, if the object in question is an apple, we not only recognize it as
an apple, we also know that it is good to eat, and we can simulate reach-
ing for that apple, grasping it, and eating it.
What we have so far, is a relatively good description of how we pro-
duce language, and especially metaphorical language, from physical
experience. The next question, however, has to do with understanding
metaphors that we have not created personally so that we can discuss
metaphorical ideas with others in the process of developing new organ-
izational culture.
If you have understood the processes we use to create embodied con-
cepts and language, understanding the way we use those same processes
to understand the metaphors of others is not difficult. We are simply
using the same tools in reverse. This is true even if the idea we are work-
ing with is abstract (grasping a concept) as opposed to concrete (grasp-
ing an apple).
The phrase we use activates the sensory-motor system neurons
responsible for performing the similar action. We then mentally simulate
that action substituting the metaphorical concept for the real object.
Shortly after the soundwaves of spoken words hit our ears or the light of
written characters hits our eyes, we engage our vision and motor systems
to create the non-present visions and actions that are described. (Bergen,
2012, p. 223)
An important aspect of metaphorical communication we haven’t yet

covered is the use of gesture. We often see gestures used to add emphasis
to what is being said. For example, someone talking about the repetition
of an event might use his or her hand to make a vertical loop indicating
that an action or an event happened over and over (Cienki & Müller,
2008). These gestures stimulate the brain in very much the same way as
written and oral metaphors.
I was recently participating in a meeting where, as we approached
the end of a presentation, the leader said, “It’s time to wrap up”. As she
made the statement, she simultaneously made a circle in the air with her
vertically extended forefinger. I immediately experienced the sensation
of closing my notebook and straightening my papers, although I didn’t
130 J. MACQUEEN
do either of these things in the moment. What I had done was simulate
the actions I associated with wrapping up a meeting as a response to her
metaphorical gesture.
So, what do these various theories of metaphor have to do with your
role as a consultant working with groups to change organizational cul-
ture? As I have noted before, people going through the processes of gen-
erating new organizational culture often come up with numerous ideas
that are both diverse and abstract. At various points within those pro-
cesses, it is likely that they will want to converge around ideas such as
organizational identities. For example, what assumptions are they gen-
erating regarding the organization? Or, what constitutes appropriate
behavior within the organization? In order to come together and reach
consensus, the group must understand these newly introduced concepts
among themselves—and sometimes communicate them to others outside
the group.
On occasion, people will identify or generate a metaphor that has such
resonance for the group working to express a cultural idea that your job
is simply to get out of the way and let them settle on the meaning of the
metaphor on their own. But in cases where the concept is particularly
abstract and/or complex, the group may need help generating a met-
aphor that speaks to all. Finding something that is meaningful to each
person in the group is important. Without unanimity and acceptance of
the concept, how it is intended and meant, the new culture cannot be
constructed. To ensure success in this work, a consultant should know
enough about how embodied metaphors are produced to stimulate those
processes in the group without participating in creating the content.
Many times, the process is a relatively straightforward task of facili-
tating the group’s conversation. If this is the case, you may only need to
keep the conversation going as new ideas emerge and a natural consen-
sus involves. Often, this is simply asking questions to help the group go
deeper into the meaning of whatever it is with which they are struggling:
“What do you mean by that?” “Can you say more about that?” “Tom,
what do you think Shelley has in mind when she says that?” “Emily, what
does that idea (concept) remind you of?” “What would doing that feel
like?” All of these are suggestions that may help to open up people’s
imaginations and feelings around an idea.
In the event that the group is trying to define too closely a concept
they’ve been discussing, they may find themselves going around in cir-
cles. When this is the case, you will need to help them break out of the
tautological loop they have created trying to define something concep-

tual in concrete terms when the language they are employing is simply
too limited (Bergen, 2012). Suggestions such as those above, especially
what would do that feel like, can help them shift their thinking to a mode
that is more experiential and thus more metaphorical.
Other times, a more active, physically engaging approach may be
needed. Involving the group in metaphorical games or improvisations
can be helpful. I have found using or adapting the work of Virginia Satir,
the great family systems therapist (Satir, 1988; Satir & Banmen, 1991),
or Viola Spolin, the famous teacher and scholar of acting technique
(Spolin & Sills, 1999), to be excellent source material for this kind of
work (note, if you decide to employ exercises described in Satir’s work
you should do so with great care. The feelings that may be generated
might go beyond what was intended or needed for addressing the sub-
ject at hand).
Storytelling can also be very effective and not as potentially precar-
ious or daunting for the practitioner with less experience. For exam-
ple, I worked for some time with the Board of Directors of a nonprofit
group whose initial request was to do an organizational vision and mis-
sion. Their presenting issue was, “We seem to be stalled. We just can’t
get over the hump with our fundraising”. I had deferred jumping into
visioning work with them until I knew them better.
The group originally had been part of a larger, international nonprofit
serving communities in a number of South and Central American states.
The group with which I was working split from the larger entity over
disputes of where fiscal and people resources could most effectively be
applied. The new organization was under the leadership of a well-known
international scientist who wanted the organization to focus its efforts
exclusively in Mexico. The new group had substantial initial success rais-
ing funds for this effort and had effectively financed a couple of projects
in communities in Mexico. Over time their fund development efforts had
stalled and they were experiencing internal conflict over the most effec-
tive ways to move forward.
A further complication was that the scientist, the de facto founder of
the new organization, would occasionally use the organization’s money
to initiate new programs in remote locations. These were done solely at
his initiative, without first obtaining consensus from the board for the
effort or the expenditures. While most of the board approved of these
programs once initiated and, in fact, displayed pride in the organization’s
132 J. MACQUEEN
achievements in conducting them, the fact that the programs had been
planned and implemented without acquiring board approval was a sore
spot.
I began working with them in a relatively low-key, straightforward,
standard organization development manner that focused on explor-
ing the relationships among board members and the kind of tactical
approaches they had taken to improve their fundraising efforts. During
this time, they made a couple of attempts to create a new organizational
vision for themselves but had been unsuccessful. After many months of
with the working on group communications and decision-making skills,
I could see both their interpersonal skills and tolerance for difference
and ambiguity improving. It seemed to me that they might be ready to
work on something that had the potential for significant cultural change.
I offered to do a visioning retreat with them that was held off-site and
scheduled for a full day.
At the retreat, I first asked them to tell me the history of the group in
detail. This was done in such a way that the entire group could partic-
ipate. In a round-robin fashion, they identified as many events as they
could think of that contributed to the history of how they had begun
as an organization and how they had come to be in this room at this
time. Events were often told out of order and the written record (done
on large sheets of paper employing graphic facilitation techniques) often
needed to be changed as different people recalled different events and
sometimes remembered the same event differently.
When this task was accomplished, the walls of the room were filled
with a very complete chronicle of the group’s journey from past to pres-
ent. To ensure the sense of what they had been through over time was
clear in everybody’s mind, I asked for volunteers to read the history out
loud and then asked the whole group if they were certain we had cap-
tured everything important. When no one could think of anything more
to add, we were ready to move on to the next portion of the exercise.
I told the group that the next task was to transform the history that
they had just completed into the story of the group. To do this, they
were going to have to consolidate some details, picking those events that
were most important to developing a narrative flow. I suggested they
do that by selecting those events that had the most influence on what
actions people had taken to create that impact. Again, I suggested that
they work in a kind of dialogic, round-robin fashion, but that anybody
could suggest changes to what had already been put up while working to
build on what had been established. Interestingly, very few of these kinds
of changes were made in the narrative/story version of the history. What
they related this time was completed quite quickly. I asked for volunteers
to “read” the graphic recording version of their narrative/story. I also
asked if there were any additions or corrections to be added when this
task was done. Once again, there were none.
For the final portion of the day’s work, I asked the group once more
to transform the story upon which they had been building. This time
they were to extend from the same basic narrative but change it into
some new kind of story. I told them it could be anything: a Western,
a romance story, a gangster story, a fantasy with elves, whatever they
chose. What they were to do was fit the narrative they constructed into
the framework of this different kind of story and then tell the story into
the future. I told them they would have 15 minutes to choose the kind
of story with which they wanted to work, and then left the room so that
they could be assured of making their decision without my influence.
When I returned, I told them that they were to construct the story
using the same method they had for the previous versions. They were
to use the dialogic round-robin format and anyone was free to make
changes or corrections when it came to be their turn. The following, in
essence, is the story that they told:
Once there was a merry band of outlaws who lived in the forest with their
wise and brave leader. They had rebelled against a group that claimed
to help people, but took more than they gave. Now, they stole from the
rich and gave to the poor, and felt happy and successful. Sometimes, their
leader rode off into the forest on his own. This left the merry band feeling
lost and confused. When he returned, he told of the adventures he had and
deeds he had done on his own. The merry band always found this trou-
bling. Finally, they spoke to the leader and he agreed not to go on adven-
tures by himself. They once again stole from the rich and gave to the poor.
They were a happy and successful band ever after.
When they had finished, there was a very thoughtful silence in the
room. As usual, I asked for a volunteer to retell the story using the
graphic record and again asked if there were any additions or corrections
that anyone wanted to make. They shook their heads no. I then asked
them if they felt they had a new vision for themselves. Slowly, they all
nodded yes. I then asked if anyone could tell me what their vision was
134 J. MACQUEEN
for themselves? One person raised her hand and said, “I think we’re sup-
posed to be a band of happy outlaws taking from the rich and giving
to the poor. Is that right?” She looked around the room and everybody
nodded agreement with her.
I paused for a moment and then asked, “So, do you think you came
up with a new mission? And if so, can anybody tell me what it is?” The
same person raised her hand and said, “help people help themselves?”
She looked around the room. Another person offered tentatively, “In
Mexico?” Another declared, “Yes! Help people help themselves in
Mexico!” Suddenly, there was agreement all around the room and within
a matter of moments, everybody was chanting in unison, “Help peo-
ple help themselves in Mexico!” And a few were actually getting up and
dancing to the rhythm of the chant.
The shift in the organization’s mission and vision represented a sub-
stantial shift in the organization’s culture. The group seemed to have
adopted an attitude of consistent good humor and goodwill in the
course of doing business. They became more entrepreneurial in the way
they went about planning and executing their fundraising activities, con-
sistently willing to consider going against other, often taken for granted,
established practices frequently seen in the greater fundraising commu-
nity. This renewed energy and activity resulted in substantial increases in
their fundraising over time.
Why was this work successful? Efforts at creating organizational mis-
sion and vision are, at root, exercises in sense- and meaning making
with an explicit emphasis on defining group identities. People are solv-
ing problems of external adaptation and internal integration by defining
who they think they are as individuals and a group, and becoming com-
fortable sharing those identities among themselves and with people out-
side the group. I believe that at some time in this group’s past, probably
when it split off from the original nonprofit, their organizational pat-
tern had been disrupted in a significant way. That disruption was never
effectively addressed. I do not believe the group had ever gone through
any sensemaking as a group, and therefore had not been able to come to
consensus about their identity. Consequently, new members also did not
have a strong sense of the group’s identity.
In encouraging the group to relate the details of their history, this was
perhaps their first opportunity to identify cues for sensemaking as a social
activity (see Chapter 7). When working on the history as narrative, they
took the first steps needed to generate a metaphor for themselves based
on “telling a good story” (Weick, 1995). Telling the story of the merry
band and its wandering leader created a metaphor through which they
could address the leader’s behavior. They also could begin to describe and
explain the nature of the cultural assumptions about their identities and the
behavior they wanted to manifest and experience as an organization. When
we see something like this happening, we begin to understand the role and
power of metaphors in the development of an organizational culture.
Before concluding our discussion of metaphors, there is a particu-
lar class of metaphor that Donald Schön refers to as generative meta-
phor (Schön, 1979) that will be valuable to our general understanding
of metaphors and their value to the growth of organizational culture.
Generative metaphors not only help us understand and experience one
thing in terms of another, they can help us understand something in an
entirely new way. This makes them especially useful when working with
groups that are stuck solving a particular problem. In these cases, it is
likely the group has only seen the problem in one way, defining the
problem only in one frame (Barrett & Cooperrider, 1990).
In similar fashion, groups often have trouble shifting a culture when
they are trying to think about it head on. They have only the experience
of their existing culture available to them as a frame of reference. It will
be very difficult for them to make progress until they can see their exist-
ing culture in a new light. In other words, it is very difficult to change
one’s cultural assumptions by examining and analyzing them as they are
with no new context. Hence, the value of generative metaphors.
Generative metaphors overcome these psychological obstacles because
they are either new metaphors or new to the audience trying to use
them and therefore reside outside of the existing conceptual system. You
may recall the initial exercise I described in this chapter asking people
in workshops to generate metaphors within the scheme of “argument is
war”. When I changed the exercise and asked them to think of as many
ideas as possible around the metaphorical scheme “argument is dance,”
the group is often silent while they contemplate the task. For most of
them, “argument is dance” does not have a place within their exist-
ing conceptual system. When they begin to imagine metaphors in this
scheme, the results are often inventive, even remarkable.
New metaphors have the ability to create a new reality. This can begin to
happen when we start to comprehend our experience in terms of meta-
phor, and it becomes a deeper reality when we begin to act in terms of
136 J. MACQUEEN
it. If a new metaphor enters a conceptual system upon which we base our
actions, it will alter that perceptual system and the perceptions and actions
that the system gives rise to. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980b, p. 145)
In this case, the dance metaphors were not only new, they were gen-
erative. They helped the participants in the workshop see arguing in a
whole new light. If, as I had suggested, the participants were able to
install the “argument is dance” metaphors in their organizations, peo-
ple might have begun to understand the nature of arguing in such a dif-
ferent way that their cultural assumptions about how to experience and
behave in the face of arguments would have been transformed.
In illustrating his idea of generative metaphors, Schön presents a
more practical example. He describes a group of product development
researchers who were working on a new paintbrush with synthetic bris-
tles. They had not been pleased with the performance of this new brush
because, relative to natural bristle brushes, the new brushes failed to
apply paint in a way that was smooth and even. They had employed var-
ious approaches to improve the paint brushes. These included creating
bristles that mimicked natural bristles by splitting the ends and experi-
menting with bristles that had different thicknesses. Nothing worked.
At some point, one of the researchers noticed that when a paintbrush
is pressed against the surface, paint flows through the spaces between the
bristles onto the surface. The paint is made to flow through the “channels”
formed by the brush. He noted that painters will sometimes vibrate a brush
when applying paint to a surface, so as to facilitate the flow of paint. This
led the researcher to compare the paintbrush to a pump. As others began
to understand this idea, they were able to develop successfully a new prod-
uct as a result of the “pump” metaphor. Thus, the metaphor of “paint-
brush is a pump” led to commercial success by enabling the researchers to
define the qualities of a paintbrush in a different way (Schön, 1979).
Many times, you will experience generative metaphors emerging spon-
taneously from the group. When this is the case, your job is to stand
back and allow it to happen. If this is not the case and you believe the
use of generative metaphor might be helpful, and if your judgment is to
encourage the emergence of the metaphor, you may need to prepare an
environment in which that emergence can happen. This is what I did in
the case of the “merry band of outlaws” metaphor. I helped the group to
structure the telling of their history, making that history a narrative, and
then changing that narrative into a metaphorical story. (This also mirrors
the process of sensemaking. See above.)
It is important that you do not interfere beyond this laying of

groundwork in the construction of such metaphors. You must assidu-
ously avoid presenting the group with a metaphor for their use. To do
so will tend to deprive them of their “ownership” of the metaphor. Also,
through the neural processes that we have discussed, the social activity of
generating that metaphor can create shared language and shared mean-
ings that they will continue to use as they employ the metaphor as an
element in their culture. In a case such as this, your work with people
will be to understand the implications of the metaphor as they begin to
apply it in their culture (Srivastva & Barrett, 1988).
Not all generative metaphors will work this way. In the case of the
paintbrush metaphor, Schön notes that it took time for the researchers
to recognize the metaphor for what it was and, further, to recognize its
generative qualities (Schön, 1979). If this is the case, it may be advisable
for you, as the consultant, to very gently probe their understanding of
what it is with which they are working. Again, it is very important that
they come to that understanding on their own for the same reasons I
cited above.
There may, however, be times when the nature of the project on
which you are working will require that you present the group with
something that is, in fact, a generative metaphor needed to move the
group toward seeing their culture differently. When this is the case
you will need to employ some sort of physical experiences, the group
can use for neuro-simulations to achieve the benefit of metaphorical
understanding.
In the next chapter, where I present my case study, I will explain
methods for doing this and you will have the opportunity to see the
practical application of much of what we have discussed in this book rela-
tive to guiding people toward shifting their organizational cultures.
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Sage.
CHAPTER 9
Using the Ideas and Approaches:

