Embedded in memory

From the earlier sections, I hope we have a basic grasp of concepts like values, principles, enablement systems and the general map of culture. Of course, it's quite a lot of ground to cover, so how much you understand probably depends upon how much you remember and when it comes to culture, nothing matters more than memory.

Within any collective, the values we espouse and the principles we hold are embodied in the written history and the living memory of its members (see point 1, figure 1)

Figure 1 - Memory

This is why, if you wish to change the culture of any organisation then you need to change the experience of its member and that experience means dealing with past memory. It's not enough to simply say words but instead action and the memory of action is required. Memory unfortunately is very fickle thing, it's a faulty but incredibly useful system. In the seven sins of memory Daniel Schacter highlighted known areas of failure which include :-

• transience - forgetting with the passage of time.
• absent-mindedness - where event details are overlooked which can lead to change-blindness (failing to see differences unfolding over time) and shallow encoding (encoding only at a superficial level).
• blocking - where information is encoded in memory but we can't recall (i.e. someone's name)
• misattribution - where we do remember but what we remember is wrong or even not a memory of our own but manufactured.
• suggestibility - the tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources into personal recollections.
• bias - distorting influences of our present knowledge, beliefs, feelings on new experiences, or our later memories of them
• persistence - negative memories tend to persist a lot longer than positive ones.

Those things which become perceived as negative values and principles can persist for a long time often becoming embedded in myths, legends, symbols and even rituals within an organisation.  The story of that person who "got fired for making a call home" or the "sales executive who squandered millions on lavish parties" might not be reality but it can become embedded in the collective's  faulty memory. To overcome this memory you need not only action but repeated action i.e. it has to become the "experience" of members.

The problem with memory is that it affects our sense of psychological safety within the collective (point 2, figure 1 above). A failure to allow challenge (part of our doctrine of universal useful principles) or an action to discourage challenge (i.e. a senior member of the collective dismissing without good cause a more junior members view) can become remembered and in cases impact the members ability to challenge or communicate in the future. It can also undermine our sense of belonging to the collective (point 3).

At this point, we should highlight our first culture cycle (see figure 2). You can consider this a flywheel (in its positive sense) or a doom loop when things start going wrong.

Figure 2 - The flywheel or doom loop?

For a collective to succeed it needs to diffuse its values to others (point 1). That collective however is in competition with other collectives and that competition causes values to evolve. The success at which we can diffuse values depends upon both the effectiveness of the enablement systems (i.e. mechanism of diffusion) and the effectiveness of the collective itself (i.e. the use of universally useful principles) - see point 2. Those values and principles will change over time but will also be embedded in the memory (point 3) of the organisation through stories, rituals and symbols. That remembered history will impact the psychological safety of members of the collective which will in turn impact the sense of belonging to the collective (point 4).

The flywheel is where we exploit this loop to reinforce positive memories through experience to encourage psychological safety and hence a sense of belonging within the collective allowing for not only confirmation of values but also encouraging their diffusion in a wider society. 

The doom loop is where some experience (i.e. a failure to allow challenge) embeds in the collective's memory undermining the psychological safety of the group which in turn undermines belonging to the collective. This can impact the ability of the collective to succeed, to diffuse its values and if we allow the situation to continue (i.e. failing to communicate, failing to allow challenge, failing to think big and inspire others) or even exacerbate the situation through some misguided action then the collective can fall apart over time.

But what do I mean by exploitation or misguided action? How do we achieve that? This is the point where I bring in my favourite topic - that of strategy and gameplay.

Gameplay and culture

Gameplay consists of those patterns which are not :-

Climatic - patterns which will occur in an economic systems regardless of your choice such as components evolving due to competition or more evolved components enabling higher order systems.

Doctrine - patterns which you have a choice over whether to use but are universally useful.

Gameplay patterns are hence context specific and ones you have choice over whether to use. They work in certain landscapes i.e. open source is a fabulous mechanism for industrialising a product space but it makes little difference in the genesis of components. Depending upon your experience with mapping then some of these forms of gameplay, such as "open approach" or "talent raid" will be familiar to people whilst others, such as "ambush" or "signal distortion" will be less so. What is not obvious is that some of these forms of gameplay come with a cost. In homage to the game of Dungeon and Dragons, I've personally labelled these as Lawful Good, Neutral, Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil.

