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A first model of he tangata

Drawing energy from the encouragement of Michael and Hank and others, and distilling from the many ideas, I'm starting to form a model of how He Tangata all hangs together - for cultural change. I then want to grow it into a framework of core practices, then a methodology. I need contributors of ideas, reviewers, and stress testers. Come along with me here. So this is the first cut of a model:

he Tangata model 2he Tangata model 2
There is a distinction between the deeper culture and the more superficial climate. "Culture is a deeper phenomenon based on symbolic meanings that reflect core values and fundamental ideologies and assumptions" whereas "climate is about experiential descriptions or perceptions of what happens... the shared perceptions of employees concerning the practices procedures and kinds of behaviours that get rewarded and supported in a particular setting... a manifestation of culture"
[IT Service Climate (Jia, Reich, Pearson)]

Culture is a tension or mix of behaviours and beliefs. Obviously beliefs influence behaviours but how many people know how behaviours can shape beliefs? You do it often enough and you start to believe it. This is because (a) your behaviour "programs" you at some innate level, you develop habit (b) you rationalise your own behaviour at a higher level and (c) at the conscious level you come to realise the benefits after using a practice.

[Is the behaviours/beliefs axis redundant to the culture/climate pair? Are they the same thing?]

In addition, on a different dimension shown here perpendicular, there is a range of exhibited culture from the personal culture of the individual to the emergent culture of the group. Group culture is not just the sum of the parts. Every group of humans exhibits an emergent personality and culture (and intelligence? and awareness?) that is distinct from its members.

[Somewhere i've read that the IQ and mental age of the group is lower than that of the lowest individual member :) Jung I believe. Anyone known that one?]

So the personal and group behaviours and beliefs form the culture. Emergent from that culture is an observable climate in the workplace. The positive influences in that climate are a mix of teamwork, performance, understabnding and vision. Jia et al "propose two sets of antecedents of IT service climate: organizational support (including supervisory support and co-worker support) and proximity to client (including decentralization and co-location)." They had no particular reason to think these were an exact or complete set of all the influencers or antecendents for service climate. You can see how I've morphed these into teamwork(coworker)/vision(supervisior) and performance(not really equivalent to Jia's decentraliation)/understanding(proximity/co-location).

See how teamwork is introverted behaviour (relative to the customer) and performance is extroverted behaviour (visible to the client, delivering results). Likewise, vision is inward beliefs and understanding/empathy for the client is outwards beliefs.

i think there is a cycle from vision to inspire teamwork to deliver performance to generate understanding/empathy/proximity to inform vision

this cycle is supported by four human products that we can create: goals, feedback, communication and commitment

underpinning that is four process activities: practicing (behaviours), measuring results (extroverted), educating (beliefs), and motivating (introverted).

It all rests on developing a culture of change in order to accept these things (see J Kotter and other ideas here)

So what does this mean?

if this is a good model, then I want to flesh out some of the segments into the underlying good practices they need.
But first let's test it:
is it a robust model for how to approach cultural change? Will it work
Does it address all the main things we need to?
Does it give about the right balance?
Does it use the right words/concepts in the right places? Some words you can see I'm not sure of them...

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