How to Heal America? – The illness of the nation part 2

By Viktor Kunovski

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Last week in response to what was happening in Greece and the euro-zone I wrote the post The illness of the nation – Why is Greece suffering?

Yesterday I enjoyed James Allworth’s blog at the HBR  “The wall Street Protests and America’s choice” as well as Laurence J. Kotlikoff contribution on CNN “America’s debt woe is worse than Greece’s “.This inspired me to ask you the question

How to heal USA/our nations/ us/ humanity?

It is time for major change, and I think people in the USA know and feel that.
For the past 3 years Americans have been choosing from a list of 80 to 100 values/behaviours and voting for the top 10 Personal values, Current culture values and desired culture values.  (see slide 3 on this pdf. )

Without going into much details, this diagnostic says that USA is quite ill at the present. All top 10 values/behaviours in the current US culture are limiting (nice and polite way to say toxic). These “old/toxic/not functional/cancerogenic values and institutions that don’t serve you/us, need to be replaced with what brings energy, nurtures us and simply works for ALL of us, not just for some of US. The future strategy therefore needs to be aligned with the most desired values of the US people.

Since there is democratic government in the USA and the country is not run by characters like Gaddafi, Americans will be quite all right.
Americans need to understand that these problems/issues are so big that they can’t be solved by the president or the government alone. They require systemic leadership and participation of all the citizens.  Thankfully this all inclusiveness is already happening. National dialogues on what is most important to the US people – “questions that matter” – is happening covertly all over the social networks. One interesting example of this is http://www.americanselect.org/
I believe that very soon we’ll see the manifestations of these activities and witness millions of people exercising the “democratic muscles” by openly going on the streets and “asking/demanding” (not rioting like in London last month) for CHANGE in USA.

USA is not alone in this. Global transformation, like never in the history of man has been happening for some time now. From Egypt and the Arab world, protesters in Athens, to students in Chile and anti-corruption demonstrations in India (to name just few), people within the system are showing big signs that something is ill within our nations and like cancer is attacking our economies, destroying wealth, health, education, environment. People also show readiness for transformative action that is socially fair, just, transparent and responseable.

The current US leadership needs to be open to the change that is inevitable, focus on what is happening at home, listen to its people and channel the incredible energies in creative ways. Opposing the changes will lead only to frustrations and possible civil tensions. If they are not wise to drive this process, believe me the new emerging leadership will, and it is only a matter of time. There will be some turbulence, which is very normal for THE DRAMATIC CHANGE, but overall USA and it’s people will be all right.

This global process of culture and consciousness transformation will leads to greater societal alignment, is naturally unfolding and it is unstoppable.
As my dear teacher loves to say: If you want to shine, you have to burn.

Are you linear or systemic leader?

By Viktor Kunovski

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In his latest book “the Wave Rider”, Harrison Owen, the originator of the open space technology makes distinction between organizations who were engaged in linear development and few others which had almost instantaneous change results and development trajectory that was anything but the standard linear model. He calls them High Performing System.

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You are executive with years of experience. You have an MBA from prestigious university and your organization is making money.
And yet the company results are just average, “good rather than great“.
The speed of change has left your company back in the race.
These days you feel like NOKIA looking at the iPhone.

So what is happening?

Do you belong to the old school of business leaders and thinkers, the linear (top to bottom) thinkers? or you are a systemic leader?

Your executive team makes decisions and strategies on the top floor or on the 2 day retreat somewhere in the mountain. Than you come back and try to execute the strategy down the line. By the time you got back from the mountain the strategy has become old. You know that something is not working.

What is happening, you ask again?

Have you noticed? your competitors have embraced systemic thinking and leading, they are not even hiding it.
They are measuring the culture, the pulse and the health of the whole system because they know that systemic intelligence is always wiser than the smartest minds.
They are approaching change systemically, employees participate in leadership and share responsibility.
Their innovation and creativity has exploded since they are working with those open space systemic methods and tools.

Clients, shareholders, environment, even your staff adores them.

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Get systemic in 3 easy steps:

1) Leadership team MUST commit fully behind the culture transformation. Without this any effort is waste of time and energy.
2) Start measuring organizational values and culture using CVA Culture Values Assessment
3) Involve the whole system in meaningful conversations based on the results from the measurements, especially on the values in the desired culture.

