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Sunday Jul 22 2001 | Updated 0024 hrs IST 1354 EST
Conflict by design
By Invitation / Prasad Kaipa

IN today’s rapidly-shifting markets, the law of nature —learn and adapt, or die -— has become the law of the marketplace. What, then, would happen if we began thinking of and designing our organizations according to the principles of living things?’’ asks Ken Baskin in his book Corporate DNA.

At SelfCorp, we, too, have been exploring how we can develop rules for successful businesses using living systems approaches. We live in a world with short periods of relative stability often followed by longer periods of chaos. Market character often changes drastically after such chaotic periods and new market ecology emerges. Emergent phenomena and ecological metaphors are useful in understanding how organizations can operate, cooperate and evolve in a complex and highly volatile environment.

Hamel and Prahalad, in `Competing for the Future,’ propose that companies should pre-empt or build dominance in emerging market ecologies as economies operate according to precisely the same rules as nature. We can take the same analogy inside the corporation.

We can seek what it would mean for organizations to coevolve with their competitors in `market ecologies,’ to structure themselves for the purpose of learning and adapting. We can make the transformation from just the mechanical model of bureaucracy to include a more organic form to supplement the mechanical model.

In writing this paper, we chose to stretch business language a bit by using non-business terms like `heart’ and `spirit,’ and to bring in the more subjective perspective. In addition, we consciously included either/or thinking by allowing contrasting points of view to co-exist.

It is to acknowledge the fact that nature evolves in its own fashion irrespective of our mental models and conceptual frameworks. What is DNA in the context of organizations? When we consider a corporation as a living organization, corporate and governance structures represent the `body,’ corporate culture and values represent the `heart,’ strategy represents the `head,’ while leadership and purpose of the organization represent the `spirit.’

Just as human beings have polarity between head and heart in making decisions, organizations have polarity between the `heart’ and `head.’ Many times, organizational strategy dictates the choices for the organization explicitly while the culture and values may accept and/ or resist those strategic choices.

When there is alignment between strategy and culture, the organization makes big strides in implementing that strategy and if culture resists the strategy, implementation goes nowhere. Similarly when executives model an environment of trust, openness, transparency and integrity (values and principles) in addition to creating a larger mission and purpose for the organization, the spirit of the organization gets revitalized and reenergized.

This can result in employees taking more responsibility and accountability, reduced employee attrition, higher quality customer service and increased creativity and innovation. When we begin to align head, heart, spirit and body of the organization, building of corporate identity (branding), knowledge creation and innovation, design that communicates company values and culture (so that it is easily identifiable and brandable), the flow of information and development of the `corporate nervous system’ become more effective.

The issues of governance structures, learning processes, role of executives and strategy become interwoven and synergies between these four, we predict, becomes more emergent. Whatever we say here in this paper at a conceptual, descriptive and methodological levels has been said by other researchers and consultants in parts without bringing in the concepts of DNA or corporate genetics.

Why are we evoking the DNA metaphor and why should organizations pay attention? When you identify the genetic code of an organization, you understand the unique and invisible essence that distinguishes itself from every other code that is out there. Studying, cloning, genetic engineering, predicting future behavior and identifying becomes possible only when we first identify and isolate the genetic code.

Just as Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Thymine function as the building blocks for the human genetic code, there are elements within the organizational system that function similarly. The basic building blocks do not change between one organization and another, only the sequence of base-pairs changes. Base-pairs represent the polarity at the foundational level, interdependent opposites which define and give life.

Without knowing the `base-pairs’ that organize in different ways to give us the DNA sequence of an organization, we can neither replicate success in other organizations that are acquired, nor clone our culture in new divisions in other countries, nor prevent `diseases’ that could wipe us out. Once we understand the genetic code i.e. know the DNA of an organization, then we can study, clone, replicate and repair its defects and use it to study genes; build various cells (divisions), organs (functions), and identity (brand) in a conscious and purposeful way.

We must also keep in mind that all culture is local and that its replication at other locations may be manifest in significantly different ways. Recognition that cultural manifestation of corporate DNA is the combination of the base-pairs and the environment is critical in the analysis of potential mergers and acquisitions. Virtually all mergers are acquisitions because, as they experience oppositional tension (their cultures on opposite poles) it is seen as a problem to solve which leads to a power struggle over which pole to choose.

As these multiple power struggles occur, it ecomes clear that one of the merged cultures is `winning’ in these struggles. As this happens, it becomes clear, especially to the acquired culture, that the combining of the two has been more of an acquisition than a merger. Think of the Chrysler-Daimler merger or the Honeywell-Allied Signal merger cases. Especially in the Chrysler-Daimler merger, which was promoted as `merger of equals,’ two years later it is quite clear that Daimler acquired Chrysler.

(The author is the CEO of SelfCorp. The second part of this research paper will appear next Sunday) -
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