In figure 3, I've provided a list of gameplay and highlighted the more "Lawful Evil" plays from my perspective. Things like  sweating an acquired asset for revenue whilst intending to dump it or creating a confusion of choice in consumers in order to increase price or adding a little fear, uncertainty and doubt over a competitor's product line. They're not in the outright "evil" category of deliberately creating a community in order to fail and poison a market but instead they're in the more "naughty" but "nice" category. Of course, depending upon whether you perceive these as evil or not is very much wrapped in your own values.

Figure 3 - Gameplay

The problem with these forms of gameplay is whilst useful in competition with others they can end up becoming embedded in the memory of the organisation and may run counter to the values of the organisation. A bit of "misdirection", "talent raiding", "creating artificial constraints" and poison pill "insertion" into more community efforts might do wonders for you against a competitive collective but if your core values are "we believe in fair play" then the memory of your organisation is not going to quickly forget, nor is the questioning of members whether they belong or feel safe in your collective.  Keep it up and you can quickly find yourself on the doom loop despite some early success. Of course, if your collective values "A Machiavellian attitude" then you might see these forms of gameplay as positive and reinforcing. This goes back to the issue of labelling the gameplays and why I said "from my perspective". You need to think about the gameplays in terms of the collective itself which is why you need to understand what it actually values.

In figure 4 (point 1), I've highlighted the issue of gameplay (which itself is a pipeline of constantly evolving techniques) and its connection to values, memory and success.

Figure 4 - Gameplay, Values and Memory.

It is important to understand that whilst your choice of gameplay is not limited by the culture, you can always override this by executive fiat, it can certainly impact the culture and that can have long term effects which if they become embedded in the memory (i.e. the stories, rituals and symbols) of the collective can become difficult to overcome. This is not again a negative, you might wish to deliberately do this but the point of mapping is to think about how you're going to impact a space before you take action.

For this reason, when considering gameplay in a competitive space it is important to be mindful of both the landscape (i.e. gameplay is context specific) but also the culture (i.e. the values, principles, enablement systems, memory, sense of belonging, psychological safety) of the collective and any long term effects you might have. This is also another reason why sharing strategic play in mapping form is useful because it enables people to challenge the play including whether it fits with our values without the inevitable people politics of a story.

It's also why statements like "culture eats strategy for breakfast" are frankly daft. It's part of the same thing. Whilst your culture might constrain your strategic choices today, those strategic choices that you make will impact your future culture.

Gameplay, Doctrine and Landscape

Your choice of gameplay and the implementation of doctrine (universally useful principles such as "focus on user needs") is influenced by the competitive landscape you are operating in.  However, whilst doctrine is directly part of the flywheel (or doom loop) in our culture map, the gameplay is more indirect in terms of influence.  Landscape is even further removed from the loop. It should therefore be possible to provide generic advice on how to improve the culture of any organisation irrespective of the landscape it is operating within. I've marked this all up in figure 5 with the loop and doctrines impact within it (point 1), the impact of strategy and gameplay (point 2) and landscape (point 3).

Figure 5  - Landscape and culture

Of all the culture self help books that I've had the misfortune to read, one particular book stands out in terms of providing such advice. This is "The Joy of Work" by Bruce Daisley. The book is broken into three sections of recharge, sync and buzz each with a list of concrete steps that can be taken regardless of the landscape you are operating in. Many of these steps support basic concepts in our doctrine list (e.g. encouraging communication and challenge through use of pre-mortems) as well as reinforcing basic elements of belonging and psychological safety. I cannot recommend it enough. I would summarise the book here except, I want you to go and read it as it's a worthwhile investment of your time.

Summary

There are a number of basic concepts I wished to get across in the section. These include :-

• The collective has a memory and that memory is part of culture.
• Your choices and actions, from your use of universally useful principles to gameplay, will affect that memory.
• Within culture there are loops, some of which are positive (flywheel) and some of which can be negative (doom loop).
• Not all gameplay is equal, some is more "evil" than others depending upon your perspective and values.
• Gameplay can impact culture and also can be constrained by it since it's part of the same thing.