A Case Study
Many books focusing on organizational behavior and all of its

complexities, include case studies. I find them interesting because they
often help describe the practical application of theories in ways that
cannot be achieved by dialectical description on its own. They can be
instrumental in illustrating the ideas and work being described. This is
especially true when the study provides a relatively complete account of
how the project was accomplished and evaluated. That is what I have
tried to do with this chapter.
The study presented here is a project that sought to implement a
culture change in a hi-tech support organization. It is the story of how
my client/partners and I designed the project process, ran the process,
and subsequently assessed its success. Because this book is for scholar/
practitioners, I have chosen to include the study and its evaluation data
even though the project was not an unqualified success, something, in
my experience, not often published.
The study is intended as a cautionary tale of what can happen when
a client fails to follow through on their end of the agreements for which
you have contracted and client agreements are taken for granted either
by the client, the consultant, or, sometimes, both. I am presenting the
study here in the hope that what you learn as scholar/practitioners will
have an impact on your ability to practice, save you some of the pain I
went through, and, most of all, help you to understand ways of learning
from your experience.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25685-2_9
142 J. MACQUEEN
I will present analyses of the quantitative and qualitative statistics

gathered in a longitudinal study of the project which show that the the-
ory and techniques employed seem to have been successful. Along the
way, in examining efforts to influence the culture, I will devote time to
describing what I understand to be some of the project’s impacts on
the organization as well as some of the project’s impacts on me, the
consultant.
The entity within which the client in the study exists is a govern-
ment-funded organization of about 20,000–30,000 employees. It has
three principal levels of management. At the top level are the President
and her staff. Within the institution, there are “divisions,” overseen by
Vice Presidents. Within the divisions, there are “departments” whose
managers have the title, Executive Director.
The client organization in this study is a department with approxi-
mately 250 employees at the time the project and study commenced. It
is situated within the Information Technology (IT) services division of
the institution. The department provides and manages the institution’s
IT infrastructure. It supplies, maintains, and manages its Internet, email,
and telephone services for all the functional units within the institution.
The department operates on a cost-recovery financial model. It is the
only department in the institution that does so. The unit must recover
all or most of its costs through fees charged to its clients and custom-
ers—other divisions and departments within the larger institution. Thus,
the satisfaction and goodwill of its customers is as important to this
department as it would clearly be to a commercial entity. While a small
portion of its budget is provided through the institution’s budgeting sys-
tem, relationships it has with customers who are not charged for services
are just as, or more, important. This is because those customers who are
not charged for the department’s services may also have a voice in what
funding is provided directly to this department. Therefore, the depart-
ment’s customer service relationships are equally important with both
types of consumer.
It should also be noted that the Vice President of the IT division
for many years managed his division with a kind of benign neglect—
employing “a hands-off” philosophy toward all the departments.
This had significant implications for how this specific department was
managed.
In my initial engagement with this department, I was brought
into facilitate and resolve a contentious issue that had come up with
9 USING THE IDEAS AND APPROACHES: A CASE STUDY 143
several other divisions that were stakeholders in a major IT infrastructure

project. The department was responsible for implementing the plan.
Based on my success in that assignment, I was asked to assist a depart-
mental communications team established specifically to support the roll-
out of the infrastructure project. No one in this communications team
seemed to know exactly what they were supposed to communicate about
this project—or to whom. The confusion derived in part, from the fact
that there was another, previously established communications team
whose leadership was located with the general IT division management.
That group had a broader portfolio and seemed to believe they had been
given the same charge. Not unexpectedly, I found the lack of direction
for the departmental team produced a certain amount of confusion and
low-level conflict between the two groups.
I offered to facilitate the departmental communications team in the
development of a team charter as a way to clarify for themselves, and
their own management sponsors, what exactly their charge was to be.
They then could negotiate directly with the division team to sort out
purview. Given that the Executive Director of the department was in
charge of the infrastructure project, this approach allowed them to nego-
tiate directly with the division team to sort out purview. The offer was
accepted. We went to work. I began by having them answer the usual
questions of “how and to whom we will be accountable,” “how are we
to structure ourselves?” and “to whom and how are we to communicate
internally and externally?”
Then, I recommended that they identify, more specifically, what their
purpose or goal as a committee was to be. One of the senior leaders of
the department provided us with an answer: The goal of the committee,
and indeed the goal of the project, was to “reestablish communications
technology as a strategic asset in direct support of [the larger organiza-
tion’s] mission.” To say the least, I was very surprised, if not stunned
by this idea. How could it be that communications technology was not
already considered a strategic asset by the entire organization? Were
there any functions in the organization that were not at least touched by
these technologies if not dependent on them for their operations?
In pursuing answers to this question, I learned that under a previous
Executive Director’s administration, the organization had been man-
aged in a very conservative, if not rigid, manner. For example, I was
told about an incident where a team was doing an installation job that
required some construction work. The site for the work, coincidentally,
144 J. MACQUEEN
was across the street from a hardware store. The team ran into a minor
problem and needed some additional supplies for the job: a bucket of tar
whose cost was under seven dollars. Rather than going across the street
and purchasing the bucket of tar, the employees had to submit a revised
work order and a purchase order then wait a week and half to two weeks
while both were approved in several different departments at several dif-
ferent levels. Neither the customer nor the work crew were happy with
this turn of events.
These types of administrative procedures had been established to
maintain what had been perceived at the time as being necessary for
maintaining tight budget and project controls. They had become part of
the culture and way of doing things. They generally went unquestioned
except, perhaps, by people on work crews and project teams such as this
one. Whenever anyone complained they were simply told, “these are the
rules and this is the way we do things”.
I learned that, over time, the internal narrative of the department had
become, “We don’t do that. We can’t do that. We won’t do that”. Also,
I learned that for a number of years, the department had developed a
reputation for poor customer service because of the hoops customers and
employees often had to go through to get even relatively simple tasks
done. It eventually became known as “The Department of No”.
These somewhat draconian rules and procedures represented elements
of a culture that seemed particularly at odds with the department’s busi-
ness needs. It was crucial that the department win and maintain the loyalty
of its customers. While the department was the larger institution’s primary
source for equipment and services of the type they provided, customers
could also go to external vendors for many of those same services and
equipment. This presented a potential threat to the department because it
was quite conceivable that their very function could be outsourced.
The situation represented a consulting opportunity to help the group
make changes to its culture. Such a project would entail shifting some
of the employee attitudes and behaviors that seemed less than customer
friendly. Those shifts, in turn, could lay the groundwork for more struc-
tural changes in areas such as formal processes, procedures, and account-
ing, all of which are elements of an organization that I have elsewhere
identified as cultural artifacts. I believed that this could be accomplished
through constructing and implementing a new internal department
brand and using that brand as a generative metaphor (Schön, 1993) to
stimulate the changes that needed to take place.
While working as a member of a branding consultancy, I learned that

a brand is more than just a catchphrase or a logo. A brand is a prom-
ise regarding the unique experience audiences will have when they come
into contact with the company. I have observed, by applying this idea in
some very large companies, that for the brand to be effective, the prom-
ise needs to be kept consistently with customers and also with employ-
ees. You cannot have an effective brand that promises and delivers great
service if the employees do not believe they can expect a similar level of
responsiveness and concern when dealing with their management and
peers. In other words, for customers and employees, what we do as an
organization has to equal what we say—and what we say has to equal
what we do on all levels.
To be successful, the brand needs to be created from the top down
and from the bottom up. While there has to be a strong push and sup-
port for such an effort from the top, that drive must also exist at a grass-
roots level from the initiation of the project. If, and when, support is
seen, experienced, and recognized throughout the organization, there
will be little resistance to adopting and implementing the brand. If, for
example, the axiom “say equals do and do equals say” is built-in as an
essential part of the brand’s foundation, accountability for supporting
behavior at all levels is built-in, at least superficially.
This is an especially empowering technique for shifting behaviors, and
thus culture. If the group constructs the elements of the brand, as they
did in this initiative, they themselves will put the ideas in place. People
tend to be enthusiastic about the branding ideas and process because
they own them. While the brand will demand changes in behavior, the
“say equals do” construction can usually be applied broadly—allowing a
particular group or individual to make choices about how they choose to
implement those changes. People like the idea that they are doing some-
thing good for the organization, good for the customer, and good for
themselves as individuals. And the opportunity to participate in forging
their own destinies in an active and aboveboard way has great appeal.
I proposed this idea to the Executive Director of the department,
being careful to warn him that it would take a commitment of signif-
icant resources from the organization. It would include considerable
amounts of his time as well as the time of his employees. I noted that the
implementation would not be achieved speedily. I suggested it would
take a minimum of two to three years to achieve observable, measurable
results.
146 J. MACQUEEN
I recommended writing a customer satisfaction survey for the pur-

pose of measuring those results. The Executive Director demurred, stat-
ing that they already had such instruments in-house and that he did not
want to be bombarding his customers with surveys. We neglected to set
a timetable for obtaining those data and so they were never collected.
We negotiated fees for the work and an agreement to do longitudi-
nal surveys of the organization to determine what results were being
achieved internally as one measure of success. He agreed enthusiastically
to the project and we moved forward. We went to work.
Using the communications committee as a base, we expanded its
membership to a somewhat larger though still manageable working
group. The membership now included functional representation from
throughout the department as well as a range of hierarchical roles. We
had people whose jobs involved construction and pulling cable as well as
administrative assistants, receptionists, programmers, and software engi-
neers. We included project managers, people from the help desk, and
departmental executives. My task was to facilitate the work of this group
providing only as much structure to the content as I knew to be neces-
sary to create a viable brand.
The components of the brand were to include:
• A positioning statement of how the department wanted to be

viewed by its membership and by its stakeholders and customers;
• A brand promise—a statement of the experience the department
would deliver both internally and externally;
• The brand character—attributes that people could expect to experi-
ence in the brand if it were a person.
After several months of weekly and sometimes semiweekly meetings

lasting at least two hours, the team produced all the basic statements
along with explanations of the meaning of each statement. The docu-
ment was presented to the Executive Director and his direct reports for
approval, which was granted.
The committee then asked one of the senior managers on the com-
mittee to organize and implement a rollout process that included a
series of workshops to be presented to all eligible, full-time employees
throughout the entire department. This constituted approximately 250
people.
The senior manager divided and scheduled the department into work-
shop groups. The groups had to be small enough so that people in each
group could actually have discussions in which everyone in a particular
session could be actively involved. To accomplish this, each workshop
group numbered ten to twelve people. This way, each person could
potentially directly engage everyone else in conversation when they
were sitting in a circle. The structure further enabled participants eas-
ily to break out into smaller groups of three for more intimate work,
based on Block’s idea that the true unit of transformation is the small
group (Block, 2009). Within each of the workshop groups, individuals
were chosen to be representative of the various units within the depart-
ment. This was done to increase individuals’ familiarity and understand-
ing of what the various groups did and so help to decrease siloing in the
department.
The “brand orientation sessions” were held once a week. Each
workshop had to be long enough that the commitment of time was sym-
bolically significant. Thus, the sessions were a day and a half in duration.
The number of workshops allowed everyone in the department to be
“touched” by the branding effort in meaningful ways. An important pro-
viso was that the design, content, and facilitation methods of each meet-
ing had to be essentially the same from session to session.
I should also note, there was a hierarchical and functional mix in each
workshop designed to demonstrate that the brand was going to apply to
everybody in the organization. The functional mix was created to com-
bat the siloing already existing in the organization and demonstrate that
the brand was meant to be adopted by all. To that end, the Executive
Director committed himself to attend the beginning of each workshop to
welcome people and kick off the discussion.
The “rollout” programs were to be followed some weeks later by the
institution of a “coaching program,” which I will describe further on.
This aspect of the overall program design was to provide critically nec-
essary support for and reinforcement of the conceptual and behavioral
concepts introduced in the brand orientation rollout.
While preparing for the brand orientation workshops, we produced a
seven-minute video featuring some general statements about the brand,
how it had been constructed, and quick explanations of the brand
elements. To demonstrate his commitment to the effort and reinforce
his leadership role, the video’s narrator was the Executive Director. The
148 J. MACQUEEN
final version was placed on the departmental intranet, for viewing prior
to coming to the workshop and for reference after the sessions.
We also designed and printed posters which displayed the brand ele-
ments as well as other pertinent messages, such as the Paul Watzlawick
quotation, “One cannot not communicate” (Watzlawick, Bavelas, &
Jackson, 1967, p. 49). This, and some others, were included to reinforce
the brand idea that communication is always occurring and all actions
would be interpreted by individual customers and peers as saying some-
thing relevant to the fulfillment of the brand promise. During the work-
shops, these were displayed around the room and were used for reference
during presentations and discussions.
Ultimately, we presented more than 16 one-and-one-half-day work-
shops. Within the series, we included a pilot workshop and a refresher
workshop presented for the departmental executives at the beginning
and the end of the series, respectively. These were done to help ensure
that the senior management team, which was demonstrating elements of
their own subculture (Schein, 1993), had opportunity to experience the
branding ideas and to make commitments to them. The workshops were
held at a rate of about one per week.
At this point, let us take a look at the inner workings of the work-
shops. Though some things might seem mundane, trivial, it is actually
important to the understanding of the process. Each session began with
a welcome delivered in person by the Executive Director. We then had
a round of introductions. These were particularly important because
many of the participants did not know each other nor had they worked
together before—a result of internal siloing. Introductions were followed
by a presentation of the brand elements as formulated and interpreted by
the brand committee. The text of the slides we used is presented below.
To gain the deepest possible initial understanding of the brand in a short
period of time, participants were actively encouraged to ask questions
and discuss the elements as we went along.
All of the discussions were facilitated using dialogic techniques. Each
participant was asked to speak “into the room,” sharing her own ideas or
experience and to build on what people in the group were saying rather
than get caught up in responding to someone’s specific comment. This
form of dialogue in a meeting helps to create safety and focuses people
on thinking about the issues rather than spending all their energy think-
ing about how they’re going to answer the person who spoke just before
them (Schein, 1993).
Throughout the workshop processes, we referred to the posters I

mentioned earlier. Mostly, these included statements of the brand ele-
ments. The following are adapted from slides used for the workshop
presentation and are included here for reference:
Underlying concepts about a brand:

“A brand IS —
a set of concepts that are consistently applied
throughout an organization to influence written materials,
visual materials, behavior.”
“A brand is NOT —
a logo, a tagline (though the effort might include these.)
“A brand is a promise” that we make to customers,
stakeholders and each other: a consistent experience every
time at every touch point.”
We know that with this brand:

Say = Do, and Do = Say
This makes us highly and visibly accountable because
“One cannot NOT communicate”
We are doing this because we want to make a shift:

we want to be the department of “Let’s see.”
The brand position: “A strategic consulting resource

creating long-term value with [the larger organization’s]
community by applying expertise in communications
technology.”
150 J. MACQUEEN
“Strategic means we want to support the long-term

Success of our customers.
Consulting means communications and collaboration
with the customer as part of a work problem/solution.
Don’t just fill a need — solve a problem.”
“Creating long-term value with [the larger

organization’s] community means:
— It’s a collaborative effort. — It’s more than just talk. —
The solution we provide has lasting impact in supporting the
work/business of our customers.”
“By applying expertise in communications technology means:

— this is our sweet spot.”
The brand promise:

“Let’s explore what’s possible together.”
The brand character:

“Approachable.” “Plain spoken.” “Collaborative.”
“Approachable means we’re easy to reach; we’re easy

to talk to (not intimidating with our expertise.)”
“Plain spoken means: we speak in non-technical terms

whenever we can, we don’t use jargon.
Other words that might go along with this idea are
direct and respectful.”
“Collaborative means: we work with customers,

partners, and colleagues toward the best possible outcome for
everyone. We start by building shared understandings about
problems, needs, constraints, and possibilities.”
At the end of this presentation, each person was asked, “What does
the brand mean to you?” and their responses were discussed by the entire
group. I did this specifically to prompt the sense/meaningmaking pro-
cess. In this context, you might think of the introduction of the brand
and workshops as the interruption discussed in Chapters 4 and 7. Other
activities included in orientation sessions represent various elements sug-
gested by my model and the sensemaking process. As we go along I will
draw attention to, and highlight, how some of these activities are related
to my model. In this section, you will see how the use of metaphors helps
define and communicate the new emergent culture functions.
I also hoped that the brand and its elements would represent a gener-
ative metaphor for the group (Schön, 1993). That is, it would stimulate
thinking by pointing out the obvious problems of the present in a con-
text that paves the way for more creative approaches to the future. In
point of fact, the brand and the brand elements turned out to be quite
successful stimulating this kind of thinking both in the workshops and
afterward. This was demonstrated by the anecdotal feedback later pro-
vided by managers, supervisors, and the customers themselves.
As the workshop progressed, we applied techniques adapted from
those sometimes used in appreciative inquiry processes (Cooperrider,
Whitney, & Stavros, 2008). These processes encouraged the participants
to think about some of the practical implications of implementing the
brand and what a future incorporating the brand and brand behavior
might look like. They helped stimulate the use of metaphor and pro-
spective simulation—processes identified as elements of sensemaking and
meaningmaking in Chapter 7.
In groups of three, participants interviewed each other about their
history with the organization (a method to promote retrospection and
help with identifying cues) and then encouraged their partners to tell
their story into the future (prospective simulation). The results of the
interviews were presented to all of the participants. Then, the entire
152 J. MACQUEEN
group collaborated on making a list of skills and strengths demonstrated

by an individual’s story—providing useful knowledge on how a particular
individual might contribute value to a collaborative task should they be
invited to participate. Subsequently, and again in groups of three to five
people, participants invented stories about what the organization might
look like in five to ten years when the brand had been fully implemented
and established. They were also asked to indicate what their activities and
role would be in those scenarios. Each of the small groups then created a
drawing to illustrate their story of the future and presented it to the full
group. The pictures functioned as metaphors for vision and the newly
formed identities people were building for themselves.
Since the concept of the brand focuses a great deal on employees
being consultative with customers and each other, we included some
skills development work around consultation. It provided an experien-
tial concept to help develop meaning for a key component of the brand
(see Chapters 6 and 8). We emphasized repeatedly that these skills were
being presented as ways to help people solve problems with each other
and with customers because the brand presents an emphasis on being
collaborative with both.
But getting buy-into this segment of work was not as simple as one
might think. Before beginning the workshops, we understood that there
were many people in the organization who had negative responses to the
words, “consultant” or “consulting.” For many participants, these terms
were attached to external technical salespeople who were seen as pushy,
and whose “consulting” activities were seen as adding little or no value
to the organization’s goals or activities.
Consultative skill building was the only “formal training” in the entire
day-and-a-half session. The instruction was grounded in two interde-
pendent ideas. One, active listening is critical for successful consultative
problem-solving. Two, solutions to problems are most effective when
they are discovered and implemented by the person with the problem.
This is often true when using active listening, where a listener repeats
back or paraphrases what one person says to another. Because the person
with the problem is hearing themselves work out a difficulty aloud for
the first time, they often come up with a solution on their own. I also
included active listening because people in general, and particularly peo-
ple in the workplace, seldom feel heard or that others are really listening
to them (Burley-Allen, 1982; Kaner, 2014).
After a short demonstration of active listening techniques, peo-

ple formed role-playing pairs and chose what role they wanted to play:
Person A—the speaker with the problem, or Person B—the listener/con-
sultant. Person A would choose a real problem, either a business or per-
sonal problem, and begin to describe it. Person B’s job was to practice
active listening with Person A, meaning they would reflect back vocally
what they were hearing the other person say, without asking questions.
In the second round, Person B (now the listener) was encouraged to ask
only clarifying questions about details she or he was hearing. In the third
round, the listener could both ask clarifying questions and questions
that encouraged the speaker to go more deeply into the nature of the
problem and what Person A might be thinking of as a potential solution.
Soon the pair had either come up with a solution or had made substan-
tial progress toward solving the problem.
At the end of the exercise, each pair reported on the problems they
had been trying to solve, solutions they had generated, how they felt in
either role, and what they saw as the exercise’s applicability to the con-
cept of the brand. Most reported that they understood consulting as a
way of not manipulating a client/customer and understanding what the
customer’s real issues were rather than acting on their assumptions about
that person’s needs when beginning the conversation.
At the end of each rollout session, participants were asked what
actions they would commit to in order to implement the brand in a col-
laborative fashion, and whom they might recruit to help them accom-
plish that goal. As each session closed, the participants were also asked
what they liked and what they thought might be improved. Generally,
they spoke about how surprised they were that the sessions had been
substantive and productive. They had not expected the work to be as
tangible and down-to-earth as it had been.
Taken as a whole, the elements of the orientation sessions helped
the participants open and outline a new identity for themselves that was
closely linked to the identity that was being generated for the organiza-
tion. I want you to understand this as another tie-into my model and the
processes outlined in Chapter 5. That is, it encourages the participants
to reflect, gather cues, make sense and meaning of their experiences;
encourages the construction of new identity; and makes ample use of
metaphors. We also see participants beginning to adopt new values and
ways of doing things as recently adopted cultural assumptions.
154 J. MACQUEEN
Subsequent to the workshops, the next steps for all employees were
to begin establishing performance goals with their supervisors around
implementing the brand. The measure was put into effect during the
next several months as the employees engaged in annual performance
planning and reviews. What was not implemented, although agreed to
by the Executive Director, was a planned series of workshops for all the
supervisors and managers. These workshops would have provided fol-
low through training and support for coaching their employees around
meeting the brand-related performance goals that had been established
by each of the employees. This proved to be a critical issue in the project,
preventing it from reaching the goal of establishing a culture of “What
if,” in place of the culture of “No.”
The plan for this instruction was coaching training in coaching tech-
niques based on Edie Seashore’s Triple Impact Coaching (Patwell &
Seashore, 2006) and Charley Seashore’s book on giving and receiving
feedback, What Did You Say? (Seashore, Seashore, & Weinberg, 1997).
These books emphasize building trust through the verbal behavior of
coaching. They build on the initiative and responsibility activated when
the individual being coached is encouraged to employ their own agency
for establishing and attaining goals.
Why the whole plan, including the performance coaching, was not
implemented was never made clear to me by the Executive Director.
These were actions that were occurring in contradiction of the agree-
ments we had worked out together at the initiation of the project. The
implementation was delayed numerous times until finally the Executive
Director simply quit responding to my inquiries and those of others. If
the program had been carried out in its entirety as agreed, a number of
activities would have been set into motion.
Subsequent to the coaching training, the supervisors and manag-
ers were to meet with their direct reports for 15–30 minutes approx-
imately once every four to six weeks. The “waterfall” pattern I had
envisioned looked like this: The Executive Director would coach his
direct reports, they would coach their direct reports (the managers),
and the managers would coach the next level of personnel (supervi-
sors and/or individual contributors) on the brand-related goals they
had established. I was to take on coaching the Executive Director until
arrangements for similar coaching could be made with one of his supe-
riors or a peer in another unit who would agree to undergo the coach-
ing training.
Finally, we implemented the longitudinal surveys to measure the

extent to which our efforts had resulted in shifts in the culture. The
details of the survey and results will be discussed below. Briefly, the sur-
veys sought to capture a series of snapshots of how individuals, their
peers, and their managers were responding to and implementing vari-
ous elements of the brand in their everyday behavior. My hypothesis was
that, over time, an overall rise in mean scores in response to the survey
statements and questions and a decline in the standard deviations to the
same questions would indicate success and having shifted the culture.
My assumption was that more agreement with the ideas expressed by
the brand ideas would be seen as increasing mean agreement scores and
declining disagreement would show up in decreasing standard deviation
scores. This in turn was based on the idea that culture is constituted by a
common perception of “how we do things around here” (Bower, 1966).
The following is a description and analysis of the quantitative data
gathered in the surveys conducted after the rollout of the workshops.
The survey was developed with the collaboration and support of
Prof. James Hawdon of the Department of Sociology at the Virginia
Polytechnic and State University.
The survey design is relatively simple. We began with Schein’s idea
that organizational culture is a “system of beliefs, values, and behavio-
ral norms that come to be taken for granted as basic assumptions and
eventually drop out of awareness” (Schein, 2016). These assumptions
are about “the correct way to perceive, think, feel, and behave” (Schein,
2016) relative to solving certain kinds of problems in the organiza-
tion. In this case, these are problems related to improving and main-
taining relationships with the organization’s customers and among the
organization’s employees. They are thus (as Schein might define them)
problems of adaptation to the evolving customer service needs of the
organization.
Since these ideas, values, and the behaviors they represent are defined
by the brand elements noted earlier in the chapter, we based the sur-
vey questions on those elements. They are: the brand promise, “Let’s
explore what’s possible together,” (a consultative approach to address-
ing customer needs and problems), and the elements that make up the
brand character, “Approachable, Plainspoken, and Collaborative.” In
order to be experienced as effective, these brand elements need to be
expressed as common or shared behaviors enacted by all or most mem-
bers of the group. Therefore, we needed to understand to what extent
156 J. MACQUEEN
the group members saw their own behavior and that of their peers as
consistent with the sentiments of the brand elements. The more they saw
themselves and each other acting in ways that were congruent with the
brand elements, the more agreement about those perceptions would be
expressed among members of the department.
We wanted to find out if the brand was becoming a part of the
culture—a set of “shared assumptions about the correct way to per-
ceive, think, feel, and behave” (Schein, 2016) with regard to how
department personnel were treating customers and fellow employees.
If this was the case, over time the survey would show the statistical
means of the responses to statements about people’s perceived behav-
iors being compatible with particular Brand Elements, would be going
up. At the same time, the standard deviation numbers would decline
for each statement.
I recognize that people often see others’ behavior as different from
their own and that one’s relationship with a peer is often different from
one’s relationship with a manager. Also, relationships with members of
senior or upper management are often regarded differently from all the
rest. I believe these differences can affect our perceptions of those behav-
iors. Therefore, I wrote statements with which the participant is asked to
agree along a scale of 1–10 about each brand element to capture some
of those differences without making the participants feel they were com-
mitting themselves to either/or observations and to lessen their sense of
being judgmental as much as possible.
For example: “I try to make myself approachable at work”; “I believe
my coworkers explore what’s possible with others when solving prob-
lems”; “when my manager or supervisor is communicating with other
people, I believe he/she takes the time to make sure that people with-
out his/her expertise understand him/her”; and “upper management
appears to work collaboratively with other people.”
Instructions for filling out the survey were as follows:
Using the scale below, please rate the following statements as they apply to
your work experience at [name of the organization].
Almost Never Almost Always

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
The statements to which the participants were to respond were as

follows:
(Brand element: Approachable)
• I try to make myself approachable at work.

• My coworkers are approachable at work.
• My manager/supervisor is approachable at work.
• People in upper management are approachable at work.
(Brand element: Plain Spoken)
• When I am communicating with other people (coworkers, cus-

tomers, etc.), I take the time to make sure that people without my
expertise understand me.
• When my coworkers are communicating with other people, I
believe they take the time to make sure that people without their
expertise understand them.
• When my manager or supervisor is communicating with other peo-
ple, I believe he/she takes the time to make sure that people with-
out his/her expertise understand him/her.
• When people in upper management are communicating with other
people, they take the time to make sure that people without their
expertise understand him/her.
(Brand element: Collaborative)
• I try to work collaboratively with my coworkers.

• My coworkers work collaboratively with me.
• My manager/supervisor works collaboratively with me.
• I try to work collaboratively with my manager/supervisor.
• Upper management appears to work collaboratively with other
people.
(Brand element: Brand Promise: Let’s Explore What’s Possible Together)
• I try to explore what’s possible with coworkers and/or customers

when solving problems.
• I believe my coworkers explore what’s possible with others when
solving problems.
• My manager/supervisor and I try to explore what’s possible with
each other when we’re trying to solve a problem.
158 J. MACQUEEN
The survey was prepared and laid out for electronic distribution, and
responses were collected and analyzed using Qualtrics© Survey Software
System. Charts of the results used here were prepared by a professional
data visualization designer.
The survey was given in three events over four years. The first sur-
vey was sent out in late 2014 with the intention that subsequent sur-
veys would be distributed at 12-month intervals. The second survey was
delayed by several months at the client’s request because the department
had, in the interim, designed and scheduled a departmental reorganiza-
tion to take place in the same time period as distribution of the second
survey. The Executive Director was concerned that the distribution of the
survey would prove a distraction and so I agreed to delay it.
I also agreed to include several questions about communications
regarding the reorganization activities with the longitudinal survey. This
was to try to avoid bombarding the population with survey tasks. These
questions were limited to five totals and were clearly separated from
questions related to the branding activities with a subheading and by
placing them at the end of the survey. The third survey was distributed
on schedule, approximately twelve months after survey number two.
The response rate for survey number one was about 65%, which we
judged as very good and even high for a group that historically did not
respond well to surveys. As a result of the reorganization mentioned
above, the total number of participants was smaller because the census of
the organization was reduced by about a third due to layoffs and trans-
fers of personnel to other departments. However, the response rate for
the second survey remained approximately the same.
In the third year of the survey, the population was again reduced
though not as much as previously. I believe, however, because of a rise
in the general level of cynicism regarding the branding project, the
response rate dropped to 55%. This would seem to indicate that the
remaining population may have had less enthusiasm for the branding
effort. Also, among that group, fewer had direct exposure to the brand
orientation activities and thus were less inclined to respond to a survey
about those activities. Bear in mind, the survey’s reflection of the expe-
rience and opinions of this group are probably less accurate because the
sample is smaller in terms of hard numbers and percentage of the group
being surveyed. Thus, it may not constitute as precise a representation of
the emergence of the new culture as the previous two surveys. Still the
trends toward that emergence definitely appear to be there.
The results for the questions can be viewed in Fig.  9.1, and read year
by year, statement by statement. In each of the charts, the results for
the 2014 surveys are delineated by a red graph, those for 2016 by an
orange graph, and those for 2017 are in blue. In each case, the values
for the norm scores are in the upper half of each diagram and the stand-
ard deviation scores are in the lower half. Also, in each case the red bar
Fig. 9.1 Quantitative data charts

160 J. MACQUEEN
presents us with a base-line against which subsequent years’ changes may

be compared.
As we begin to examine the scores in more detail, remember, my
hypothesis was: A rise in the mean score coupled with a decline in the
standard deviations from year-to-year represents an indication of the
growing strength of the new culture in this organization. For example,
first-person assessments to the approachability statement (Q12_3), “I try
to make myself approachable at work,” definitely show a trend toward
this idea becoming a part of the culture for year two over year one. The
same appears true in people’s assessments of coworkers, supervisors, and
upper management. However, in year three, the year in which it must
have become apparent that support for the initiative would not be rein-
stated and the year subsequent to the reorganization and downsizing,
the assessment of approachability drops off dramatically for both supervi-
sors and upper management.
I suspect that there may have been several interdependent factors that
contributed to this result. The first may have been a certain level of hos-
tility directed at all levels of management and supervision in wake of the
reorganization. People often resent the disruption and subsequent con-
fusion they experience at such a time. Sensing and experiencing this hos-
tility, supervisors and senior managers may well have isolated themselves
from the rank-and-file employees, thus becoming less approachable. In
addition, over the years I have witnessed managers who felt guilty about
a reorganization and how it was handled. This, too, would have created
a tendency for them to isolate themselves from the rank-and-file. In any
case, the result ends up being the same. The practice of making oneself
approachable and the experience of feeling the people one works with are
approachable is diminished because of a reorganization and the methods
by which it was handled, so it becomes less of “the way we do things
around here” (Bower, 1966).
For the “plainspoken” statements, the results are strikingly similar. The
responses between year one and year two follow the same pattern with the
exception of people’s assessments about upper management—this popula-
tion seems never to have experienced upper management as plainspoken.
This is reflective of attitudes voiced during the rollout sessions. People fre-
quently expressed a lack of faith in upper management’s ability or willing-
ness to follow through on any implementation of the brand values.
I frequently reported to the Executive Director and members of his
immediate staff that the rollout sessions and survey data demonstrated
perceptions of a lack of approachability and plain speaking on their part.