For more info contact COACH ERA

Macedonian values Re-Evolution

THIS BLOG IS DEDICATED TO MARTIN AND THE RE-EVOLUTION HE SPARKED IN MACEDONIA

By Viktor Kunovski
Twitter: coacheragroup
www: COACH ERA

Calendar of events:

May 2009: Macedonia becomes the first nation in South East Europe to have measured its culture and values.
At that time the data was showing alarming facts:
9 out of 10 TOP Values in the current culture were limiting.
One of them is Crime and Violence. The level of entropy in the system is 48%.
2009 till 2011: Social and political reforms are slow, administration is politicized, politicians corrupted, unemployment is at European record level of 31%.

June 5th 2011:  Macedonian Election for the parlament.
June 6th 2011:   The votes are known,   the ruling party stays in power. It is celebration night in the country.

That night a young man is brutally killed by the special police member dressed in civil clothes. The ministry of interior hides the event for almost 24 hours, than it spins what has really happened.

Macedonians protest on the streets in many towns demanding changes since that day.

Macedonia is going trough a process of systemic cultural transformation, similar to the one in Egypt, the rest of Arabic world, Spain, Greece.
These processes will be happening on a global level in many other countries unless the current leadership is wise to actually lead the transformations itself. Examples of such a leadership we currently have in Australia and South Africa.
The end goal of these re-evolutionary processes is creation of culturally aligned,   sustainable, just society that is also balanced with the eco systems that surround us.

These processes have one interesting characteristic. They have no single leader leading them. They are lead by the systemic intelligence of the group itself.
The social media appears to be the platform for connecting the people in the system.

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http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/06/11/macedonia-protests-against-police-brutalitymurder-cover-up-spread/
http://www.facebook.com/martincco#!/media/set/?set=a.10150216535124594.332087.844034593

The illness of the nation – Why is Greece suffering?

By Viktor Kunovski

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www: COACH ERA

This is not just an economic crisis this is a crisis of values.

What a month of uncertainty in the euro-zone and across the world markets.
CNN writes of the eminent Greek default. Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy…
Laurence J. Kotlikoff today writes that “America’s debt woe is worse than Greece’s“
Where is this going? What are the solutions?

I would like to observe this phenomenon from a systemic organizational point of view, not only financial.
Why is Greece and many others before her (USA, UK, Island, Argentina…) in such a mess? Are we learning something here, or we are turning a blind eye once again?

In May 2009, I have used a diagnostic tool developed by the Barrett Values Centre, to measure the values within the culture of Greece’s northern neighbouring country – Macedonia.  We also measured the entropy within the Macedonian system as well as the level of alignment in it. By doing this Macedonia not only become the first country in South East Europe to have measured its culture, but has become a strong indicator of the cultures of other Balkan countries. To the reader that intends to have greater insight in this matters, I suggest to read the whole diagnostic behind this measurement including the links that are given in this text.

Macedonian culture is similar with the cultures of the other nations in the region (Turkey, Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Serbia, Monte Negro, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia), therefore the Macedonian diagnosis could be useful in understanding some of the problems Greeks are having at the present.

The measurement shows high level of limiting values (read behaviours) within the culture of Macedonia such as corruption, bureaucracy, nepotism, blame…etc. Being born there and knowing the Balkan cultures I can say with conviction that these behaviours are also present within the Greek system. Macedonia has 48% of entropy.
Judging by some previous experiences and measurement, it seams that the Greek entropy has reached critical boiling points of over 50%. When Argentina’s banks collapsed in 2001 similar measurement was done few months before. It showed 60% entropy. In Iceland the measurement was done in 2008, it showed 54% entropy. That year Island economy collapsed. In the USA 2007, entropy was 52% and we all know what was happening there. See slide 11 (Argentina) from these presentation 18 (Iceland) 22/23 (USA). 

The leadership and the people in these countries and those who are trying to help them must understand that some of their biggest pain, problems and obstacles are results of their national values and culture. If they don’t make the effort to change these behaviours they will continue to suffer on economical, political and in many other areas.
This is also true for all other nations in the world.
The price of limiting values and toxic culture (blame, corruption, bureaucracy, short term focus, nepotism…) is staggering. For example if your organization or nation has 25% entropy, this means that every 4th day is unproductive and lost.  On global level the price of limiting values within our culture is simply mind blowing. The slide 41 in this presentation says it all.

When a human gets flue, the body reacts with developing temperature in order to fight the enemy (viruses).
When a human system gets ill and develops large levels of entropy (toxic values and behaviours in the system) people go on the streets and demand for change.

