Different places are----well----different. THIS is an accurate summary of 99% of what is now published/researched/said about cultures. Duh. Lots of things have made culture theories and practices useless--Hofstede did his 7, then 9, then 10 "dimensions" and 100,000 lazy academics copied him for 40 years = 200,000 useless articles about culture in research journals. Culture is EVERYTHING--that is certainly one problem with it. Culture is invisible, unconscious--that is certainly another. Culture is wimpy female stuff that real men shun and avoid and do not need--that is a third. Perhaps the DEEP THING in all these is this---we, filled as we all are with various vast, invisible, wishy-washy culture thingies, view, think about, handle cultures. The cultures in us distort all we think and do with cultures. This is a starting point.
Then there is the HARD TRUTH context about culture. Japanese ways do not work in Japan we know from bankruptcies yearly if nothing else. Japanese management is not Japanese--we know this because two nuclear plants were threatened by the giant grade 9 Fukushima earthquake--one had 3 nuclear meltdowns and one had no trouble at all. On any specific behavior dimension, about a third of all Japanese act and react more American-ly than average Americans; similarly, about a third of all Americans act and react more Japanese-ly than average Japanese. Right now--dear readers---try to explain this to yourself clearly.
This book presents one REMARKABLE MODEL of all aspects of all cultures--the Shared Practiced Routines model. Its implications are amazing. Selves are cultures. Selves are high performances. Cultures are selves. Cultures are high performances. High performances are selves. High performances are cultures. They are all SHARED PRACTICED ROUTINES! Once you get this deeply into your mind via this book, you will wield cultures of all sorts, and all their traits, types, dimensions with confidence and accuracy--building, dismantling, modifying, improving, fusing cultures with ease that amazes those around you.
But it is very hard work to think clearly about culture. Cultures are USED by sneaky people, by selfish people, by lower status people--to control outcomes. Cultures never come to us neutrally. So we have to always disentangle the culture from how Mr. X or group Y is USING it for their own selfish or evil purposes. Naive academics gets this wrong 100% of the time--reading their books is page after page of---different places are different, different people are different--duh.
How do you make, build, unmake, modify, fuse, cultures? You enact shared practiced routines together--practicing them till all are effortless, automatic, easily without awareness meshed with each other. It is just like mastering basketball, music, and anything that requires practice practice practice. The professors sicken us with their delusion that "concepts" and "analyses" and "insights" build, modify, improve, etc. cultures. That is the typical professorial wimp out--how to feel smart without being able to do anything. Harvard is a master of generating these kinds of wimpy-at-culture people.
One of 7 tools in this book is TRANSPLANTING X ACROSS CULTURES--where X is leaders, systems, products, business practices, etc. Dozens of consultancies worldwide are now based SOLELY on this 2-matrix method. It works!
Along the way this book goes into--in its 2nd half--detailed models of each of 10 components of all cultures--definition and uses (what definition we present depends on hidden uses), operators and tools (what operations we can do to cultures depends on our tools), traits and dimensions (these are THE SAME, only our attitude makes them differ--traits we INTEND to modify, dimensions we intend to leave as is), social processes and culture types (sets of traits = types appear in some processes not others), powers & high performances (our goal).
Then there is the HARD TRUTH context about culture. Japanese ways do not work in Japan we know from bankruptcies yearly if nothing else. Japanese management is not Japanese--we know this because two nuclear plants were threatened by the giant grade 9 Fukushima earthquake--one had 3 nuclear meltdowns and one had no trouble at all. On any specific behavior dimension, about a third of all Japanese act and react more American-ly than average Americans; similarly, about a third of all Americans act and react more Japanese-ly than average Japanese. Right now--dear readers---try to explain this to yourself clearly.
This book presents one REMARKABLE MODEL of all aspects of all cultures--the Shared Practiced Routines model. Its implications are amazing. Selves are cultures. Selves are high performances. Cultures are selves. Cultures are high performances. High performances are selves. High performances are cultures. They are all SHARED PRACTICED ROUTINES! Once you get this deeply into your mind via this book, you will wield cultures of all sorts, and all their traits, types, dimensions with confidence and accuracy--building, dismantling, modifying, improving, fusing cultures with ease that amazes those around you.
But it is very hard work to think clearly about culture. Cultures are USED by sneaky people, by selfish people, by lower status people--to control outcomes. Cultures never come to us neutrally. So we have to always disentangle the culture from how Mr. X or group Y is USING it for their own selfish or evil purposes. Naive academics gets this wrong 100% of the time--reading their books is page after page of---different places are different, different people are different--duh.
How do you make, build, unmake, modify, fuse, cultures? You enact shared practiced routines together--practicing them till all are effortless, automatic, easily without awareness meshed with each other. It is just like mastering basketball, music, and anything that requires practice practice practice. The professors sicken us with their delusion that "concepts" and "analyses" and "insights" build, modify, improve, etc. cultures. That is the typical professorial wimp out--how to feel smart without being able to do anything. Harvard is a master of generating these kinds of wimpy-at-culture people.
One of 7 tools in this book is TRANSPLANTING X ACROSS CULTURES--where X is leaders, systems, products, business practices, etc. Dozens of consultancies worldwide are now based SOLELY on this 2-matrix method. It works!
Along the way this book goes into--in its 2nd half--detailed models of each of 10 components of all cultures--definition and uses (what definition we present depends on hidden uses), operators and tools (what operations we can do to cultures depends on our tools), traits and dimensions (these are THE SAME, only our attitude makes them differ--traits we INTEND to modify, dimensions we intend to leave as is), social processes and culture types (sets of traits = types appear in some processes not others), powers & high performances (our goal).