They took no action to address these issues. A similar decline in relation-
ships among individuals and their supervisors appears in the responses
to the “approachable” statements and shows up again here. I believe
that the causes may have been similar in this instance to what they were
above. This is in addition to the possibly long-established attitudes
related to trust on the part of members of the staff.
The “collaborative” group of statements also shows strong progress
toward the formation of a culture over the first two years of the study.
However, again we see the results show a decline in the practice of collab-
oration among staff and supervisors in year three. Once more, it appears
that upper management has never been viewed as being collaborative.
This was also a phenomenon to which I called senior managers’ attention
though none showed any interest or inclination in addressing it.
The final set of statement responses presents a more complicated pic-
ture. Individual self-assessments of their ability to “explore what’s pos-
sible” with their peers and customers never appear to be very strong.
However, people’s assessment of their coworker’s ability to carry on this
same activity seems to improve markedly over all three surveys and indi-
cate the growth of culture within this value. It is confusing, yet telling,
that the participants do not appear to have confidence in themselves,
though nonetheless recognize and observe it in their peers. It could be
that from the beginning, the concept was not as clear as one might have
hoped. Another interpretation might be that while they saw the success
of the activity around them, they never felt like they were individually
rewarded or recognized for carrying out that activity. It may also be that
the responses are a product of false modesty common to many members
of this organization.
The assessments of supervisory personnel and those in upper manage-
ment are similar in this area as they were in the previous assessments.
Supervisors’ ability to fulfill the brand’s promise seems to drop off in the
third year. Upper management’s willingness to fulfill a promise never
seems to have existed in the eyes of the general staff.
The qualitative analysis of the survey data continues many of the
themes found in the quantitative analysis. That is, there are indications
that the cultural values of the brand had taken root and were growing in
the first two years of the study and then began to decline in year three.
Additionally, the cynicism regarding the role of members of the depart-
ment’s senior managers is reinforced in this data.
162 J. MACQUEEN
Let us stop here for a moment, because I want to remind you that
the survey study was done as part of an effort to document and sup-
port a culture change/brand development project in this organization.
During the course of the study, the organization went through a number
of significant changes. These included downsizing and a major reorgan-
ization project affecting virtually all of the positions in the organization.
In the survey, the staff were asked to respond to statements and ques-
tions designed to measure the responses to the culture change/branding
effort, both quantitatively and qualitatively. In this section, we will be
examining only the qualitative questions.
In the survey, there were three open-ended qualitative questions.
First, “What does the brand promise, ‘Let’s explore what’s possible
together,’ mean to you?” Second, “In what ways have you seen the
brand promise, ‘Let’s explore what’s possible together’, and the brand
character ‘Approachable, Plainspoken, Collaborative’ become the organ-
ization’s way of doing things?” Third, “What additional thoughts about
branding in this organization would you like to share?”
To analyze this data, a set of criteria, or “tags,” were established for
identifying and selecting responses to the questions that seemed to be
common to each question and could be used across the three years of
the study. Because each of the questions addresses different issues, some
differing criteria were selected for each question. An effort was made to
keep the criteria similar enough from question to question to allow for
the identification of some trends among the questions and across the
years of the study (see Fig.  9.2).
When I began analysis of the data, I was particularly aware of the cyni-
cal nature of some of the comments showing up in response to Question
16. Indeed, some cynicism with regard to the overall effort had been
expressed by certain participants from the very first days of the brand
orientation process. This was especially true with regard to the depart-
ment’s senior management and their willingness to actively support the
branding effort. So, it was no surprise to see these sentiments showing
up in the qualitative data. Because there are responses in the quantita-
tive data relative to the managers’ behavior that could be interpreted
as having similar psychological sources, I became interested in track-
ing whether or not there was a growth in the level of cynical comment
through the multiyear process. Hence, the development of the “cynical”
criterion or “tag”.
Fig. 9.2 Qualitative data chart—Question 16 (Question 16: What does the

brand promise, “Let’s explore what’s possible together,” mean to you?)
For the sake of reference clarity, I offer the following definition of

cynical:
1. Believing that people are motivated purely by self-interest; dis-

trustful of human sincerity or integrity.
1.1 Doubtful as to whether something will happen whether it is
worthwhile.
1.2 Contemptuous; mocking.
2. Concern only with one’s own interests and typically disregarding
accepted standards in order to achieve them. (Oxford Dictionaries
Online)
Comments, identified as “cynical responses,” were suggested prima

facie by the very nature of their content. Trends in the quantitative data
suggested a similar tendency in thinking as the survey process proceeded.
As might be expected, the number of cynical responses fell during the
164 J. MACQUEEN
period when people in the group seemed to feel hopeful about the pos-
sibilities coming out of the branding effort and their implications for the
organization, the organization’s performance both internally and exter-
nally, and their individual work lives (year two, 2016).
As it became clear that support for behavioral implementation of the
brand framework and its cultural assumptions would not be restored, the
number of comments reflecting cynical/negative attitudes about adopt-
ing brand values and behavior increased to levels that were higher than
those initially captured in the data (year three, 2017).
While the numbers of these comments may seem relatively low as a
percentage of all the responses, it is important to remember that people
voicing negative comments in groups may be “carrying” those ideas for
the rest of the group. They are also likely to influence those members
not actively voicing these comments to adopt similar ways of thinking.
The converse might also true. It is interesting to think about the poten-
tial effect an increase of the “meaningful” voices might have had on the
group had support for the branding effort been provided on an ongo-
ing basis. It does seem to suggest that support for the change in culture
would have continued to grow if given the chance.
The tag of “meaningful responses” was applied to comments suggest-
ing the individuals had taken the branding ideas and made them mean-
ingful in their work lives as described in Chapter 4. Nowhere was this
more evident than in comments where the individual indicated how
and/or why a particular idea might change someone’s work in a way that
might be positive and meaningful.
When the first survey was distributed, participants may not yet have
had the time to begin sensemaking and generate this feeling of meaning-
fulness either individually or socially. The fact that the second survey was
not administered until about eighteen months after the first because of
other disruptions in the organization tends to point out how long these
social processes can take before the group generates consensus. The rel-
ative quantity of these comments decreased, and the number of cynical
comments increased, as management continued to fail to provide sup-
port for this effort.
It is probably not surprising that a substantial number of people seem
to have responded to this question about the brand promise as if it rep-
resented a test of their knowledge of the branding ideas rather than an
inquiry into the meaning people might be making of their branding
experiences. Undoubtedly, this is due to the fact that people in a training
exercise are often asked to fill out evaluation assessments after participat-
ing in training programs. A goal of these assessments is to understand
and quantify what the participants learned and how much they enjoyed
the experience as a way to measure the value of the course. Trainers often
unconsciously adjust the training experience and sometimes the content
to ensure that the participants respond to these assessments in ways that
reinforce the value of the program to the sponsors. While this was not a
goal with these surveys, that experience and expectation was likely what
this population drew on for part of their responses.
These types of comments I grouped into two subcategories: “got
the right answer” and “got the concept.” The participants in the “got
the concept” group tended to write in generalities about how people
are supposed to act if they are being more or less compliant with the
branding principles. They tend to veer away from and not make com-
ments that are evaluative of the brand concepts. The “got the concept”
responses were in this way different from those comments that were clas-
sified as cynical or meaningful.
The other part of this group seemed primarily interested in providing
the “right answer.” That is, they appeared to be trying to demonstrate
that they have been paying attention to the branding content though
they do not seem interested in exploring the implications of that content.
These responses are often quite short using language that is exactly the
same or closely approximates that of the original brand presentations. A
very limited percentage of comments were categorized into the category,
“missed the idea” which is meant to suggest that the individual did not
understand the content to begin with.
The second question was, “In what ways have you seen the brand
promise (Let’s explore what’s possible together?) and the brand
character (Approachable, Plainspoken, Collaborative) become the
[Department’s] way of doing things?” This second qualitative question
(Survey Question 17) is very different from the first. It is asking about
participants’ sense of the organization’s progress with regard to adopt-
ing the values and assumptions of the new brand and enacting them as
the default approach for doing things in the organization. Responses to
this question are a potential indication of ways of thinking that suggest
elements of a new culture are beginning to take hold. In evaluating these
comments, six categories were developed for sorting these ideas. Two
categories carried over from the first question. These were statements
suggesting that the participant “Got the idea,” that is, they grasped it
166 J. MACQUEEN
and were able to articulate basic concepts of the brand, as well as “cyn-
icism” statements expressing doubt, skepticism, and distrust about the
brand and its implications.
Comments of the type that were previously categorized as meaning-
ful disappeared from the results. This may have happened because the
question implies progress and therefore learning and acceptance of the
prescribed ways of working on the part of the group as observed by
the members of the group. The qualities implied in the categories that
served to help identify the “meaningful” responses to the first qualita-
tive question (Survey Question 16) are essentially expressed by ones used
here; “Good progress” expresses some of the same optimism and creative
energy previously expressed in the comments categorized as “meaning-
ful” (see Fig.  9.3).
Interestingly, this idea of “good progress” is the only category that
does not follow the pattern shared by other categories over the three
years. In those categories, the numbers go up in the second year and go
down in the third. Here, the pattern is different. The “good progress”
Fig. 9.3 Qualitative data chart—Question 17 (Question 17: In what ways have

you seen the brand promise (Let’s explore what’s possible together?) and the brand
character (Approachable, Plainspoken, Collaborative) become the [Department’s]
way of doing thing?)
number declines in the second year and recovers in the third year,
though not to the level of year one. It may have to do with the imple-
mentation of the reorganization program which many staff did not seem
to view as logical in its conception and for which communication from
management was perceived as inadequate.
These ideas were revealed by the addition of a very limited number
of questions in survey number two included at management’s request.
These questions had to do with the participants’ perception of commu-
nications made by the department’s management and the effectiveness
of those efforts. The questions were carefully segregated from the rest of
the survey by placing them at the end of the standard questions under a
unique subheading. They were not repeated in the survey number three.
The idea of inadequate communication was indicated by responses to
the special questions. When viewed in the context of a brand where two
of the brand characteristics were “open” and “plainspoken,” the level of
communication demonstrated by management might well have seemed
antithetical to the idea “good progress” on implementation. Therefore,
execution of the brand was not being accomplished or maintained by
upper management. We should pay attention to the fact that “poor com-
munication” was occurring while the processes of sensemaking about
the changes induced by the brand orientation workshops were likely still
ongoing and developing.
As a consequence, the cynical views were now being expressed during
the three years at more or less the same rate of change shown for those
people who saw little or no progress of the brand and the culture becom-
ing the client organization’s “way of doing things around here.” They
were both declining in more or less equal measure indicating that those
who had begun expressing cynicism were now those indicating little or
no progress (Fig. 9.4).
Question 27 was included specifically to send the message to the par-
ticipants that their voice and comments were important, no matter what
they wanted to say and to offer an opportunity to express those com-
ments if a place for doing so had not been provided elsewhere.
In analyzing this data, I used the categorization scheme developed for
the other questions while leaving open the possibility of adopting new
categories depending on what was found in the comments as seemed
appropriate. This proved to be useful with several sets’ subcategories.
The cynical comments showed up at more or less the same rate as they
had throughout the study. Comments in the “good progress” category
168 J. MACQUEEN
Fig. 9.4 Qualitative data chart—Question 27 (Question 27: What additional

thoughts about branding at [the Department] would you like to share?)
showed up in more or less the same pattern for this question as did the
“okay progress” and “little or no progress” in Question 17.
In any survey with qualitative, open-ended questions requiring writ-
ten answers, there are those who choose not to respond to these ques-
tions at all. This is probably because many people simply do not answer
qualitative questions that require something written. Among those who
did answer these questions, the largest single group of responses across
all three years and growing significantly in the third year, are those com-
ments that are identified as “process improvement.” These included
ideas about everything from improving the quality of the seating in the
workshops to the wording and structure of the surveys, to the need for
executive “buy-in” for the branding effort. Also included are recommen-
dations that we deal with the problems facing people in the “real world”
when participants emerged from the brand orientation sessions. It was
interesting, enlightening, and gratifying that some of these people were
still working to think constructively about the brand, the brand elements
and values, and the techniques that had been used to implement the
brand. As you can see, some of them were still actively considering the
brand and branding issues as much as three years after the time it was
originally introduced and a full two years after the time organizational
support for its understanding and practice had been withdrawn.
If we had been able to harness that energy, interest, and commit-
ment, who knows what kind of results this group might have achieved.
Certainly, I will value this material especially when I have the opportu-
nity to pursue similar projects.
From the time this work was proposed to the day I completed ini-
tial analysis of the data from the third survey, the project, took nearly six
years to complete. The effort was not simply mine. Many others contrib-
uted, supported, and collaborated on the project. Not the least of which
were the members of the client organization, colleagues, advisors, and
friends.
The good news, at this point, is the data gathered during the study
suggests that the approaches applied during the project proved effective
for supporting the opening of a culture change. What is not demon-
strated is the sustainability of those changes. A concerted effort to rein-
force participants’ thought and behavior through supportive activities,
such as the coaching program originally envisioned for the project, was
needed to fully implement and demonstrate full success of the program.
Given the level of success as demonstrated by the data is somewhat
limited, what do I know about the project’s impact on the organiza-
tion beyond the changed attitudes captured in the study? My associa-
tion with the department did not end with the completion of the Brand
Orientation Workshops. I continued to have a number of rich relation-
ships involving many frank and insightful conversations. These connec-
tions were sustained through the three years of the survey study. In some
cases, they persist to this day. As a result, I can report anecdotally on
some behavioral phenomena that emerged in the wake of the effort and,
at this point, appear to be cultural or on their way to becoming cultural.
At the top of this list is increased collaboration both within individ-
ual teams and among cross-functional and organizationally segregated
teams throughout the department. Many people have attributed this to
the vertical and functional mixing of participants in the workshop groups
during the rollout. People also credit emphasis placed on enacting the
brand character, which you will recall is described as “approachable,
170 J. MACQUEEN
plainspoken, and collaborative.” In fact, a certain amount of the evo-