From Egypt and the Arab world, protesters in Athens, to students in Chile and anti-corruption demonstrations in India, people within the system are showing big signs that something is ill within our nations and like cancer is attacking our economies, destroying wealth, health, education, environment. We need to look in our cultures to find out why we are having temperature so often these days, and change the values in the system that are not serving us any more.

Leaders in Greece and all over the world need to follow the examples of some smart and wise leaders from Australia, South Africa, Latvia,…and use such opportunities to mobilize the systemic energies and channel them in the right creative directions by measuring the national cultures of their countries and start meaningful dialogues on values (things that matter) on a national level, where the whole system participates and gets aligned.

Why is asking questions a must for a modern leadership?

By Viktor Kunovski
Twitter: coacheragroup
Facebook: COACH ERA
Linked In: COACH ERA
www: COACH ERA

Have you seen a politicians or a CEO asking questions?
I must say I have but it seams that this condition is so rare that it does take a memory exercise.

I was observing people on leading positions this month, how they behave and what they do when facing the “crowd”. From governor Schwarzenegger in California answering questions on his Twitter panel, to a group of CEO and professors on a panel about creativity in business during the global entrepreneurship week.

Wow, those people are so wise, they were answering to all the question that came from the public.
But should it really be this way?

Most of our business and political leaders are making this big mistake continuously. Our teachers and professors at the universities are part of this pattern as well.
Perhaps it is something within the culture in the western world, where we project our power to our leader (father) and we expect that he is smarter, wiser than us, therefore the answers should come from him only.

So why is it such a big mistake to answer “only” and not ask questions from a leadership position?  These are some of the reasons:

When a leader is only answering questions he is not allowing the responsibility for an issue (task, problem, project) to be shared.[i]

Psychologically this looks like this:

The leader, “the big one” (the father) is responsible for all, therefore he knows all and he has answers to all.
The public “the listener, the small one (the child) knows less, is less responsible and is waiting for the right solution, decision etc. to come from “daddy”.

This is not only disempowering for the people who are lead, but is also a big burden for a leader (or the leadership team) to carry on its shoulders for a long time. This way does not encourage personal growth, and when there is no personal growth there is no organizational or systemic growth too.

By answering and not asking meaningful questions leaders are blocking the creativity, the collective insights and wisdom naturally nested within the system. This maybe serves a narcissistic purpose but has no valid leadership and creative value. The leader is not learning a thing from the pool of knowledge that has the most valuable information for him/her.

The above method of leading by answering is old fashioned, is fear based with a power struggle in it, it is not liberating energetically and it does not support creativity and the regenerative natural flow of the system.
The bottom line is that organizations/systems that are lead by such leaders have less creativity, possess fear based culture are less productive and obviously they make less money as result of this. This is certainly not what we want.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like Mr. Obama , but he or any other business and political leader must start to ask more and more meaningful questions and create  supportive environment for the collective intelligence to come to surface.
Leaders need to allow open space communication where things unfold freely. In such a way leaders support co-creativity, invention, cooperation on a global and/or local level.[ii]

For the end let me “walk my talk” and ask some questions you may use on personal and organizational level:
Find a group of minimum 3 to 4 people who would like to explore these or other meaningful question that matter to you.
With right facilitation the size of these groups can grow to several thousands.
For those of you who are not familiar with the open space methodologies take a look at some of these links:
world cafe, open space.

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For facilitation of the 7 levels of organizational INQUIRY services in your team, organization or nation contact us.
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Exercise 1:

What is my(your) life purpose?
How could you contribute to humanity?
What stops you from being the best person you want to be?

Exercise 2:  “7 Levels of organizational Inquiry” based on the Richard Barrett 7 levels of consciousness model (click on the image for full clarity)

Exercise 3: 8Q suggested by Now-Here

What is my unique Purpose?
How am I releasing the magic of the moment?
How am I venturing into uncertainty?
How am I focusing the power of my intent?
How am I supporting growth?
How am I learning to see the invisible?
How am I returning my gift?
How am I keeping my energy clear and bright?

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[i] Coaching for performances John Whitmore Nicholas Bradley 1996

[ii] http://www.now-here.com/academy/dialogues/no2/media , http://www.now-here.com/8qs/

Open space technology, social media, global consciousness and culture transformation.

By Viktor Kunovski

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www: COACH ERA

I write this paper because I think, feel and see the unfolding of the biggest change in culture and consciousness the human kind has ever witnessed on the planet.

