Wrapup thoughts from the Leadership Institute - Organizational Culture

John Perry Barlow today posted a long post titled Too Alive to Be Virtual, about how he's been too busy to blog all the things he's been thinking of writing about - I know just how he feels! So, in an effort to do at least a little catching up...

On the last day of the Educause Leadership Institute in Boulder, Mark Sheehan gave another terrific session on Organizational Culture. While I typically have not been really focused on organizational development in my professional life, this session really resonated with me - whether because Mark has a wonderful way of leading people into this territory, or because I'm at a point where this kind of topic makes sense to me.

Mark introduced us to the work of Ed Schein , a faculty member at MIT and writer of the seminal work on organizational culture, Organizational Culture and Leadership. The first chapter of the new third edition of the book is up at that link as a PDF, and is well worth a read.

When we examine culture and leadership closely, we see that they are two sides of the same coin; neither can really be understood by itself. On the one hand, cultural norms define how a given nation or organizations will define leadership—who will get promoted, who will get the attention of followers. On the other hand, it can be argued that the only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture; that the unique talent of leaders is their ability to understand and work with culture; and that it is an ultimate act of leadership to destroy culture when it is viewed as dysfunctional.

One question struck me at the Institute - why, in a field that is heavily dominated by males, were all of the brightest and most engaging people I met at the Leadership Institute women? Something to ponder...