lution of this behavior is suggested by the data. Some of the behaviors
appear to be situational, depending on who the supervisor or manager
is for a particular group. Again, this emphasizes the importance of rein-
forcement by an authority figure for implementing and sustaining con-
gruent brand/culture behavior as we might have seen in the coaching.
A second impact shows up in anecdotal reports mentioned earlier of
improved customer satisfaction. There are also a number of comments
on improved collaboration that show up in the written responses to the
qualitative questions. In addition, I know that efforts have been made
to change many of the process and procedure issues that were reported
as part of the rollout. Minor changes to a work order, requisition pro-
cesses, billing procedures, and other practices that had made it difficult
to do business with the department have been changed or streamlined
using input from the employees who needed to implement the old ways
of doing things.
Another impact, reported to me mostly in confidential discussions
with managers and supervisors, has been a heightened awareness of the
role of trust in the organization. Certain managers and senior manag-
ers have reported increased efforts to expand their individual approach-
ability and as a consequence the level of trust they enjoy with the staff.
These activities include efforts to ensure that people who work for these
managers feel welcome in their offices under any circumstances. In some
instances, the managers are venturing outside their offices to talk to their
staff in a more casual fashion.
At this point, I do not know that these efforts are widespread enough
to be considered cultural. However, should the trend continue and
expand, it could reach the level of, “this is how we manage around
here.” In the meantime, I am pleased to report that there are efforts to
effect changes in manager-staff relationships that seem to have genesis in
the brand/culture work.
What do I understand as the project’s impact on me? I ask this ques-
tion here because I believe that “conscious use of self” is a critical capa-
bility for any organization development consultant (Seashore, Shawver,
Thompson, & Mattare, 2004). However, to take advantage of this skill,
you must develop and maintain a good sense of what is going on with
yourself psychologically and emotionally. You can then make conscious
use of that information in decisions about all your consulting interac-
tions. It is important that you realize that you are always affected by the
environment in which you are operating. Meaning, when you are con-
sulting to an organization, you are always a part of that organization’s
system whether you have made a conscious choice to join that system or
not. As a matter of fact, you are at far greater risk of committing errors if
your decisions about joining that system are made unconsciously.
Staying with the theme of trust, in the latter stages of this project it
became clear that the Executive Director was not going to honor his
agreements to implement a coaching program to support the brand-
ing effort and the implementation of a new culture. As this occurred,
my own level of trust in him declined, similar in ways to what had been
implied in comments made during the rollout workshops. My efforts to
restore trust between us by engaging in direct dialogue as well as efforts
using written communication were unsuccessful and our relationship
suffered.
Eventually, I decided that I could no longer be effective because of
the level of mistrust that had manifested in the relationship. It had also
become clear that without the coaching program, changing the culture
at the level we had envisioned could not be achieved. The new culture
required sustained support and reinforcement to achieve the level of a set
of basic, taken-for-granted assumptions about “the correct way to per-
ceive, think act and feel” in relation to solving the problems faced by
the organization (Schein, 2016). Nor did I have faith any longer in the
Executive Director’s willingness to reinstate those activities or anything
else that could achieve a similar result.
Disillusioned, I withdrew from the project. However, I did not do so
until quite late in the process—when it would have been almost impossi-
ble to recover the momentum we had lost. The gesture had little effect.
Had I considered exiting earlier, which I failed to do because of my own
personal investment and ego attachment to the project, I suspect that
action or even the threat of that action would have significantly affected
the work and influenced outcomes.
Should I have anticipated and acted on what was happening in the
consultant/client relationship earlier? In the early sessions of the Brand
Orientation Workshops, I was receiving sufficient data about the trust
issues between the staff and their managers to foresee the problems that
eventually showed up earlier than I did.
The fact is, I had convinced myself that what I was observing in
those workshops was a phenomenon I thought I had seen many times
before. That is, individuals displaying attitudes of generalized distrust
172 J. MACQUEEN
and disrespect toward their managers. It is a way of venting their frustra-

tions at what they are experiencing as apathy and a lack of responsiveness
on the part of their managers. It is a behavior that can be commonly
observed in the perceived safety of the workshop environment.
Witnessing these kinds of sentiments over the years, made by all sorts
of people, resulted in my own failure to address peoples’ expressions of
mistrust critically and specifically in the orientation workshops. In effect,
I had come to stereotype the comments and the people categorizing
them in terms of whining, leading me to unconsciously downplay vital
information being shared with me.
At the same time, I was seeing repeated evidence of the Executive
Director’s interest and support in the work through his conversations
with me and by the fact that he was unfailingly showing up to kick off
each workshop session. However, by not paying attention to the uncon-
scious decision to refrain from acting more directly on information I was
receiving regarding trust in the organization, I left myself vulnerable to
the consequences of ignoring warnings about the managers’ commit-
ments and follow through as they shifted over time.
There were several other errors that I made in the contracting process
that you may have already spotted on your own. Chief among these was
not being more insistent on including a measure for outcomes achieved
by the project and their importance.
In the design, it would have been more effective if some members of
the organization had shared the facilitation responsibilities of the rollout,
especially if this had been done with some of the senior management
team as well as with supervisors and line staff. Such interfacing and col-
laboration would have strengthened overall commitment to the project
and achieving its outcomes.
I can only hope this discovery of these blind spots in dealing with
this client will make me a better consultant as I strive to apply what I
learned and stay more conscious of the decisions I make on a day-to-
day basis. I also hope sharing this information with you, along with the
entire description of the project and its assessment, will serve to help you
improve your skills as well.
I am looking forward to the opportunity to continue to practice,
develop, and document this approach. I have great faith in both the the-
ory and approach I used in this project and look forward to providing
more complete evidence of the effectiveness of both. I welcome efforts
by others to do similar work and would be happy to support and/or col-
laborate on such initiatives.
References
Block, P. (2009). Community: The structure of belonging. Easy Read Comfort
Edition. ReadHowYouWant.com.
Burley-Allen, M. (1982). Listening: The forgotten skill. New York: Dorling
Kindersley.
inquiry handbook: For leaders of change. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler
Publishers.
Francisco: Wiley.
Oxford Dictionaries Online. Retrieved from https://en.oforddictionariew.com/
definition/cynical.
Patwell, B., & Seashore, E. W. (2006). Triple impact coaching: Use-of-self in the
coaching process. Victoria, BC: BookBaby.
Schein, E. H. (1993). On dialogue, culture, and organizational learning.
Organizational Dynamics, 22(2), 40–52.
Wiley.
Schön, D. A. (1993). Generative metaphor: A perspective on problem-set-
ting in social policy. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought. Cambridge:
Seashore, C., Shawver, M., Thompson, G., & Mattare, M. (2004). Doing good
by knowing who you are. OD Practitioner, 36(3), 42–46.
Seashore, C. N., Seashore, E. W., & Weinberg, G. M. (1997). What did you say?
The art of giving and receiving feedback. Columbia, MD: Bingham House
Books.
Watzlawick, P., Bavelas, J. B., & Jackson, D. D. (1967). Pragmatics of human
communication: A study of interactional patterns, pathologies and paradoxes.
New York: W. W. Norton.
CHAPTER 10
Working with Organizational Culture:

Ideas About Consulting
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt
of in your philosophy. (Shakespeare, 1603, Hamlet, I.iv)
This book has been about working with you to develop your culture
perspective. We began by looking at how organizational culture is first
formed by following a group coming together to organize a community
garden. We then looked at how the concept of organizational culture has
been viewed historically.
In Chapter 3, we began to think about various mental models of
organizational culture. I described my own model of organizational cul-
ture as well as those of Mary Jo Hatch (1993), Edgar Schein (2016),
and Richard Seel (2000). What all four of us have in common is that
we each view organizational culture as dynamic, self-organizing systems.
These models are also firmly grounded in Schein’s idea that organiza-
tional cultures are sets of assumptions formed around shared learning
gained from solving problems as a group or organization.
As a way of helping you to better understand the philosophies under-
lying organizational culture, I spent a chapter introducing you to some
of them. These included those of Hernes, Mullarkey, and Shotter, among
others. In particular, I focused on process metaphysics and some related
philosophies relevant to organizational studies and culture because of
the importance of process thinking to understanding complex adaptive
systems.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25685-2_10
176 J. MACQUEEN
Since organization development (OD) is a practice that is largely

understood as being oriented toward change in organizations, we
examined one of the classic methodologies for changing organizations,
John Kotter’s “Leading Change” (1996). We also looked at how issues
around organizational culture are sometimes ignored and the kinds of
problems that can produce.
In subsequent chapters, the discussion turned to the processes
involved in the actual creation and production of organizational culture.
These processes include dynamic group and neural processes. They also
include the communications processes people in groups use to build and
communicate organizational culture, principally through metaphors and
related ideas about neural cognition. We also examined a case study in
which I attempted to develop new culture in a real organization.
By now the cultural perspective you have been developing includes an
appreciation for how organizational cultures are complex, complicated,
and dynamic. As a consequence, you may be recognizing how perplex-
ingly difficult working with organizational cultures can be from the con-
sultant’s point of view. Along the way, I have been making suggestions
for how to deal with the dynamic complexity of cultures. I will offer some
additional specific examples of how I have done so later in this chapter.
Cultures, because they are complex adaptive systems are in continu-
ous flux. The people participating in those cultures who are working to
change them, often exhibit significant anxiety and charged emotion. This
is because a change in a culture is, by definition, a change in how people
think about “How we do things around here” (Bower, 1966). The fact
that producing new and/or modified culture often means constructing
new personal and organizational identities along with attendant cultural
artifacts such as organizational values, mission and vision adds to the vol-
atility of the situation.
It is for this reason, this final chapter will include an examination of
the paradigms and the assumptions, that are active in most OD consult-
ing processes and how they are likely to affect your ability to be effective
when consulting to organizational issues related to organizational cul-
tures. For many of us whose training is based in Lewin’s theories and
related Lewinesque practices, our backgrounds represent a kind of world
view of how organizations function at a dynamic level. This forms a par-
ticular orientation beyond which it is difficult to see. That view may leave
us with biases that distort our views of reality and create certain blind
spots that I will use this chapter to examine.
10 WORKING WITH ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE … 177
Many, if not most, of the ideas and practices that we talk about
regarding organization development, are based in Lewin’s model of how
organizations change and develop. This model is strikingly linear. What
I mean by linear is that we go from the current state, engage in one or
more interventions, and emerge into the (desired) future state. Lewin
described this in terms of “unfreezing, moving, and refreezing” (Lewin,
1947).
While Lewin does not state this specifically, the refrozen end state
is viewed as a kind of terminus of the organization’s journey through
change. In other words, nothing else is supposed to happen spontane-
ously. Organization development is viewed as a top-down process of
organizational change. If it is not motivated, managed, or directed by
people at the top (ODN, 2019), when the change is “finished,” it has
reached a kind of stasis. Nothing more is required in terms of change
except, perhaps, in response to changes in the external environment.
(I should note here that, in general, when I speak about organization
development (OD) I am generally speaking about the practices of OD
and the ideas behind those practices and not the field of OD. Some
sources such as the ODN Web site, cited above, do not make this dis-
tinction. I shall try and do so when necessary in this chapter.)
Tuckman’s view of group development is also linear in nature. A
group develops the beginning with forming, proceeds to the stage of
storming, then to norming, and ultimately to performing (Tuckman,
1965). Performing seems to be a kind of endpoint for the group. No
more development is needed or is perhaps possible, except when some-
thing external happens to the group and somehow reverses their
progress.
We should note that Lewin’s model is decidedly positivist in nature
(Marshak, 1993). Much of what has followed and built on Lewin has
also generally been classified as OD because OD is so firmly based in
Lewin’s work. Most of these subsequently developed practices are based
in Lewin’s paradigms. For many of you, this may raise a question: What
does it mean to be positivist? And more generally, what is positivism?
Positivism, in essence, is an epistemology that grew out of the think-
ing of Auguste Comte during the Enlightenment. Positivism privileges
the empiricism of the scientific method over other forms of research. It
also favors empirical, rational knowing, and learning over more intui-
tive ways of knowing and learning. It promotes a worldview that sug-
gests “ethics, values, and politics have no rational basis, on the grounds
178 J. MACQUEEN
that they are not scientific.… [these practices and beliefs are] seen as the
expression of irrational or nonrational emotion, will, instinct or arbitrary
decision-making” (Bentz & Shapiro, 1998). Over the centuries, it has
become a default way of thinking throughout the Western world. As a
result, proposing or promoting alternative ways of thinking and doing
are met with suspicion and resistance.
I do not mean to suggest that the scientific thinking that is at the
core of positivism is without value or merit. Much of what we think of as
material progress is a direct result of the work of scientists applying sci-
entific thinking and method to the discipline of their thinking. However,
as Shakespeare points out, “there are more things in heaven and earth …
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (In Shakespeare’s time, the term
“philosophy” was the term applied to what we now call “science” or sci-
entific thinking.)
Positivism, in the realm of organization development, shows up as a
key aspect of “OD culture.” It represents sets of assumptions about how
practitioners should, “perceive, think, feel, and behave” (Schein, 2010)
with regard to dealing with their clients and their clients’ issues. I have
a fairly strong bias against many positivist elements that I perceive in the
traditional OD culture and approach. I want to acknowledge the many
successes and contributions traditional OD has as made to organiza-
tional studies and providing improvements to organizational behavior.
However, I simply do not find a match between OD’s view of the world
of organizations, how organizations behave, the responses of organiza-
tions to intervention, and my own experience. You need to be aware of
this bias as you read this chapter. Thinking about organizational con-
sulting anchored in a paradigm of systems and processes, the bases of
organizational culture, suggests a number of interesting alternatives to
traditional, standard OD practices.
As I noted above, OD and traditional OD practitioners tend to view
organizations and cultures as being linear. If you accept the idea that cul-
ture is a system (see Chapter 3), you will need to let go of the idea of
culture as linear. Linear suggests that something has a beginning and an
end and progresses along a particular path. If this were true, organiza-
tional cultures should be predictable. They should have identifiable end-
points at which a change to them comes to a clear conclusion rather than
serving as a continuation of a system or perhaps something entirely new
(emergence). If you subscribe to this traditional view of linearity, you
(and your client, who very likely is operating within their own positivist
paradigm) would be reasonable in an expectation that you would know

how and when the culture you are working with would arrive at such an
endpoint. In addition, you should also be able to say with some certainty
what it would look like once it has arrived.
Cultures, and for that matter, organizations are not linear in nature.
They are complex. As systems, they are subject to emergence which by
definition is not predictable. Systems, therefore, often experience unan-
ticipated changes to how they function and to their makeup or content.
As a consultant, this means that you need to be constantly aware of sub-
tle changes in the organization and whether or not you need to support
those changes.
Consider for a moment whether this matches your understanding and/
or your experience. If so, you may need to consider the level of detail at
which you can plan. I am not suggesting that you stop planning but that
you may need to reconsider how you operate within those plans and enact
them. A key quality of an effective culture consultant is your adaptability
and flexibility working within an environment that is always in flux.
Another critical talent for you to cultivate will undoubtedly be your
ability to communicate these uncertainties to your client populations,
managers, and stakeholders. Many of these people come out of their
own positivist backgrounds and cultures and may, therefore, regard you
and your ideas on these subjects (if you are adopting these put forward
in this book), as eccentric, to say the least. You will often find yourself
explaining these ideas in terms of the positivist ones with which your cli-
ent is more familiar. Ultimately you will need to do this without killing
their intention to effect changes that matter to the businesses, to peo-
ple’s dignity, and for needed business results. This will be particularly
true when it comes to setting expectations not only around timelines but
results. We will discuss this in more detail later.
The heavy emphasis in positivist culture on data, logic, and rational-
ity produces some ways of thinking that can be particularly tricky for a
consultant. One of these is analytic thinking and another is dichotomous
thinking. Let us take a look at both of these ways of thinking.
“Analytic thinking, i.e., the separation of a whole into parts”
(Marshak, 1993), is highly valued in most Western cultures. I do not
want to imply that the ability to be analytical is necessarily bad. This
book, and perhaps most books of this type, would not be in existence if
not for the authors’ analytical abilities. However, if one’s default mode is
to regard all aspects of the system in its component parts, the separation
180 J. MACQUEEN
of those parts results in what we typically refer to as data. We will then

