Lisa Jackson and Gerry Schmidt relate nine lessons from nature to corporate change in their new book, Transforming Corporate Culture 9 Natural Truths for Being Fit to Compete (2011, CorporateCulturePros.com, ISBN: 978-0-9846485-0-4). The book is divided into three sections, create, grow and evolve with three chapters in each. At the beginning of each chapter, the authors present a truth from nature along with its relation to business.
Starting with “In nature, everything has a clear purpose to fulfill, encoded in its seed.” The business side is that companies must be intentional and keep a clear vision. The book ends with “In nature, survival is about passing on your DNA.” For the business relation, leaders are the DNA carriers and they must pass on the leadership function to others. The remaining seven truths of nature are related to a company’s vision, trust, growth, collaboration, communication, adapting and changing mindsets.
Leading Transformation and Change
The authors begin by giving the reader a sense of the need today for effective leaders to stand up when there is a need for change in the corporate culture. The book explains to the reader that there is currently a “crisis in leadership” because so many leaders lack abilities to manage “diverse styles of people, situations, and opportunities.”
The book reveals a model for today’s leaders to follow to get their corporate culture in shape which the authors call the Nature’s Truths . They compare diverse workplaces with the millions of species of plants and animals on earth. “Each of these life forms has a different purpose and set of requirements for sustaining itself.”
They take it one step further with, “Intention is the seed of everything. Everything is the product of its seed. While “intention” is the most abstract concept we approach in this book, it is the most important.”
The book asks the following questions about the intention of corporate leaders:
- Are leaders conscious and transparent about their intentions?
- Do their intentions serve something more than just the need for money?
- Will it make the business – or world – a better place?
Reframing Change
Jackson and Schmidt write that a corporation’s culture is the driving force behind its success, especially in a knowledge-based economy. Behind the culture is the company vision.
They write, “Vision is the critical “constant.” Leaders need to relate that vision through a constant and consistent story. Trust and truth telling are also vital to changing corporate culture. Jackson and Schmidt include the following pillars of trust:
- Alignment and positive intent
- Candor and truth-telling
- Transparency
- Empowerment
Nature’s Guardrails in Corporate Change
The authors present detailed information about Goals, Roles, Process and Interpersonal(GRPI) as guardrails for transforming corporate culture. They go onto to define GRPI as:
- Goals-Why are we doing this and what does success look like?
- Roles-Who is doing what and who should be here?
- Process-How will the company achieve the goals?
- Interpersonal-How will everyone work together cohesively and effectively?
Changing Corporate Culture Mindsets
The last part of the book explores mindsets within a corporation and how those mindsets can interrupt or derail change. One of the typical and probably most damaging mindset is “We’re good enough with what we know how to do and the way things are.”
Jackson and Schmidt tell readers how to spot a mindset through behaviors and words. They also write about changing mindsets, “We have seen leaders successfully build a change-friendly culture by skillfully reframing the meaning of people’s roles and contributions to opportunistic, positive, and empowered.”
Nature’s Truths
While applying nature’s truths to business and corporate culture is a rather unique approach and is the main theme attached to the authors’ theories and models , the ideas and concepts presented in the book are strong enough not to need another layer of complexity. The nature theories continually made this reader work too hard to make and keep the connection. And, in the end, the nature’s truths didn’t provide any more insights into why people do what they do or react they way they do to change.
While the nature’s truths were distracting for me, the book has many strengths including being well thought out and nicely written. Two really great features of this book were the ‘Making It Work!’ sections with small steps that leaders can take to implement change and the summary sections at the end of each chapter. Both set this book apart from so many other change books. And, most of all, the writing was strong and the concepts were applicable.