In the next section, I will continue to look at how to distort an existing culture whether your own or someone else's

Exploring value in the culture map

In this section, I'm going to explore a bit more into our map of culture in order to shed some light on the question of what should I do now?  As with mapping in general, there are no right answers, there is simply a way of discussing the environment to find a better path.

Values

To begin with, I'm going to re-examine that concept of pipelines when it came to values. In figure 1, I provided a very basic map of values and how they were connected from public holiday to workers' rights to abolition of slavery to the concepts of equality in front of the law. 

Figure 1 - A Map of Values

None of these values appeared fully formed but instead they evolved over time. It might surprise you but as recently as the 1750s, a group of notable laissez faire economists, for example Vincent de Gournay, that were arguing for deregulation of markets often cited the slave trade as an example of a well functioning economic market. As Blake Smith noted - "the birth of modern capitalism depended not only on the labour of enslaved people and the profits of the slave trade, but also on the example of slavery as a deregulated global enterprise" [https://aeon.co/essays/why-the-original-laissez-faire-economists-loved-slavery]

Today, whilst the trade still unfortunately exists, the general population would consider the "abolition of slavery" as an accepted value. The idea itself has evolved from concept to accepted. In figure 1 above, I've highlighted in bold several of these values because when we examine a collective of some form - an organisation, a family, a nation state - then we are usually concerned with their most visible values. We rarely see the components which underpin them especially when they are broadly accepted and taken as a norm.

In figure 2 (see below), I've provided these highlighted values in the form of a pipeline (point 1). Any collective will have a set of evolving and visible values that will distinguish it from other collectives i.e what makes one company or one political organisation different from another are the values that it holds. When examining culture for any social group, we need to note that members of that group can belong to many collectives i.e. an international company has members that hopefully subscribe to the values of the company but also to many others collectives i.e. the nation they reside within. Those values may be different and in some cases can be in conflict.

Figure 2 - Success, Competition and Values

For example, direct conflict and confrontation over issues are frowned upon within China as more value is placed upon respect, honouring the person and collective action rather than individualism.  The US on the other hand assigns greater value to notions of individualism and of confrontation on matters where individuals decide on what is the "Truth". In Norman Grubb's book "Modern Viking" and the story of Christian Leadership in the US, the values of confrontation, shocks to the system and "men who won't take no for an answer" are strongly espoused in that particular sect of Christian philosophy which are almost a direct antithesis to the ideas of Confucianism.

The first points to note are that there are many values, those values will differ between collectives, some values are more evolved than others and there can be conflict between values between different collectives. As described above, values are also not static but they evolve.  The question should be - how do they evolve? As with mapping other forms of capital, evolution requires competition between different forms.

That competition comes from the collectives themselves. The success of any collective is determined by how well its values diffuse. A company that promotes the use of green energy to reduce global climate impact will not succeed if another collective persuades everyone else that reducing global climate impact is not a value they should aspire to. For this reason, all collectives are in competition with each other to spread their values in the wider society (figure 2 above, point 2).

It is the competition to diffuse different forms of a value driven by the actions of their respective collectives that drives the evolution of that value. Like a virus, ideas and values not only diffuse in society but through multiple iterations they evolve. Competition is a necessity for evolution of those values. Without collectives such as the Knights of Labour (workers' rights) or the "Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade" then these values would neither have diffused nor evolved to become accepted in the wider society. Without this evolution, there would have been no "higher order" values created through componentisation effects and hence no modern concepts such as paid holidays which many of us now take for granted or have become embedded in law.

Within any large social system such as an international company, we can therefore expect to see a diversity of competing values from many collectives including but not limited to the company and the nation states that members belong to. One of the issues with attempting to creating a single culture within a company is it conflicts with the very diverse nature of competing values that arise from the different collectives its members belong to. Furthermore, this diversity of values whilst creating conflict within any single collective is also a necessity for such a system of values to evolve and adapt to the outside world. A single monoculture is not only nearly impossible to achieve but highly undesirable from an evolutionary viewpoint. Such an organisation would require very strict and narrowly defined values that allow for little to no diversity within its collective and hence it will be fragile to outside changes. Those that design for a greater freedom in interpretation of values and allow for diversity will tend to be more adaptive and resilient. 