apply logic to those data, usually privileging some over others as certain
pieces fit or disconfirm a particular model in order to understand or ana-
lyze them. We thus tend to adopt blinders when attempting to perceive a
whole system. We often see parts rather than the whole. And, no matter
how good we are at reconstructing the data we have gathered, some-
thing is inevitably lost. Those losses unavoidably imperil our understand-
ing of the Gestalt of the system and our ability to deal with it as such.
Dichotomous thinking is a related pattern of thought induced by the
positivist analytical tendency to describe things and behaviors as exist-
ing in component parts. Perhaps the most prevalent form of dualistic (or
dichotomous) thought is the either/or instruction. Notice how once you
have applied the idea that a person, a thing or event is either one thing
or another, it becomes difficult to consider their existence in any other
way. For example, the idea that something could be both hot and cold
at the same time seems impossible to grasp away from the paradox of the
hot fudge sundae. The same applies to the attempt to consider an event
or series of events is both beneficial and damaging.
Another dichotomous or dualistic construction is that which we com-
monly apply to past and present. In the real world, there is no clear
demarcation between what is past and what is present. Each is embedded
in the other and our perception is based on how we view and understand
the workings of a given system. We construct and separate what we see as
its various impacts in the flow of process. We tend to bookend what we
perceive as related events in a system rather than regard them as part of a
continuous flow within that system.
We often tend to apply the same kind of thinking to issues like cause
and effect. The one thing does not exist without the other. For exam-
ple, take a conversation that teammates Joan and Jesse might have. The
conversation is about an argument that two other people, Tom and
Chris, carried out regarding something that did not get done and whose
responsibility it was to do it in the first place. The thing that did not get
done will have some set of impacts within the system. Joan and Jesse’s
conversation about the Tom and Chris argument might be overheard by
Sam who reports on it to the manager. The manager then decides to take
some action against Joan because of the way he interprets or misinter-
prets Sam’s reporting to her.
Where in this is the cause? Is it the thing that did not get done? And
why did that thing happen? Can we isolate the effects or responses that
we can observe in the string of events? Some things happen before the
particular result and some things after that result. In fact, there often are
no definitive beginnings and ends between the beginning of one action,
its impacts, and how often that impact stimulates another action. The gen-
esis of one is often embedded in some other preceding event. Engaging in
cause and effect, past and present, either/or thinking and reasoning can
seriously inhibit our ability to perceive and interpret a whole system of
interrelated, interconnected processes and how they function.
One aspect of the commonly held paradigms of organization devel-
opment practice is that OD is about solving problems for an organiza-
tion. This is generally interpreted to mean fixing whatever is wrong with
the organization because “any method of organizing inevitably creates
problems that require changes to how we organize” (Bushe, 2017). This
often puts the consultant into the role of formulating, planning, and
implementing a change. Doing these three things without collaboration
from your client constitutes what Block calls, “pair of hands consulting”
(Block, 1981).
Block’s idea here is that when you take on these three tasks inde-
pendently, you are doing things that the client can or should be able to
do for themselves. Your job as a consultant should be simply advising.
By contrast, the pair of hands approach not only lets the client off the
hook for taking responsibility for the change. And it also disempowers
them. (Engaging in the pair of hands approach was a part of the trap I
let myself in for and discussed in Chapter 9’s case study.)
In recent years, the pair of hands way of working as a consultant has
gained increased acceptance, no doubt because managers find it much
easier to deal with consultants who work in this mode. The genre has
developed its own name: Change Management. “Change Management
[can be] defined as implementing an organizational change into a pop-
ulation that has little say over the change” (Bushe, 2017, p. 2). There is
some debate about whether or not Change Management should be con-
sidered a part of OD (there are, after all, separate certification programs
and a professional association dedicated to Change Management—the
Association of Change Management Professionals).
The fact is, many Change Management practices mitigate against the
development, evolution, or effective adoption of organizational culture.
These practices tend to be quite directive. By comparison, the practices
presented in this book are geared toward activating individuals’ empow-
erment and sense of responsibility. You want to ensure the experiences
182 J. MACQUEEN
leading to the creation of culture are those of the client so that the cli-
ents learn from these experiences in a way that is deep enough for them
to build and apply meaning based on them.
Another issue with the culture surrounding organization development
is that it tends to assume that organizational problems can all be solved.
The issue for consultants working with culture is that this attitude tends
to deposit all “problems” into the same bucket. In fact, issues confront-
ing organizations more often fall into at least two categories: “technical
problems and adaptive issues” (Bushe, 2017, p. 8).
Technical problems usually have their source in something that is
essentially mechanical, a tool or tools, e.g., the accounting system, the
information system or perhaps a process or procedure (the mechanics
of how we hire someone). They are often complicated but not com-
plex. They do not have a large number of dynamically interconnected,
interrelated parts. “Technical problems can be solved in a top-down pro-
cess through the application of analytical models and expertise” (Bushe,
2017, p. 8). They can, in fact, be solved. And once they are solved, they
are likely to stay solved. One can solve, or fix, problems in the account-
ing system up to the point we discover that there are people/interper-
sonal issues in how it is being administered.
Adaptive issues, on the other hand, are typically issues affecting how
a system is functioning. They are usually cultural issues, often artifacts or
products of the culture that are visible through some aspect of perfor-
mance. For example, in an organization where there are tacit agreements
about how extreme or rigid hierarchy is honored by a careful obser-
vance of and compliance with it, performance might be affected because
of the necessity of communicating only through agreed-upon channels.
This might be slowing performance. Adaptive challenges are so named
because they require some adaptation within the cultural/organizational
system. To improve the system’s performance, some aspect of the system
will need to shift or adapt to better interact with a situation in order to
mitigate the culture’s effect.
They require the engagement of those with a stake in the challenge if they
are to be managed and require inquiry experimentation and learning.
Typically, they are never completely solved. (Bushe, 2017, p. 8)
Issues such as morale, infighting, blaming, not taking responsibility,

and resistance to change are typically all adaptive challenges and related
to culture. Thus, it is helpful that the consultant is aware enough to
understand that all problems are not the same and that not all problems
can be solved. In other words, it is important that a consultant maintain
their cultural perspective when being asked to “solve” the problem in an
organization. An alternative version of the OD consultant’s job descrip-
tion might be about contributing her particular gifts along with other
members of the group, toward resolution of the issue being addressed.
Another aspect of the influence of positivism throughout Western
society and many Western organizational cultures is a strong tendency to
favor intellectual/scientific/data-oriented knowing and learning over the
more intuitive experiential approaches to knowing and learning. These
preferences are also often a part of traditional OD culture. Along with
the humanistic idea that a person’s experiences should be taken seriously
and are valid in and of themselves simply because they are that person’s
experience(s), there is growing support for a research methodology and
epistemology known as phenomenology. We often see phenomenology
being used in many of the social sciences including organizational stud-
ies and some aspects of OD practice. We may occasionally see phenom-
enology or ethnomethodology being applied (though not necessarily
consciously or with rigor) by OD practitioners who have decided to use
interviewing research in their practices.
Phenomenology is used to obtain knowledge about how we think and feel

in the most direct ways. Its focus is what goes on within the person in an
attempt to get to describe lived experience in all languages free from the
constructs of the intellect and society as possible. At its root, the intent
is to understand phenomena in their own terms– to provide a description
of human experience as it is experienced by the person herself. (Bentz &
Shapiro, 1998, p. 36)
Notice that this is radically different from, and in many ways opposed
to, the more positivist assumptions about the proper, appropriate ways to
gather data directly from people regarding their experience. Interviewers
often ask people to abstract themselves from events and describe those
events in actions with as little emotion as possible.
Empirical and behaviorist sciences have even rejected the meaningful-

ness of a personal statement about internal states and, until very recently,
denied the scientific usefulness of such information about feelings and
memory. (Bentz & Shapiro, 1998, p. 99)
184 J. MACQUEEN
However, the use of this kind of phenomenological articulation by group

members is often critical to a full expression of what they see and under-
stand as the problems the group faces and how they may be trying to
resolve them.
The problem that arises when interviewing groups about their culture
is that the language that people use to describe their individual experi-
ences is often highly personal and imprecise.
A result of the positivist influenced behavior is that people in these
groups often self-sensor themselves and go so far as to disparage the
phenomenological kinds of statements from others. These highly per-
sonal, vague, and metaphorical statements are not what is considered
acceptable in the existing culture of many organizations. Nevertheless,
the more a consultant can facilitate the personal expression of people’s
feelings and experiences, the more individuals can recognize what is
common among group members. They can then form a consensus that
constitutes the shared understandings and learnings about the group that
Schein sees as the foundation of organizational culture (Schein, 2016).
It is not my intention to propose that OD culture consultants need to
become rigorously skilled phenomenologist researchers. Rather, I want
to suggest that they should remain sensitive to and aware of their own
cultural biases and respond to their clients in positive, supportive ways
when they find themselves engaging with clients in conversations about
the clients’ newly forming culture.
The tendency to privilege intellectual over intuitive expression
can also be applied to how the group learns. That is, people are often
encouraged consciously or unconsciously to interpret what they have
learned or are learning exclusively in concrete terms. Learning is as
essential to the process of consulting to organizational culture as it is to
all OD consulting. Cultures form based on what the group has learned
from solving problems (Schein, 2016). The consultant’s primary con-
tribution to this process is pointing out that some sort of learning has
been accomplished when an issue has reached resolution within the
group. Beyond this, it is working with the group to help them articu-
late what was learned as well as describe what the process involved was
like. Hence, not only what it was they learned but how they learned it.
In this way, the outcome of what the group learned can be consciously
incorporated into the culture. Thus, it is often important that you help
the group make what people have learned and how they have learned it
explicit.
This basic process is true whether the experience from which it was
drawn was constructed or spontaneous. If you are working with building
assumptions through the use of structured activities (formal training),
you need to ensure that those activities are fundamentally experiential
in nature, that people have a true experience of the skill they are being
asked to learn. Fortunately, there seems to be an increasing trend toward
these kinds of training design. From the consultant’s point of view, what
will be important will be ensuring participants have the opportunity
to carry out the same kinds of interpreting and clarifying work recom-
mended above. People will need to struggle translating their intuitive
impressions of the training experience into more conventionally articu-
lated expressions of what they have been through. They need to do this
just as they would if the issue on which the training is based had arisen
spontaneously out of their environment in order to incorporate the
learning they have done into their culture.
For the true benefit of learning and the development and application
of meaningfulness, it is vital that you do not short-circuit the process.
You should support the groups’ struggle to be cognitively and culturally
independent. As you do this, you should once again check-in with the
group about how they understand what they have learned and how they
have learned it so that they are more likely to do it again on their own
the next time around.
In classic OD, once one has heard and understood the presenting
problem, the consultant often prepares a diagnosis. The scientific defi-
nition of a diagnosis for this situation is a process of determining by
examination and analysis the circumstances that have led to the disease
afflicting the organization. The first step in this is the development of
a hypothesis about the basis for the problem. The hypothesis is usually
directly related to the presenting problem. The next step is often to
validate that hypothesis with the client and contract for initial services.
These initial services typically include some sort of data gathering phase
often based largely, and sometimes exclusively, on action research meth-
odology. For many consultants, this means interviewing as many mem-
bers of the group as possible, either individually or in small groups,
depending on the size of the organization and perceived sensitivity of the
issues involved.
The next step is some form of data analysis. The data involved consists
of pieces of information gleaned from the interviews as well as any other
empirical data gathered in the process. The analysis of the data is often,
186 J. MACQUEEN
though not always, performed exclusively by the consultant or the con-

sulting team. If the consultant is truly dedicated to the ideal of participa-
tive action research, the consultant may recruit members of the group to
participate in the data analysis. The results of this analysis are applied to
the construction of a diagnosis. Again, this is usually, though not always,
done by the consultant. It is possible that the consultant will choose to
collaborate with the group to produce the diagnosis. Although in my
experience, this is rare because the content may be considered too sensi-
tive to make it available to a client team.
The diagnosis, once constructed, is presented to the client and her
group as “data feedback,” which is often delivered with a recommenda-
tion for corrective action. Typically, this is a perceived needed organiza-
tional change and a plan for its implementation. It is not unusual for the
proposal and the plan to be geared to solving the need implied in the
presenting problem. My experience using this model many times over
many years is that it seldom has done anything other than promote work
for solving that presenting problem already implied in that problem. The
exception has been those rare occasions when the data gathering and
analysis turned up a problem significantly different from what had been
presented to me initially. Almost always this has turned out to be a time
when the information I received from people in the group indicated that
the actual problem was the manager or executive of the organization.
You will note, of course, this approach is modeled on and very firmly
based in the scientific method. It is therefore, by definition, positivist.
It suffers from many flaws that can be avoided through application of
the systems/process paradigm. That is, understanding the organiza-
tion as a system and how the effects of its processes are functioning and
manifesting.
I was taught that the true goal of this part of a consulting engagement
is to gather information from as many sources as possible. Then, you move
on to produce a full, unbiased, multidimensional picture of the organiza-
tion that most of its members will accept as true and accurate. Having done
this, it is likely that most of them will “buy-in” to participating in the pro-
posed intervention based on the idea that the consultant has understood
the whole organization and how it functions. I believe that more often
than not this is the case. However, I believe that just as often, we as con-
sultants have undoubtedly misled the client through our own belief in an
approach that cannot deliver on the goals it promises to fulfill. Applying a
system/process paradigm as a lens for critical evaluation, you can see why.
Using the presenting problem as the basis for constructing the

hypothesis limits the range of inquiry. It automatically privileges cer-
tain questions and lines of inquiry and hides others from view. Without
exceptional dedication to rigor, one tends to pursue those lines of ques-
tions that are most prominently suggested by the presenting problem.
The consultant tends not to pursue what might otherwise be suggested
by less prejudiced, more open descriptions of the processes one may or
may not have developed in a hypothesis. These inherent biases most
often emphasize “cause and effect” thinking and preclude the use of
more complex systems orientations both in the description of and in the
explanation of events. This mechanistic approach may also lead us to dis-
regard culture as a source for behaviors and systems of interactions.
An additional problem is that the entire approach tends to put the
consultant at “the center of the action,” depriving her of input and
insight from the whole system. The result is that the “diagnosis” of the
organization constructed from a position that the consultant has likely
created for themselves as being at the center of the activity, is likely not
to be a full, unbiased, multidimensional picture of the organization.
Rather it is a flawed, limited picture of the organization because of mul-
tiple unconscious biases the consultant is inherently unable to overcome.
This limits the choices for intervention the consultant can imagine and
present to the client.
The consultant and their clients’ cultural assumptions and traditions,
grounded in positivism, usually preclude intervention strategies that are
not exclusively based on reason and logic. More intuitive, systems-ori-
ented interventions where outcomes are less predictable are often missed
or rejected by both consultant and the client. As often as not, this is
because descriptions of the intervention and the reasons for its imple-
mentation cannot be delivered as simple sound bites. In my experience,
systems-oriented interventions are often more effective because they do
not rely on single, isolated impacts in the system that have direct rela-
tionships to “the problem.” Instead, they seek to imagine a series of
actions and influences that will eventually have the desired impacts.
I want to emphasize at this point that I do not totally reject all forms
of diagnostic methodology. The practice has real value for developing
relationships and establishing trust in instances where trust tends to be
an issue. I would urge you, however, to pursue questions about how the
system as a whole tends to work as well as explorations-related processes.
I would further caution you to limit your claims and the expectations
188 J. MACQUEEN
you set regarding the ultimate impact of your interventions and what can
reasonably be expected of them given the system/process point of view.
An issue that can be particularly difficult for a system/process-ori-
ented consultant is the question of measuring progress and/or success.
As we have discussed previously, the point at which you can say the
organizational problem for which you were called in has been solved
often does not exist. “Because the implicit theme of most change effort
is to move toward a more desired future state, ways to measure ‘pro-
gress’ become integral to the change process” (Marshak, 1993).
Because the client is paying for the facilitation of some agreed-upon
change, it is reasonable for them to want some indication of how that
change is coming along. Given that cultures and their effects are often
not tangible, it is difficult to apply specific metrics such as how much,
how often, how fast, or how many to this kind of work. Remember,
culture is about assumptions which are often not easily identifiable (let
alone measurable). Assumptions can be identified, and changes more
often quickly identified through shifts in attitudes and patterns of behav-
ior. The suggestion, here, is that when you are negotiating and establish-
ing outcomes with the client, you agree to specified shifts in behaviors as
observed over particular periods of time as indicators of progress.
This idea requires that you agree to descriptions of existing behaviors
that you and the client would like to see changed. It further predicates
that you have some relatively well-defined ideas of the kinds of behavior
that you and the client want to see established in their place. Please note
that I am suggesting kinds or types of behaviors. Unlike training courses
that offer to produce specific behaviors, cultural assumptions may pro-
duce a range of behaviors, many of which will lead to the same (or some-
times only) similar outcomes.
While these types of results are based on intuitive definitions and
subjective observation and interpretation, it is possible that, with great
care, you and the client can come to agreement on what types of behav-
ior, and how often they are observed, will constitute progress. When it
comes to systems and cultures, there can be no final or complete result.
However, behavioral observations such as these should provide you, the
consultant with an indication of when the desired behaviors are well
enough established that it will be safe for you to begin withdrawing from
the organization without threatening the collapse of the work.
Be careful. These can be especially difficult conversations for a client
not used to thinking in these terms. Plan your approaches carefully.
Before we move on, I want to remind you of some recommenda-