How will the world look like during and after these changes I don’t know now. This is a matter of evolution itself.
My only assumption and wish is that people, organizations and nations on the planet will be functioning more coherently and with more alignment. See “What is alignment”.

One thing I know is that open space technologies are the simplest form of group sharing and dialogue.
Today they exist in different names, such as “The world café”, “open end inquiry” or “appreciative inquiry“.

The number of people that can engage in these open spaced groups could be from 2 to several thousands people big. If we creatively use the social media technologies as a platforms, these groups could  reach millions.
People in these groups sit in formations of 3/4/5 around tables (or on the phone in a webinar) and they are lead by the group leader.[i] The leader is a person that ask a meaningful question.

The purpose of these open spaced groups is to find the way forward to an issue. An issue could be a problem that needs to be solved, or could be a developmental issue like “where does our community wants to go”?

The experiences and the facts show that the intelligence of the group (system) in cases like this is always superior to an intelligence of an individual or an isolated leadership team (general managers or political leaders). [ii]

Around the world there are many groups that are gathering and using the open space technology.
It happens to be, that I am also a member of such a group so I have kind of insiders view in these processes.
In my group we call this process “open ended Inquiry”. Our group leaders are proposing a single question at a time. We gather in groups of 3 and each of us talks for 15 min. When one person talks the others only listen, they don interrupt.

The effects of this process are empowering, illuminating and also healing.

The level of insights and creativity after a meeting with my group is 10 fold.

To describe this process imagine hundreds of meters deep dark vertical cave in the ground.
Imagine that few of those cracking luminous sticks that are used by explorers or solders are being simply dropped to fall freely. The gravity pulls the sticks towards the bottom and they simply fall effortlessly and they illuminate the space around. Creative energy is released from the process that is used to make changes in ones lives or to achieve goals in organizations and communities.
This is how the open spaced technology works, bringing on the surface the new illuminated knowledge and ideas started by a single question.

Now imagine the combination of open spaced technology, powerful leadership that asks meaningful questions with the platforms of social media.

This is the formula of managing your organization, community or nation towards impeccability.

If we can focus the energy and the attention of a large group, with powerful questions we will create an amazing shift in culture and in consciousness of people.

Lets try it by answering the question of the week?

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Connected readings:

Why is asking questions a must for a modern leadership?
“Values or Death”
global alignment , the role of social media in culture transformation and organic systemic leadership.

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[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology
ii The wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

What is Alignment?

By Viktor Kunovski

www: COACH ERA

Let me start this writing by quoting Wikipedia on what alignment is[1]:

Alignment is the adjustment of an object in relation with other objects, or a static orientation of some object or set of objects in relation to others.

To make things simple and light please see this 60 seconds clip on you tube to see an alignment in the nature:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V71hz9wNsgs&feature=player_embedded

Beautiful isn’t it.

Humans can also create a wonderful alignment.
Examples of people accomplishing alignment are many. Think of a symphonic orchestra, a 30 dancers ballet group, or bring your memory back a year ago to the opening ceremony of the last Olympic games in China

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUy9OgRRXnw&feature=related

Well, imagine now how your organization, city, nation or the whole planet will function and look like if we create organizational and global alignment.

Why do we need alignment?

In the business world, companies that have aligned cultures are the best performers on the market, sometimes outperforming its competitors for several times[3]. At the same time they are the most desired places to work in.
Alignment saves time, energy, resources, money…lots of money. Companies and national budgets could save trillions of $. See the slide 89 of this presentation named Estimated cost of Entropy (the energy in the system that is unproductive and is result of limiting values within the culture as well as the lack of alignment) . It shows the trillions of $ lost from the national budgets.
In sport, the most aligned teams are the ones with a gold medals around their necks.

How to create alignment in your organization/nation?

Start by asking people what values and behaviors they want the most in their life and in the organizational culture.
Measure the culture of your company, community or nation.

After the measurement you’ll have much clear picture of where you are and what needs to change in your strategy to get where you want to be.

Constantly use the “7 Levels of INQUIRY” questions. They will help your organization to start openly talking about your values, culture, how they affect you and what needs to be done in order to improve.  Trust the systemic intelligence, the system is always smarter.

UNILEVER Brazil is a several billion dollar company. They and other 2000 companies around the world have started a process of culture transformation. This process leads to an alignment in the organization and brings the mentioned benefits. [4].

Following the experience of the corporate world some countries have taken the advice from the business leaders and have started the process on national transformations that will lead to alignment on the national level.  Nations like Australia, South Africa,  Macedonia[6], Latvia[7] and several others have started a process of national alignment and paving the way to others that will follow.

