Culture, Believes, Vision, Stories - Some thoughts and theories

'A shared vision is not an idea...it is rather, a force in people's hearts...at its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question 'What do we want to create?' Peter Senge


'Too many young people are being taught to give up their dreams before they have any experience attempting to pursue them'. Robert Fritz 'The Path of Least Resistance'


'It is not so much about to see what no one has seen before but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody sees.' Schopenhauer


'We can no longer stand at the end of something we visualized in detail and plan backwards from that future. Instead we must stand at the beginning, clear in our mind, with a willingness to be involved in discovery... it asks that we participate rather than plan.' Margaret Wheatley and Kellner -Rogers.


'Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair..' William James


'A belief is not a belief until you can visualize it, unless you can create a picture of it in your minds eye, especially if you have no doubts that reality can be - or is - possible.' Hedley Beare Aust Educationalist


'There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth - not going all the way, and not starting.' Buddha


'You see things and say 'Why'? But I see things and say 'Why not?' G.B Shaw


No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it. We need to see the world anew.' Albert Einstein


'If we always do what we've always done, we will get what we've always got.' Adam Urbanski


'Anecdotes, personal stories, reminiscences, like biblical parables, are the medium through which faith is restored. Stories are a form of poetry, and give us a saving image to personally relate to.' Peter Block Business Philosopher


"There are many definitions of organization culture. We view culture from the ideational perspective (Martin, 2000), and thus define it as the shared beliefs and values of members of an organization that provide meaning to and influence daily work life. Similar to Louis (1985) and Schein, (1992), we understand these beliefs and values affect work behavior in tacit and nuanced ways. These shared beliefs and values are expressed in organizational life through various more visible manifestations including business strategies, performance targets and metrics, management practices, formal and informal rules that govern behavior, traditions, stories and other symbols. While these different cultural expressions are based on the underlying beliefs and values (Schein, 1992), once established they serve to confirm and reinforce those beliefs and values. What results is forceful reciprocal chain of influence that resists disruption and change. We also do not view culture as a monolithic construct where all beliefs and values are shared strongly or entirely across the organization. Instead, we acknowledge that most large organizations are comprised of diverse sub-cultures. Yet we also believe that these sub-cultures share fundamentally similar ways of thinking about things and doing things that distinguish one organization culture from another." from Realigning Organization Culture for Optimal Performance: Six principles & eight practices
Organization Development Journal, Winter 2009 by Levin, Ira, Gottlieb, Jonathan Z

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5427/is_200912/ai_n42858880/

From wiki

One of the strongest and widely recognised criticisms of theories that attempt to categorize or 'pigeonhole' organizational culture is that put forward by Linda Smircich. She uses the metaphor of a plant root to represent culture, describing that it drives organizations rather than vice versa. Organizations are the product of organizational culture, we are unaware of how it shapes behaviour and interaction (also recognised through Scheins (2002) underlying assumptions) and so how can we categorize it and define what it is? Organizational communication perspective on cultureThe organizational communication perspective on culture is divided into three areas:

• Traditionalism: Views culture through objective things such as stories, rituals, and symbols
• Interpretivism: Views culture through a network of shared meanings (organization members sharing subjective meanings)
• Critical-Interpretivism: Views culture through a network of shared meanings as well as the power struggles created by a similar network of competing meanings

There are many different types of communication that contribute in creating an organizational culture:

• Metaphors such as comparing an organization to a machine or a family reveal employees’ shared meanings of experiences at the organization.
• Stories can provide examples for employees of how to or not to act in certain situations.
• Rites and ceremonies combine stories, metaphors, and symbols into one. Several different kinds of rites that affect organizational culture:

Rites of passage: employees move into new roles
Rites of degradation: employees have power taken away from them
Rites of enhancement: public recognition for an employee’s accomplishments
Rites of renewal: improve existing social structures
Rites of conflict reduction: resolve arguments between certain members or groups
Rites of integration: reawaken feelings of membership in the organization

• Reflexive comments are explanations, justifications, and criticisms of our own actions. This includes:

Plans: comments about anticipated actions
Commentaries: comments about action in the present
Accounts: comments about an action or event that has already occurred. Such comments reveal interpretive meanings held by the speaker as well as the social rules they follow.

• Fantasy Themes are common creative interpretations of events that reflect beliefs, values, and goals of the organization. They lead to rhetorical visions, or views of the organization and its environment held by organization members.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture

Culture is represented in a group’s:

language,
decision making,
symbols,
stories and legends, and
daily work practices.