tions made by Pearce (1998) and by Tsoukas and Hatch (2001). These
appeared in Chapter 3 and so I will not elaborate on them here. These
experts suggest when you are working in complex adaptive systems, that
you keep your relationships with those systems and the people involved
as first person.
Many consultants seem to feel that they somehow must keep those
relationships at an impersonal distance. The thinking here appears to be
they can maintain the appearance, and perhaps their own belief, that they
have the ability to remain neutral and detached. I believe this attitude is
yet another artifact of the positivist mindset. I do not believe that it is
psychologically possible to maintain this distance from your clients and
your fellow man. Certainly, this cannot be done authentically and not for
any length of time. There are two problems with this. First, it will limit
your ability to effectively empathize with the experience of the people
in the group which you need to do to accurately judge what is going
on. Second, your own lack of authenticity is likely to generate a dimin-
ished trust between you and your clients. Neither of these will be help-
ful to you in making yourself effective when working in organizations,
especially on organizational culture, which as you will recall is all about
people building their sense of how to relate to each other and how to
go about their regular activities based on the experiences they have with
each other.
I am going to close this chapter by relating a couple of consulting sto-
ries that I hope will illustrate some of the points I want to make about
consulting to an organization when the issue is about culture. Both of
these stories are relatively short and lack the complexity of narrative and
detail you saw in Chapter 9. They are here primarily to demonstrate how
culture work is circular in nature, without clear beginnings or endings
but can still achieve a desired outcome. The first is about working with
the dynamic aspects of a culture in transition. With the second, I want
to demonstrate how an organizational issue, not presented as requir-
ing cultural work but as a “traditional organizational problem,” may be
addressed when re-framed as a cultural issue. It will demonstrate how
techniques you might use to shift organizational culture might be used
to shift an organization.
In my first story, in a major manufacturing and services company, cor-
porate marketing had introduced a new company-wide brand. The new
brand was initially popular and was showing success in terms of sales in
190 J. MACQUEEN
a number of divisions. In one division, however, the success of the year-

long effort seems to be slowing, even regressing. Corporate marketing
concluded that the slowing of interest in the marketplace for the product
was linked to staff resistance to the new brand. They initially wanted to
go in, overcome the resistance, restructure and somehow re-energize the
marketing operations in this particular division in an effort to get it back
on track.
I was concerned with this interpretation because resistance is a psy-
chological interpretation of what is often an emergent systems issue.
Overcoming resistance in groups is notoriously difficult and involves
making individuals the target of the intervention based on blaming them
for “the problem.” Systems interventions generally do not work well
when framed as problem-solving. Instead, work on issues like this is most
effective when it takes advantage of energy already in the system and
seeks to move or redirect it.
Implementing a new brand, as we saw in Chapter 9, requires shifts in
personal as well as group identities, both of which are elements culture.
These shifts, in turn, bring about changes in behavior based on differ-
ent cultural assumptions. With this in mind, I suggested that my client,
corporate marketing, give me an opportunity to visit the division and
observe their operations in some detail. What I found were groups of
people in various units of the division who had not resolved their organi-
zational identity issues. There was no consensus about the new identities
and their meaning for how the groups would pursue their work. These
people were working very hard to define or redefine their identities to
better fit what they perceived as the requirements of the new brand. To
many people on the outside of this effort, this appeared to be resistance
to the brand that was slowing down the desired results in marketing and
sales in the United States. To me, it looked more like a diffusion of effort
which was sucking energy out of the entire system. This interpretation of
peoples’ behavior could be characterized as entropy (Ries, 1996). The
individuals were working very hard to implement and establish a number
of variations in the defined and approved corporate version of the com-
pany’s identity. They were trying to come up with a single answer to the
question of overall identity, or, “who are we with this new brand?” The
result of their well-meaning efforts was to create confusion and diffuse
the efforts across the marketing function within the company.
From a systems point of view, the processes of sensemaking involved
in identity formation had failed to resolve these identity questions. As a
result, the cultural system in the division was experiencing disequilib-

rium, and the employees were unconsciously trying to bring it back into
balance. These issues had been active in the division’s marketing offices
for some time—since the implementation of the new brand. I suspected,
after talking with members of the marketing staff, the more diffuse ways
of doing things were on the verge of becoming a part of the culture.
I approached corporate managers with an alternative to the more tra-
ditional approaches to rectifying the situation, that is, overcoming resist-
ance and reorganizing staff. We arranged for the marketing staff from all
the division offices to come together for a meeting. The meeting began
with the executives explaining how they saw the current situation and its
consequences. At my suggestion, they specifically did not ask that this
group to try to come up with a solution.
Instead, I asked the whole group to self-organize into small groups of
around three to five people. The only caveat was that they not sit with
anyone whom they already knew well or worked with on a regular basis.
The goal of this arrangement was to get people working with individuals
who represented a variety of offices and functions, ensuring communica-
tion among people with a variety of influences and experiences. I made
this suggestion based on Olson and Eoyang’s observation (2001) that
the more frequently elements of a system interact or communicate with
each other, the more those elements are changed by those interactions.
Because systems are interconnected and interdependent, the more the
nature of the system is changed. This may result in emergence. In this
case, the hoped-for emergence of new identity (see Chapter 5).
I guided each groups’ conversations using approaches drawn from
techniques suggested by Block (2009), Bushe (2013), and Owen
(2008), encouraging people to converse using dialogue and avoid pre-
senting solutions or conclusions but rather to make observations in the
group about how the process seemed to be progressing. We arranged to
do a number of these meetings over time working to create trust and
open up communications among the individuals (Olson & Eoyang,
2001; Seel, 2000). I also periodically asked group members to be quiet
and reflect, especially about how their work had been before the confu-
sion began and how they wanted it to be now. This was an effort to stim-
ulate sensemaking (see Chapter 7). Leaders from throughout the group’s
hierarchy (who were active participants) were asked to stay alert for new
ideas as they emerged and reinforce those that were most in line with the
company’s original brand ideas.
192 J. MACQUEEN
Initial results were seen within a few months. The eventual result,
after approximately two years of reinforcing this effort, was the emer-
gence of a new version of the corporate identity which was still in align-
ment with the original version but to which the members of the local
marketing organization were more fully committed, willing to enact and
embody.
I hope this story is effective in illustrating how organizational cultural
systems are unpredictable and working with them does not always come
to neat conclusions. The interventions used to develop the brand-influ-
enced cultures in other divisions were essentially the same as those used
here. But those cultures had remained more consistent and stable. In
addressing the shifts that had taken place in this division, it was impor-
tant to find approaches that would encourage the group to remain alive
in their learning rather than assuming they had “solved” the problem
rather than developing new assumptions about who they needed to be.
Pay attention to how much effort was concerned with allowing suffi-
cient communication to encourage dialogue and building informal con-
sensus of the ideas that were generated by the group. These processes
take time and are non-linear. They do not happen in a logical, predict-
able order. And as mentioned previously, they can be subtle, almost to
the point of invisibility. A consensus achieved without manipulation
is likely to be reached through bits and pieces of conversation that will
be reflected back in terms of issues of identity and the meaning of the
action the group takes: How do we see ourselves individually? Who do
we think we are as a group? What do we think will be the likely result of
the actions we are considering and their impacts?
Remember that organizational culture lives in the narratives we tell
ourselves and each other about our work lives. The system depends upon
communication among its elements to stimulate growth and emergence.
In the next story, my client was a human services provider. They were
a for-profit corporation, exceptionally values driven and taking those val-
ues seriously in their relationships to clients and colleagues. They believed
in developing their staff and living out their beliefs. Many in the group to
which I was to consult had come into the organization as high school grad-
uates. At the time of my entry as a consultant to this particular team, several
had only recently completed their Associate degree (for which the corpo-
ration had paid). These people were proud of their education and deeply
appreciative of the investment the company had made in them. Most of the
staff were highly sensitive to the impact they were having on their clients.
The corporation was organized into multiple programs each serving

specific geographic areas and sometimes specific populations with par-
ticular issue. Each program had an administrative manager and a profes-
sional services manager who were coequal in authority.
The program to which I had been assigned consisted of the profes-
sional services and administrative managers, a couple of administrative
personnel and about a dozen staff members who comprised the rest
of the team. Most of the staff were young women of color. The man-
agement staff were older with professional degrees and white. This and
the accompanying discrepancies in education set up a significant power
differential between staff and management. The importance of this will
become clear later as the issues come to a head.
I was called in because the professional services manager and the
administrative manager (who was recently hired) were in conflict. The
conflict was principally about values and purview. Over a relatively brief
time, the conflict had grown problematic and visible to the point that it
was affecting the staff who were actively taking sides. There were accu-
sations from the staff of unfair treatment by the managers, racism, and
unethical treatment of the clients. The managers were as different in
their world views, as they were in their management styles. The profes-
sional services manager had spent most of her career in this corporation.
The administrative manager had recently left a similar, larger company
where she had been highly successful and her hire here was considered
a real coup. Corporate HR had investigated the accusations emanating
from team members on both sides of the conflict. The results had been
inconclusive. My charge was first, to help get things to settle down, and
second, to heal the wounds of the conflict.
I had previously done several consulting projects for the corporation.
I had also been privately briefed by HR on the findings of the investiga-
tion. I decided to forego the formal ritual of diagnosis. Instead, I invited
members of the staff to meet with me voluntarily to give me “their ver-
sions of the story.” I also wanted to begin forming relationships with
those who chose to engage. They were free to meet with me individually
or in groups of up to three individuals. Almost everyone, including the
managers, took advantage of the invitation.
Then, I asked the entire group to meet with me. In a conversational
style, I shared what I had learned from my meetings. I then checked in
with them to see if they thought my perceptions were fairly accurate.
They all agreed that, with a few corrections of some minor details, I had
194 J. MACQUEEN
accurately described what was going on in the group. When I asked

what they thought should be done about the situation, no one seemed
to have any ideas. A few people stated they had already tried everything
they could think of to improve the situation. No new ideas were brought
forth.
After I made some suggestions, the group and I decided to begin
working with a fairly standard conflict management technique with
which many of them were familiar. There were, however, some impor-
tant differences between my methods and those with which the group
members were familiar. The conflict management sessions would be held
with only two or three people. Attendance at any given session was to be
completely voluntary. An individual had to volunteer to be in a session
but anyone could invite a second or third person to be in that session.
That second or third person could be someone with whom the individ-
ual had no conflict, a little conflict, or a great deal of conflict—it made
no difference.
The idea was that they were there to talk and begin open conversation
with another person. The potential attendance of the third person was
available because group members had recognized a particular conflict
might involve more than just two people. The conflict was happening
in so many areas, had so many levels, and the sense of safety so limited,
that nobody knew where to begin. My suggestion was “Let’s just begin
and figure out who you as individuals want or need to talk to in order to
be able to have a reasonable work life on this team.” These sessions were
held in a neutral place away from the offices of the team. Everyone was
asked to promise confidentiality about what went on in these sessions.
A young woman who presented as very quiet was the first volunteer.
She chose to invite someone with whom previously she had had an out-
and-out screaming argument about what was going on in the team. In
this present meeting, the dialogue was carefully managed, each person
taking their turn, each person acknowledging what the other had said,
talking about how they perceived what the issues were, and what feelings
they were experiencing. The session was remarkably successful. These
two people did not come out of the session as best buddies. However,
they did reach an appreciation for and insight into the other person.
Shortly after that meeting, that first volunteer chose to invite another
staff person and then another. Others then were volunteering to meet
with me. Before long, I had worked with most of the staff in one config-
uration or another. As this was happening, there was a general sense of
the workplace becoming a calmer. Eventually I met with the two man-
agers. Unfortunately, they were so entrenched in their positions that nei-
ther one was going to shift their thinking.
As the individual sessions were going on, I attended and facilitated
the weekly team meetings. These meetings included the two managers,
their boss and members of the entire team. These were likewise care-
fully structured to help provide a sense of psychological safety among
the members of the team. Each meeting began with a check-in then pro-
ceeded to discussions where, one at a time and in dialogic fashion, peo-
ple talked about how they perceived the team was reacting to the conflict
management sessions and how things might be changing. Then they had
a bit of time to discuss the regular business of the team, again in dialogic
fashion. No one was allowed to respond directly to another person but
only to the issues that were being raised. The last part of each meeting
was a “closing” in which there was no cross talk, no discussion, and each
person was encouraged to say what was on their mind as they were leav-
ing the meeting.
Needless to say, the pace and rhythm of these meetings was totally
foreign to what most of the group had experienced at any other time in
their history. Before long some members began to voice dissatisfaction
concerning the style of the meetings. However, when I or others pushed
back on that challenge, many others in the group acknowledged that the
perceived safety in the room was not yet at a level where they felt they
could return to unstructured encounters.
This pattern of meetings went on for a few more weeks. Occasionally,
I would gently intervene to support some instance of sensemaking. Also,
I and others, with my encouragement, would carefully interrupt to ask
questions about how people might see things differently. How they were
seeing things now. How things might be different in the future.
Then, in one of the large group team meetings there was an unex-
pected outburst from the administrative manager: “This is S***! It is all
S***!” The group sat in stunned silence for a long moment. Then the
young woman who had been the first volunteer for a conflict manage-
ment session volunteer, looked directly at the administrative manager
and quietly but clearly said, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” The adminis-
trative manager abruptly stood and left the room, followed by her boss.
After another moment of silence, I acknowledged that what we had
just witnessed was, at the very least, surprising. After such an outbreak,
I knew the group had to right itself. They needed to take back the
196 J. MACQUEEN
meeting. Most people said they wanted to discuss what had happened. I
supported the idea as long as we stayed in dialogue mode and we focus
on what people thought the “event” meant.
In the following days, I learned that the administrative manager had
resigned. The VP, who had been her boss and attended and participated
in the staff meetings, asked if I believed it was necessary to continue my
presence in those meetings given that a major source of the conflict had
left the organization. In response, I requested the opportunity to con-
tinue to meet with the group to bring closure to the process.
Within a few weeks, I announced we were coming to the end of our
sessions. During this period, a great deal of work was accomplished. The
group continued to discuss the meanings of the “event” they had wit-
nessed as well as those leading up to it. During one of the final meetings,
I posed two questions: “What did you learn?” and “What was going on
with you that enabled you to learn whatever it was?” I also told them
that I wanted to shift my role slightly to be a more conventional facilita-
tor. In order to help clarify and record people’s insights so those insights
would not get lost in the process. I asked if group members would agree
to these proposals. They agreed unanimously. However, they insisted on
the proviso that if signs of conflict began to reappear, I would intervene,
and move them back into dialogue or otherwise contain the conversa-
tion. I agreed to their request, relying on Kaner’s facilitation methodol-
ogy to achieve a consensus (Kaner, 2014).
We proceeded to address the two questions. As anticipated, people
often had trouble articulating their thoughts. I supported their efforts
by drawing them out or asking them clarifying questions. I encouraged
others to do the same. Throughout the session, I was impressed with the
fluidity of the conversation and the level of cooperation demonstrated by
the group. Remarks during the closing suggested that other group mem-
bers were similarly impressed as well.
For the final meeting, I continued the approach used in the last ses-
sion though I wanted to add a question. The new question was, “Which
of the things you identified as having learned, should you keep doing if
you find yourself in conflict again?” Within about 90 minutes, they had
agreed upon an answer: “Keep talking no matter what. Identify what’s
most important, especially for clients. Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
Based on reports from senior management, the group was soon
demonstrating new elements to their culture and developed a reputation
for being one of the most successful units in the organization. They also
developed a reputation for being one of the most adaptive and pleasant
places to work in the company. Several members of the group went on to
achieve management and leadership roles. Outcomes I attribute, in part,
to the emergence of a new culture.
Throughout this book, I have tried to demonstrate culture is not
some separate part of an organizational system. I believe the character-
ization of organizational culture as something distinct from an organi-
zation represents more artifacts of positivist thinking. Organizational
culture is an integral part of an organizational system. It is an element of
every organization, dynamically interdependent and interconnected with
all of that organization’s other elements.
This chapter has endeavored to point out how fundamentally differ-
ent the paradigm of culture as a system of processes is from many other
models. I am hoping you will take to heart the shifts in your personal
paradigms about consulting which may help to make you more effective
in working with culture and, indeed, with organizations more broadly.
I am well aware that most of these recommendations may have you
swimming against the tide of contemporary trends in organizational
consulting.
You need not adopt all of my recommendations. Indeed, it may be
wiser for you to try out a few at a time, testing your own level of com-
fort and experimenting with what you can make acceptable to your
clients. As a close friend and colleague said to me, “This is not for the
faint of heart.” Indeed, it is likely that you will, at times, straddle both
the worlds of the practices I am suggesting and those of traditional
approaches. I am confident, however, that in employing new approaches
and marrying them to your cultural awareness, you can achieve rich and
satisfying success.
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Index
A brand character, 146, 155, 162, 165,

adaptive issues, 182 167, 169
Alignment, 15, 71, 82, 192 Brand promise, 146, 148, 155, 157,
analytic thinking, 179 162, 164–166
annual review, 73 Burley-Allen, M., 152
anthropology, 10, 11 Burnes, B., 15, 66
Appelbaum, S.H., 65 burning platform, 67
Appreciative Inquiry, 47, 73, 151 Bushe, G., 71, 86, 191
Artifacts, 12, 20, 21, 26, 30, 31, 35,
52, 144, 176, 182, 197
C
Cameron, K.S., 11, 20, 103
B Case study, 5, 38, 137, 176, 181
Barrett, F.J., 71, 135, 137 change, 3–5, 7, 13–15, 20, 21, 24, 25,
Baumeister, R.F., 45–48, 99, 102, 27, 33, 34, 37, 43, 54, 56, 59,
108, 116 65–84, 86–88, 91–94, 97, 107,
Beer, M., 13 108, 113, 114, 130, 132, 133,
Bergen, B.K., 71, 85, 105, 122, 126, 135, 141, 164, 167, 169, 170,
127, 129, 131 176–178, 181, 182, 186, 188
binocular vision, 59, 60 change management, 4, 65, 181
Block, P., 74, 147, 181, 191 Chia, R., 57, 59
Bower, M., 8, 12, 15, 24, 155, 160, Christens, B.D., 74
176 Client relationship, 171
brand, 144–149, 151–156, 158, coaching, 61, 70, 73, 74, 76, 147,
160–162, 164–169, 189–191 154, 169–171
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 199

