1 The implications of exploring the landscape I’m in!
The implications of exploring the landscape I’m in!
We hope that these exercises help to encourage you to build your awareness of the importance of understanding the nature of the culture around you. The Cultural Brailling activity gave you some idea of how to make sense of what is happening around you in terms of the people, their roles and the social networks in play and the beliefs and behaviours of the group members.
The ex-Navy Commander Jon Katzenbach helped you to understand the power of working with the cultural grain and leveraging techniques such as the pride builder approach.
You also focused on understanding the difference between macro and micro trends. You looked at an example in an army context and worked to understand the implications of the trends you explored in that example. Spotting, understanding and considering trends, in a wide variety of functions and levels of the Army is important to you and your teams.
Too often, trends are only considered at specific times and for specific sets of strategic activities. However, we want you to realise that at all levels of an organisation, ‘trend thinking’ can lead to positive outcomes. At senior levels of the Army, leaders have objectives and intuitive and heuristic appreciation of macro trends.
When you are able to translate these macro-trends into more specific influences on daily actions and thinking, micro-trend implications, then overall we think that you can help the Army become more change-ready and flexible.
As you wrap up this section, we want you to pull all these pieces together.
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What are your key take-outs from your work in this section?
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What do you want to focus on in more detail?
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What are the most important components of these insights about your current landscape that you want to take forward?
For you and your leaders: Always consider the overall influences and interactions of culture, change and trends.
References
- Peloso, A. (2020). Leveraging the Power of Micro-Macro Trends in Contemporary Organizations. Journal of Applied Business and Economics, 19(2).
- Amabile, T. M., & Kramer, S. J. (2011). The power of small wins. 89(5), 70-80.
- Kjaer, A. (2014). The trend management toolkit: a practical guide to the future. Springer.
- Jackson, M. (2019). Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity – Contents and Preface (preliminary draft – MCJ).
- Ehrhart, K. H., Witt, L. A., Schneider, B., & Perry, S. J. (2011). Service employees give as they get: Internal service as a moderator of the service climate–service outcomes link. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(2), 423.