These concepts are simply a reflection of C.S Holling's work on engineering and ecological resilience as shown in figure 3. The most resilient biological systems require a high level of diversity in the ecosystem (ecological resilience) combined with a broad tolerance in associated structures (engineering resilience). For example, it would be possible to design a robust nation with structures designed to cope with known impacts e.g. poor crop harvest (grain stores), economic shocks (banking system) but it would lack the diversity required to adapt to a shock outside those known boundaries e.g. a popular democratic movement in a feudal system.

Figure 3 - Diversity




Values and Principles

In the corporate world, a good example of the form of thinking required to encourage diversity of values & competition between them can be seen in Amazon's Leadership Principles. In particular, one set of values can be described as be self-critical and work to disconfirm beliefs by seeking diverse perspectives. A reflection on the need for a diversity in opinion. Obviously, the question should be - is that value itself challenged? In fact, Amazon's principles set up a state of competitive duality - be self-critical and work to disconfirm beliefs by seeking diverse perspectives whilst at the same time valuing leaders that are right a lot.  It's a constant struggle to be right but also to challenge yourself and disconfirm your own beliefs in order to be more right.

However, these principles are highly individualistic in approach i.e. disconfirm your beliefs rather than seek a collective view. Furthermore, many of the principles listed are in fact universally useful and part of doctrine - think big, understand the details, focus on the user needs, a bias towards the new. At this point, we need to clarify some differences between values and principles.

Values are the things and qualities we consider important as described by belief. We hold them as truths within the collective. They are not uniformly shared with others and those values will evolve over time.

Principles are the rules by which we operate by as described by action. They may reflect our current values or past values or some value that has become a long accepted norm in the collective and even forgotten about. 

In some cases, people describe how "focus on the user need" is a value their company holds.  However, to "focus on the user need" is not a belief but an action. Furthermore, it turns out to be a universally useful principle for all companies. It's a rule we should all operate by in order to be effective (and hence is include in my doctrine - the list of universally useful principles). 

A value that a collective might hold could be "the quality of courage" or "a belief in God" whereas its principles might be a "focus on the user need", "challenge assumptions" and "use appropriate methods". Those principles can be shared with many collectives, even those with which it directly competes. The values between them however will be different. What is remarkable about the collective should not be its use of universally useful principles but its values.  However, despite this, such universally useful principles are not widely used and hence it is understandable that many talk about rules such as "challenging assumptions" and "focusing on user needs" as some earth shattering belief that divides them amongst others. The only truly remarkable thing is that others do not follow such basic principles but then collectives are in competition and it's fine to be hopeless at the basics as long as everyone else is.

When it comes to examining any company, we need to carefully remove out the  doctrine (ie. universally useful principles) from the statement of values. This itself is a valuable exercise as examination of a company's use of the universal principles gives an indication of how adaptable and competitive it is compared to others. In figures 4 & 5, I've provided an examination of two companies on doctrine using a red (warning), amber (weak) and green (good) notation. One of the companies is a tech giant and one is a banking giant.

Figure 4 - Tech Giant




Figure 5 - Banking Giant

On the basis of universally useful principles then the tech giant simply outclasses the banking giant. However, these collectives (in this case both global companies) might not ever compete. If they did, in the same industry, assuming they have roughly the same values then the tech giant should have all the advantage of adaptability and efficiency to overpower the banking giant whose only effective line of defence would be regulation. Doctrine provides us with a moderately useful way of examining competitive effectiveness of two collectives.

Once doctrine is removed from any statement of values then what is left are any visible values plus a mix of more local principles i.e. ones which might not be universally useful or have not been identified as such. In the case of Amazon, once doctrine is broken out of the Leadership Principles then you are left with a core set of values that are highly individualistic, probably reflecting its US nation origin.  Excluding the doctrine, then these values can be summarised as :-

• leaders are right a lot. 
• leaders commit wholly, with conviction, tenacity and never settle.
• leaders speak candidly and do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion.

