Cultural Coherence

How indigenous wisdom can improve corporate culture

Cultural coherence refers both to the degree of personal alignment between the stakeholders of an organization as well as to the degree of their collective alignment with the vision and mission of that organization. Whether they are clearly stated or unconsciously assumed, cultures are the expression of a particular set of collective values. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in the jungle, a business, governmental or non-profit organization, or an ad hoc group, prioritizing cultural coherence by paying attention to values pays off. Cultural coherence can be thought of as integrity in the sense that when something is integrated, it is part of an undivided, internally consistent whole. Since values are the fundamental building blocks of cultures, just like the pillars that hold up buildings need to be made of material that holds together well, cultural pillars get their strength from coherence around shared values. Just like building pillars require material integrity, cultural pillars have a sort of metaphysical integrity based on coherence around positive values expression. Integrity also refers to people standing on strong moral ground.
 

Strong cultures are internally consistent, i.e. coherent, when their values reflect that their moral ground is solid. For example, the Shuar, an indigenous tribe in the Ecuadorian jungle, has a complete absence of lying and theft. It’s not that they have to try to be truthful or to restrain themselves from deceiving and stealing; it doesn’t come up for them because those behaviors don’t fit into their social container, their cultural paradigm. Because the Shuar paradigm, meaning their worldview or ontological reality, holds all of life as deeply integrated, they value every member of the tribe equally. Their worldview includes recognition of their interdependence with everyone and everything. In their coherence around that worldview, they maintain a cultural ontology, a fundamental ground of being, that simply is not capable of sustaining motivations for immoral behaviors like stealing, harming, or compromising one another. It’s not that they have to try to be truthful or to restrain themselves from stealing; it doesn’t come up for them because those behaviors don’t fit into their social container, their cultural paradigm.

While the Shuar norm is for everyone being of equal value, they still have leaders and their own systems of duties. As in other indigenous cultures, Shuar leaders are always in counsel with other tribal members to ensure that the community’s priorities are coherent with the leaders’ decisions. Their leadership infra-structure is flatter than a typical organization’s in that the people who have been awarded the most power see themselves as part of a more circular, rather than vertical, system. If you think of applying indigenous wisdom to organizational culture in terms of "mojo," meaning vitality or an energetic spark, it’s easier to see how flattening vertical infrastructures pays off so well – mojo flows better when it is going around than when it’s going up and down.

Mojo management is alchemical leadership. While alchemy has been understood as the fictitious art of turning lead into gold, dismissing it as such leaves a wealth of possibility untapped. Alchemy is what makes the difference between one leader producing “gold” results, like award winning innovation and outstanding profits, and another leader with equal time and resources producing “lead” results like loss, quality issues, and personnel problems. Alchemy is the art of managing the intangible factors of leadership.

Alchemical leadership includes the art of building cultural alignment so that the organization is functioning coherently, like a clear running stream that sometimes rushes, sometimes flows slowly, and usually flows steadily, but never diverts from its path. The degree to which there is nonalignment between people with each other, and/or nonalignment between workers and organizational mission, is the degree to which your full cultural stream isn’t flowing with your direction. Mojo flows in accordance with how values go – when positive values dominate, like helpfulness, commitment and responsibility, mojo flows. When negative values dominate, like blame, dishonesty and manipulation, mojo goes retro. Develop your cultural values and your cultural stream will improve, no matter how good it is already.

The immediacy of a jungle tribe’s circumstances means that they pretty much need to get each present moment right or risk death. There’s not much wiggle room. An organization, though, can withstand a steady drip of resources for a long time and not even sense the loss because our acculturation to norms often blinds us to problems that are inherent in those norms. That is especially true in the case of intangible resources like mojo and cultural coherence.  A good way to move beyond the status quo is to consciously manage mojo. The best way to account for how the energy is flowing in your cultural stream is with a values-driven cultural assessment that can give you an in-depth, data-based read out on your cultural alignment and on where and how energy is being diverted from running full stream ahead.

Joni Carley, author of The Alchemy of Power: Mastering the Invisible Factors of Leadership, has been consulting and coaching with private and public sector leaders and their teams for over twenty-five years. Her expertise in values-driven leadership and cultural development draws on a unique depth and breadth of experience—ranging from the jungle to the boardroom, from the C-suite to the podium, the African Bush to Asian Temples, and from universities to the United Nations, where she is currently Vice Chair of the Coalition for Global Citizenship 2030 and also serves as Advisor and Senior Fellow at Nonviolence International New York. Visit https://jonicarley.com/ Connect Joni Carley Follow @JoniCarley