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25685-2
200 Index
cognitive dissonance, 15 dichotomous thinking, 179, 180

Communications, 14, 18, 106, 132, Disruption, 3, 25, 34, 37, 54, 67, 73,
143, 146, 158, 167, 176, 191 83, 86, 93, 96, 107, 108, 114,
community garden, 4, 7–9, 51, 106, 134, 160, 164
175 Dynamic, 2, 5, 11, 12, 23, 27, 28,
Complacency, 66, 67, 71, 76 30, 35, 46, 48, 49, 53, 113, 114,
Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), 12, 175, 176, 189
18, 19, 27, 28, 32, 33, 37, 53,
76, 77, 80, 175, 176, 189
Conflict, 14, 15, 59, 65, 84, 121, 131, E
143, 193–196 Eisenstat, R.A., 13
consensus, 8, 9, 25, 27, 28, 37, 95, Embodied metaphor, 53, 122, 130
96, 105, 112, 119, 125, 130, Emergent, 13, 18, 20, 27, 29, 31, 34,
131, 134, 164, 184, 190, 192, 57, 71, 76, 122, 151, 190
196 Empowerment, 74, 75, 80, 81, 181
consulting, 2, 4, 22, 26, 28, 32, 37, entropy, 25, 190
54, 79, 144, 152, 153, 170, 171, Eoyang, G.H., 12, 18, 27, 71, 80,
176, 178, 181, 184, 186, 189, 109, 191
193, 197 Epistemology, 177, 183
Context, 4, 5, 10, 11, 19, 22, 24, 44,
49, 52, 54, 56, 57, 65, 70, 77,
82, 92, 93, 96–99, 101, 104– F
108, 110–112, 115, 116, 122, Filters, 45, 92, 112
135, 151, 167 Flow, 3, 12, 22, 34, 44, 45, 59, 67,
Cooperrider, D., 47, 71, 73, 135, 151 87, 91, 94, 97, 98, 101, 102,
Covey, S.R., 77 107, 108, 111, 132, 136, 180
Cues, 22, 25, 44–46, 91, 94, 96–98, Flux, 33, 176, 179
108–110, 112, 134, 151, 153
cultural analysis, 21, 41, 42
Cultural issue, 4, 65, 76, 81, 182, 189 G
culture perspective, 4, 5, 10, 17, 51, generative metaphor, 122, 135–137,
56, 62, 65, 67, 68, 70, 74, 76, 144, 151
80, 88, 94, 175 Gergen, K.J., 57, 58
Cynical, 162–165, 167 Guiding Coalition, 66–72, 76
D H
Deal, Terrence, 10, 13, 15, 20, 23, 70, Habashy, S., 65
73, 80, 103 Harvard Business Review, 13
decision-making, 9, 132, 178 Hatch, M.J., 19, 20, 23, 28, 30–32,
diagnosis, 66, 185–187, 193 35, 68, 95, 103, 121, 175, 189
dialogic technique, 148 Hernes, T., 57, 62, 175
Index 201
Heuristics, 45 Langley, A., 54–56

Hughes, M., 13 the language of becoming, 61
Humble Inquiry, 74 Leadership, 14, 67–70, 73, 80, 103,
hypothesis, 1, 51, 155, 160, 185, 187 109, 131, 143, 147, 197
Learning, 9, 23, 36, 60, 109, 121,
128, 141, 166, 175, 183–185,
I 192
Identity construction, 53, 93, 95, 96 Lewin, Kurt, 1–3, 59, 113, 114, 176,
initiative and responsibility, 154 177
Interconnected, 13, 18, 32, 37, 48, longitudinal survey, 146, 155, 158
59, 181, 182, 191, 197
Interdependencies, 4, 18, 32, 37, 77,
78, 80, 82, 91, 94, 152, 160, M
191, 197 Maitlis, S., 57
intervention, 14, 18, 25, 66, 83, 98, Malo, J.-L., 65
177, 178, 186–188, 190, 192 manufactured crisis, 67
intuitive expression, 184 Marshak, B., 71
Marshak, R.J., 177, 179, 188
Mattare, M., 170
J McGrath, 11, 13
Jackson, P., 15, 66 meaningmaking, 44, 46–49
Johnson, Mark, 2, 22, 53, 71, 85, meta-cultures, 9, 124
119, 124 Metaphor, 5, 22, 26, 27, 35, 53, 67,
71, 85–87, 104, 105, 115, 119–
127, 130, 134–137, 144, 151
K methodology, 59, 183, 185, 187, 196
Kaner, S., 8, 113, 152, 196 metrics, 188
Kennedy, Alan, 10, 13, 15, 20, 23, 70, modeling behavior, 69
73, 80, 103 model of organizational culture, 4, 13,
King, Martin Luther, 70 17, 20, 27, 28, 126, 175
knowing and learning, 177, 183 Moore, J., 87
Kotter, J.P., 13, 14, 51, 65–68, 70–78, Morgan, D., 75, 76
80–88, 176 Mullarkey, J., 60, 61, 175
Kotter’s model of change manage- multi-ontological, 52
ment, 5
N
L Narratives, 7, 13, 19–21, 45, 47, 48,
Lakoff, George, 2, 22, 53, 71, 66, 76, 192
85, 105, 119, 120, 122, 124, Neuroscience, 5, 9, 99
126–128
202 Index
O 151, 162, 163, 170–172, 175,

Oettingen, G., 45, 108 177, 180, 182, 184–186, 188,
Olson, E.E., 12, 18, 27, 71, 80, 109, 191, 196
191 Process Metaphysics, 60
Ontology(ies), 4, 51–54, 56, 62 process system model, 62
organizational culture, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, process thinking, 59, 175
9–13, 15, 17–20, 22, 23, 26–28, progress, 9, 80, 81, 116, 135, 153,
31, 32, 36, 41, 43, 52, 53, 60, 161, 165–167, 177, 178, 188
65, 71, 77, 80, 86, 88, 93, 95,
101, 103, 105, 119, 121–127,
129, 130, 135, 137, 155, 175, Q
176, 178, 181, 183, 184, 189, qualitative statistics, 142
192, 197 Qualitative survey, 161, 162, 168
construction, 53, 95, 101, 105, 126 quantitative statistics, 142
definition, 10–13, 15, 17, 18, 20, Quinn, R.E., 11, 13, 20, 103
27, 41, 52, 93
Organization Development (OD), 1,
4, 13, 132, 170, 176–178, 181, R
182 Resistance, 14, 15, 25, 77, 84, 114,
145, 178, 182, 190, 191
Ries, A., 25, 190
P
paradigm, 11, 17, 56, 81, 178, 179,
186, 197 S
Patwell, B., 73 Schein, Edgar, 2, 11–13, 20, 22–28,
Pearce, W.B., 19, 42–44, 59, 96, 107, 30–32, 34
189 Schön, D.A., 71, 135–137, 144, 151
Pettigrew, A.M., 10, 20, 23 Schultz, M., 68, 95
Phenomenology, 183 Seashore, C., 170
pragmatic prospection, 45, 46, 68, 99, Seashore, E.W., 73, 154
108, 116 Seel, R., 18, 23, 27–29, 31, 32, 121,
problems of inclusion and integration, 175, 191
84 semiotic, 41, 42, 46, 48
Problem solving, 11, 12, 25, 95, 152, Senge, P.M., 12, 17
190 sensemaking, 5, 22, 31, 34, 35, 44–
process, 3–5, 9, 11–13, 20, 22, 27, 46, 48, 49, 61, 67, 81, 91–99,
29, 31, 32, 34–38, 44–47, 53–62, 102, 104–110, 112, 113, 116,
65, 68, 72–74, 76, 81, 85, 87, 117, 134, 136, 151, 164, 167,
91–95, 97, 98, 104–106, 108, 190, 191, 195
109, 111, 115–117, 119, 129, Shafiq, H., 65
130, 136, 141, 145, 146, 148, shared basic assumptions, 11, 93, 121
Index 203
shared values, 84 Transformation, 45, 55, 74, 78, 82,

Shawver, M., 170 84, 147
Shevat, A., 69 “Triple Impact Coaching”, 154
shifting behaviors, 145 Triple Impact Model, 73
Shotter, J., 56, 175 Trust, 14, 42, 75, 80, 81, 85, 98, 154,
simulation, 53, 68, 100–102, 108, 161, 170–172, 187, 189, 191
109, 151 Tsoukas, H., 19, 20, 54–56, 189
Smircich, L., 21, 41, 42, 51, 52, 121 Typology, 21, 67
Smith, M.E., 14
Snowden, D.J., 52, 92
Social Constructionism/social con- V
struction, 2, 13, 53, 104–106 Valsiner, J., 48, 49
social world, 43, 44 Values, 9–11, 15, 18, 20, 21, 23,
Sortor, C., 47, 48 26–28, 30, 31, 35, 36, 42, 49,
Spector, B., 13 52, 53, 57, 66, 69, 76, 78, 82,
Stavros, J.M., 47, 73, 151 87, 99, 103, 109, 123, 126, 153,
Stories, 7, 19, 20, 35, 45, 47, 98, 112, 155, 159–161, 164, 165, 169,
113, 126, 152, 189 176, 177, 192, 193
Stroh, D.P., 12, 109 Vohs, K.D., 45, 99, 108
Subculture, 36, 43, 69, 78, 79, 148
symbol/symbolic, 12, 13, 21, 22, 28,
30, 31, 35, 41, 42, 45, 49, 51, W
52, 112, 119, 121, 147 Watzlawic, P., 148
systems thinking, 2, 12 Weick, Karl, 2, 5, 19, 22, 25, 44,
45, 47–49, 55, 60, 67, 91–95,
97–99, 103–105, 107, 108, 110,
T 112–114, 135
Tactics, 67 “What Did You Say?”, 154
Teaching, 24, 32, 73 Whitney, D.D., 47, 73, 151
teambuilding, 68 worldview, 43, 54–56, 98, 177
Theory, 1, 2, 42, 49, 52, 53, 62, 83,
125, 142, 172
Thompson, G., 170 Z
Training, 19, 69, 70, 72–75, 78, 79, Zeffane, R., 75, 76
81, 154, 164, 165, 176, 185, 188

Jim MacQueen - The Flow of Organizational Culture - New Thinking and Theory For Better Understanding and Process-Palgrave Macmillan (2020)

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Jim MacQueen - The Flow of Organizational Culture - New Thinking and Theory For Better Understanding and Process-Palgrave Macmillan (2020)

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“Organizational culture is the ever-evolving product of dynamic webs that con-

“The amorphous concept we call organizational culture is truly a flowing,

ISBN 978-3-030-25684-5 ISBN 978-3-030-25685-2 (eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

Romi Boucher—one of my readers and also an Organization Development

Richard and Cathy Hach who participated in the actual consulting

2 A Culture Perspective: Growing Culture in a

3 A Mental Model of Organizational Culture 17

4 Sense and Meaning 41

5 Ontologies of Organizational Culture 51

6 Culture and Organizational Change 65

7 Creating Context: The Role of Sensemaking

8 Metaphors: A Critical Culture Tool 119

9 Using the Ideas and Approaches: A Case Study 141

10 Working with Organizational Culture:

Fig. 3.1 Emergent process: a system of diverse agents (A), richly

No man steps in the same river twice. (Heraclitus)

One of the originators of the field of organization development, Kurt

© The Author(s) 2020 1

In this book, I will offer up new perspectives, ideas, and interpreta-

This book provides a tour of the elements of organizational culture.

Chapter 6, “Culture and Organizational Change,” demonstrates in a

A Culture Perspective: Growing Culture

Il fault cultivar notre jardin. (Voltaire, Candide, 1759)

© The Author(s) 2020 7

In 1985, Quinn and McGrath put forth a more sophisticated defi-

Self-organization is the tendency of an open system to generate new

One way of looking at this is that there is no such thing as organiza-

we can identify as the manifestations of a culture. The agents, the people

A potentially significant reason for the failure of change interventions is a

To extend this, I believe that poor alignment between a given change

Culture: a symbol rich system by which people in organizations construct

If you are planning to work with organizational cultures, and I assume

© The Author(s) 2020 17

A complex adaptive system (CAS) behaves/evolves according to three

As we continue to deal with systems as representations or metaphors

Organizational systems are inherently narrative. We can observe them

“symbol rich.” What do I mean by that and why is it important? Symbols

A symbol is something that stands for or suggests something else by reason

masterwork on the subject of organizational culture. If you have not yet

The accumulated shared learning of that group as it solves its problems

We need to unpack this definition. Note that it is first about

functioning of the group, what action might be taken to influence the

Instead this work is most effective when it takes advantage of energy

and rigid structures, essentially unchanging except in the face of heat

The emergent result of the continuing negotiations about values, mean-

In Fig. 3.1, Seel provides an excellent description of how emergence

Fig. 3.2 The cultural dynamics model (Hatch, 1993)

Thus, we begin to see conversations among people that talk about

Fig. 3.3 Culture as a complex adaptive system, Sub-systems in the cultural sys-

Emergent events in otherwise balanced systems tend to happen on a

Interruption is a signal that important changes have occurred in the

sensemaking, and possibly make a new or additional action to deal with

the organization (Sub-system D). If the solution or its application at any

Schein, E. H. (2016). Organizational culture and leadership (5th ed.). Hoboken:

In this chapter, we will explore the question of meaning: What do we

Can we see organizations not only as places where we gather to get

Smircich is writing about looking at organizations through a lens

1. We realize that organizations are representations of our humanity;

© The Author(s) 2020 41

2. We realize that organizations are symbolically constituted worlds,

of the book, he introduces the reader to an explanation of the construct

Fig. 3.1 Emergent process: a system of diverse agents (A), richly

Fig. 3.2 The cultural dynamics model (Hatch, 1993)

Fig. 3.3 Culture as a complex adaptive system, Sub-systems in the cultural sys-

1. We realize that organizations are representations of our humanity;

2. We realize that organizations are symbolically constituted worlds,

Ontologies of Organizational Culture

1. Complexity theory and, especially, complex adaptive systems are

Culture and Organizational Change

1. Establishing a sense of urgency