By comparison, Facebook has a similar mix of doctrine (i.e. universally useful principles such as focus on outcome, think big, a bias towards outcome, a bias towards action) combined with one pronounced value of build social value. Whilst action orientated, the question we have to ask is "social value" for whom? Who defines it? There is a belief in the statements for creating social value but what that is has not been defined other than Facebook should be the one to build it as opposed to say some other collective such as a Nation State. This value almost certainly puts Facebook in direct competition with Nation States themselves and given Facebook's history of psychological experimentation on users, use of the service by others to interfere within national politics, its effort to create a global currency and more recently announcements of creating its own court like system to regulate free speech online then it would not be surprising if Governments start to view Facebook as a competitive threat to themselves.

By contrast, Alibaba also has a similar mix of universally useful principles such as a  focus on the user needs but within this mix is a set of different values that are highly collective in nature, probably reflecting its China origin. These values include :-

• relying on one another
• our employees to view themselves as owners of the business
• Work is for now, but life is forever.

This is not to say that one set of values is more right than another, nor that my interpretation is free from bias nor that a collective approach (given our social nature) is inherently more effective than an individualistic approach.  Whether we like it or not, our success depends upon us diffusing our values which in turn impacts the wider system.  You might not wish for a future in which we "speak candidly and do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion" preferring instead a future of"relying on one another" but what the future holds depends upon the success of current day collectives and a lot of that depends upon the doctrine they use.

However, there's one other aspect we need to consider here. It's not just the collective, its values and how well it operates (doctrine) that matters. There is the act of diffusion itself and that requires enablement systems,

Enablement and Principles

Values themselves don't just diffuse, someone has to share the ideas with others. There are two aspects to be considered here, firstly that collectives are in competition with each other and that competition does partially depend upon how effective the collective is and therefore it use of universally useful principles (point 1 in figure 6).  For example, a poorly run collective is likely to struggle against a more effective collective. The second aspect, is the need for a mechanism to spread the collective's values.  The most effective collective imaginable (using all the universally useful principles) is hardly going to succeed if it has no mechanism of enabling others to discover its values. This discovery process requires systems of enablement (point 2 in figure 6). 

Figure 6 - Enablement

Those systems cover a pipeline of constantly evolving techniques, including examples such as :-

• Word of mouth where members inform others of their values.
• An initiation ceremony where new members are indoctrinated to the collective.
• An oath of loyalty in which new members agree to be bound by the collective's values.
• A democratic process where members share principles and values through some form of manifesto and others choose to support one or another. 
• A town hall where members discuss principles and values.
• A weekly newsletter where a collective reinforces its values to members.
• A vision statement or constitution for the collective where values are written down for members.
• A mechanism of propaganda where information is provided to influence a recipient audience in order to promote the collective's values.

Summary

In this section I simply wanted to point out some basics from the map. These include :-

• Values are the things and qualities we consider important as described by belief. We hold them as truths within the collective. They are not uniformly shared with others and those values will evolve over time.
• Values evolve through competition between collectives.
• Different values exist between collectives.
• Resilience of a collective depends not only upon its structures but diversity in values i.e. many pursue rigid sets of values which make adaption difficult.
• Success of a collective is defined by its values diffusing in the wider society. The success of a collective is influenced by its use of doctrine (i.e. universally useful principles) and enablement systems i.e. being effective is not enough, it needs a mechanism by which its values can diffuse.
• Principles are the rules by which we operate by as described by action. They may reflect our current values or past values or some value that has become a long accepted norm in the collective and even forgotten about. 
• When collectives describes their values this is often a mix of universally useful principles (some of which might not be widely spread) along with actual values.
• An individual may belong to many collectives.

Finally, I wish to note that all maps are wrong and imperfect representations of the space. However, the purpose of a map is it enables us to discuss the space by reference to the map rather than the story teller. So, if you disagree with this so far then tell me where the map is wrong. Otherwise, we need to explore a bit more into our map.