What is needed to create an alignment?

1) Full system participation – an attitude that everyone is important, responsible and included and is a leader within the system.[8] The events in Egypt are good example of how this looks like on big scale.

2) Commitment from the top Leadership of the system organization, region, nation etc.

3) Continuous Measurement of culture and values within the system.

Social media and Alignment

The wonderful tools of social media that we have at disposal are predominantly used to chit chat, market and sale. They are very rarely used by our political and business leaders to ask powerful, meaningful questions.

Imagine the effect and the power of a cohesive and synchronized group of people asking meaningful questions in large numbers?
Imagine president Obama, Medvedev, Lula (to name few) and the president of your country asking together questions that matter in one voice.

Questions like how do we want planet to look like in 2020?
What do we have to do now to accomplish that goal?
What action are needed today?
etc, etc…

This process of open inquiry will create a global inclusion, that will generate global responsibility and mobilize the global collective wisdom and energy which will eventually result with collective alignment on a global scale that will bring sustainability and cohesion HOME on Earth.

Viktor is the author of the book “Values or Death“.
The book describes the process of the cultural transformation in organizations and nations.
It touches questions about importance of organizational culture for the overall performances of the system(business or nation).

Now you can download the chapters 2-5 of this book for free by visiting and signing up on this link

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment

[3] From “Good to Great” by Jim Collins

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92VaLELLyjk&feature=player_embedded

[5] http://valuesjournal.com/?p=570

[6] http://www.skyisthelimit.org/MCAssessment%20-%20May%202009%20USAID%20Official.pdf

[7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYGa38eqzik&feature=player_embedded

[8] http://coachera.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/the-role-of-social-media-in-culture-treansformation/

The role of the social media in culture transformation

By Viktor Kunovski

Facebook: COACH ERA
Linked In: COACH ERA
www: COACH ERA

I like analogies.

Lets take a 8cm long garlic chopping knife (a tool).
In my drawer is useless, in the sink is dirty and stinky, in the hands of a soldier….and in the hands of maestro chef, well who is buying the wine then?
The knife on its own does not make the finger licking dish.

So our Soc. Media (SM) tools (Facebook, Twitter, linked….) are more or less like the knife. Often times they remind me of the old media. More marketing, more sale, brainwashing…etc. Do you remember the movie Network from 1976?

So on their own (without the skillful hand) they are nothing really new in the context of social change. Now here comes the braking point I believe.

If appropriately used and guided by a skillful chef (I will stop with the analogy here and call my chef a systemic leader) SM tools could and I believe will provide a platform for staging the biggest consciousness and social change the humanity has seen. Let me just add here that the signs of this are emerging and they are visible in small numbers.
The numbers are not so small anymore, take a look at Egypt, North Africa and the Arab world (this text line is added on 27th Feb. 2011)..

If you ask your self how, I would like to share some of my experiences.

For social change (we also call it cultural transformation) several things need to be in place:

1) Full system participation (this is where the SM tools become the platform for organizational and global alignment).
Just imagine the power of numbers.
Imagine 100 million of people (facebook @ present has 600 mil. users) being lead and focused on a issue, topic, problem that needs to be solved.

Anyone who has experience with appreciative inquiry, or open ended inquiry or world café discussions will know how powerful a single question can be in order to create positive change and attitude within a group.
Now imagine that instate of the current confusion on the SM (by the way this is only a reflection of our personal and collective confusion and lack of global systemic leadership) we start to use the SM in a coherent and aligned way and start to ask questions that matter on corporate/local/global level. This will start a process of inclusion and WHOLE SYSTEM PARTICIPATION and will tap the collective intelligence of our employees/people on the planet.
By the way, culture is extremely difficult to change without the whole system participation.

Further more, this process will also generate a systemic responsibility among the participants, which means that we do not have “a Leader” but rather a shared ownership and responsibility or a “systemic shared leadership”.
This is how we’ll govern our organization, nation or the humanity. This is the social change we are talking about.

2) Commitment from the top Leadership of the system (organization, region, nation, the planet).
- In the company the CEO and the board of director must be inn.
- In the nation, the government, president, prime minister must be fully committed to the process, etc.
- On a global level, all must be inn, UN, Governments, IMF, Google, IBM, corporations…

3) Continuous Measurement of culture and values within the system.
This is available and the tools are incredible.
In addition to this we need to follow the KPI (Key performance Indicators) of the things that matter to us.
Global KPI for example would be clean water indicators, global warming/temperature, education indicators…etc.

P.S.

Let me just say that this is not a theory. Over 2000 companies and some 60 nations are using the above described processes to accomplish social transformation and create cohesive and sustainable systems.

Question of The week: What is the Leadership the world needs today?

By Viktor Kunovski
Twitter: coacheragroup
Facebook: COACH ERA
Linked In: COACH ERA
www: COACH ERA

Dear reader,

My question/s and answers intend to provide platform for opening an INQUIRY (dialogue) that will enable systemic wisdom and intelligence to come to surface. Your answers and contribution are of the highest importance.
The system will not change without you.
!!! If you post your answers on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter please also copy and paste them directly on the blog bellow!!!.
Thanks

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This week question is:

What is the Leadership the world needs today?

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Instructions for working with the questions in an open ended inquiry process.
Find a partner for these question/s. You may do this over skype as well.
Ask each other, the question for 10 min.  As a listener do not interrupt your partner.
Please share your insights and comments below.

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If you are answering the questions of the week for the first time, I suggest you to read the blog posts:

Why is asking questions a must for modern leadership?   and
Open space technology, social media, global consciousness and culture transformation.

If you can’t measure, you can’t manage.

4. Know your culture
by Viktor Kunovski
Twitter: coacheragroup
www: COACH ERA

Chapter 4, taken from the book “Values or Death” available NOW in promotional copy only.

In the 21^st century, organizations and nations that don’t know what their culture is are as good as planes without a radar.

* * *

There is so much talk about values and culture at present, and this is really very good.
Politicians talk about the right values, the businesses talk about their values. Several commercial on the TV in my country are talking about the values of our biggest bank.
Yet none of them is actually saying what those values are.

A year ago I lead an executive coaching training for one of the biggest and most profitable company in our region. Over 100 middle managers were involved in the training. The training was divided in different groups of 15-20 people, so I run the same training in repetition several times in period of one month. While preparing the training program, I learned that this company has a small list of chosen values that were supposed to present the core of what this company is and stands by. They even had a very special name for its list. I know that these values were carefully chosen with the best of intention by the highest executives of this multinational super company when they were creating the vision and the strategies for the company.

During the first training group I noticed something that was so obvious that was simply impossible not to be noticed. It repeated in exactly the same way with all other groups. On the question “what are the core values on your company list?” the first response was silence. Then people would start to mumble puffs, and uffs, circle with their eyes, become irritated and the feeling in the room was one of dissatisfaction.
At the end people would mention the values on the list as if someone held a gun in their heads. It was more than clear that they had no connection or belief, that those values were the core of their organizational culture.

This is only one of thousands of examples around the world, of companies who despite the best intentions of its executive teams are not having cohesion (cultural alignment) among its people. This phenomenon is widely spread and causes companies and whole countries to loose billions of $, under perform and not to live to its full potential.

Even when they are profitable, companies are under performing because of this.

The process that leads to creation of high performance culture and is needed in order to create FULL SPECTRUM, ALIGNED ORGANIZATIONS is called cultural transformation.

The key of this process without which this transformation is almost impossible (or in the best scenario it is very difficult to accomplish) is the full commitment of the top executive leadership team behind this process. The second option (when the leaders are not committed) will be discussed more in detail in the chapter 8.
Once this key element is in place the process of cultural transformation can start with the first step. The MEASUREMENT.

Remember If you can measure it you can manage it, this is a key principle in this process.

Companies are loosing money, energy, time and people because of weak corporate culture and limiting values. This is true even when they are profitable.

Without measurement of its culture companies are like a surgeon that operates without previous scan or examination. The design and the success of any business development strategy is jeopardized and minimized from the first moment if culture is not known. This is very risky and dangerous place to be in today world.

High performing culture is possible only when there is systemic leadership in place, when the culture is FULL SPECTRUM, when there is low cultural entropy and when the values alignment is high.

Take this wisdom from the CEO of a billion dollar company who are actually doing this:

IF WE DON’T CHANGE OUR CULTURE, WE WILL NEVER ACHIEVE OUR BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

Kees Kruythoff CEO Unilever* Brazil

For more information on how UNILEVER Brazil is changing their corporate culture and the successes of this process also visit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92VaLELLyjk&feature=youtu.be

http://www.slideshare.net/vikunovski/unilever-brazil

http://www.valuescentre.com/uploads/2010-09-02/Unilever%20Brazil%20Case%20Study.pdf