Latest / The Human Factor: Exploring the Intersection of Humanity, Technology, and Transformation / S2 Episode 018: The Organizational Immune System — When Culture Attacks What It Doesn't Recognize

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S2 Episode 018: The Organizational Immune System — When Culture Attacks What It Doesn't Recognize · The Human Factor: Exploring the Intersection of Humanity, Technology, and Transformation

0:05
Your body has an immune system that protects you from foreign
0:08
invaders. Bacteria, viruses.
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Anything your body doesn't recognize gets attacked and
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neutralized. It's an extraordinary defense
0:18
mechanism that keeps you alive. But here's something that most
0:22
leaders never consider your organization.
0:25
It has an immune system, too, and it works exactly the same
0:30
way. When you introduce a new
0:32
technology platform, a restructured workflow, or a
0:36
different way of making decisions, you're introducing
0:40
something foreign into the organizational body.
0:43
And just like your biological immune system, the
0:47
organizational immune system doesn't evaluate whether that
0:51
foreign element is helpful or harmful.
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It simply recognizes that it's different and mobilizes to
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reject it. This is why a new project, a new
1:03
way of doing work, and even an organizational transformation
1:07
initiative can have executive sponsorship, a solid business
1:11
case, and a technically superior solution and still fail.
1:17
The organizational culture identifies it as foreign, and
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then it deploys antibodies in the form of passive resistance,
1:24
procedural delays, and cultural narratives.
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It neutralizes the change before it can even take hold.
1:33
I'm Kevin Novak, CEO of 2040, digital professor at the
1:37
University of Maryland and author of The Truth about
1:40
Transformation, Leading in the Age of AI, Uncertainty and Human
1:45
Complexity, along with the Ideas and Innovations weekly
1:49
newsletter. Welcome to the Human Factor
1:52
podcast, the show that explores the intersection of humanity,
1:56
technology, and transformation, along with the psychology behind
2:01
transformation success. Today we're exploring the
2:05
organizational immune system, that invisible cultural defense
2:10
mechanism that kills more transformations than a bad
2:14
technology ever could. And I'm joined by James Elliott,
2:19
CEO of the James Elliott and Company Incorporated, who has
2:23
spent over 30 years working with hundreds of organizations
2:27
navigating exactly this phenomenon.
2:30
This is Season 2, Episode 5, and if you've been following the
2:35
season, you know we've been building towards something.
2:39
In Episode 1, we explored the identity crisis, the
2:43
transformation triggers, how change threatens people's
2:47
professional sense of self. In episode 2 with Elizabeth
2:52
Stewart, we examined emotional contagion, how anxiety and
2:57
resistance spread through organizations like a virus.
3:01
In episode 3, I unpack the structural traps of middle
3:05
management, that organizational design that inadvertently blocks
3:10
change. In episode 4, looked at the
3:13
algorithmic mirrors, how AI systems reflect and amplify
3:18
existing cultural patterns. So today, we're pulling these
3:23
threads together into a unified framework.
3:26
The organizational immune system is where identity protection,
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emotional contagion, structural rigidity, and cultural pattern
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recognition converge. It's the meta system that
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explains why organizations resist change at a fundamental
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level, even when every individual in the organization
3:48
says they want it. And this concept has deep roots
3:53
in organizational psychology. Edgar Schein, who many consider
3:58
the father of organizational culture research, identified 3
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levels of culture that operated every single organization.
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Artifacts espouse values and basic underlying assumptions.
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That third level, the assumptions that are so deeply
4:16
embedded people don't even know they hold them, is where the
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immune system lives. And that's where we're going
4:23
today. But before I get into the
4:26
research, I want to bring in someone who has seen this immune
4:30
response play out across hundreds of organizations over 3
4:34
decades. Jim, welcome to the Human Factor
4:38
podcast. Thank you for having me.
4:41
Jim, before we get into the theory, I'd love for our
4:44
audience to hear from your experience in 30 years of
4:48
working with organizations through change, when did you
4:51
first recognize that something systematic was fighting back
4:56
against transformation efforts, something beyond just individual
5:01
resistance? The the 1st 5 minutes I started
5:06
the company. Let me explain to your audience
5:10
what I do. There's two companies here.
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One company takes over all of the advertising sales for a
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particular media platform, media company of some kind and we've
5:23
done over 600 of them that we've taken over there as sales.
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Most of the companies we work with are, are large companies.
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They're not small companies. When when you transform or you
5:37
get rid of your internal sales, which is 95% of our what we do,
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a company would have it their own sales force and then they
5:46
go, well, we're getting rid of our sales force.
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You come in, talk about a cultural change, talk about a
5:54
shock to the system, talk about Pac-Man that are there to bite
5:59
you. You have people inside that
6:02
system that were best friends with the former one of the
6:04
salespeople. You have the fear by the staff
6:11
that they're going to outsource their job just like they
6:15
outsource sales. I've seen this every single
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client we go into. And you have to deal with that
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and you really have to deal with it carefully, what we do and
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what we insist on when we're taking over the media for
6:31
someone. And we've done this in many,
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many, almost every case. And usually it's contractual
6:37
that within a month everybody has to get together and then we
6:43
insist on a dinner that we pay for and we invite everybody.
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And so we'll have a big dinner at a really nice restaurant and
6:54
we'll have, you know, hors d'oeuvres and drinks and then
6:57
dinner. So everybody gets to know each
6:59
other to see that we're not devils.
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One of the things that I'm really proud of is, you know,
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I've been in business a long time and we don't really have a
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lot of our competitors are directs, not really anyone else.
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So it's really important that we sell everybody the way they want
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to be sold. And what I do is complicated
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because you might, you know, we're dealing with, you know,
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the web designer, we're dealing with the print production
7:27
person, we're dealing with the ad director, if they're still
7:32
there and the publisher expectations and all of this
7:36
stuff, right? I mean there are hundreds of
7:39
variables here when you take over the ad sales for a
7:43
particular large operation. Jim, that's a really great
7:47
foundation. Let me build on what you're
7:49
describing with the research framework that explains exactly
7:53
why this happens. Anchored Shine's work at MIT
7:57
spanned from 1980s through his most recent publications.
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They all established that organizational culture operates
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on three distinct levels. In understanding these levels is
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critical to understanding why organizations reject change the
8:14
way a body rejects A transplanted organ.
8:17
The first level is artifacts. These are the visible, tangible
8:22
elements of culture. The office layout, the dress
8:25
code, the technology platforms that people use, the
8:29
organizational chart, The way meetings are structured.
8:33
Artifacts are easy to observe, but they're so difficult to
8:37
interpret because the same artifact can mean completely
8:41
different things in different cultural contexts.
8:44
An open office plan might signal collaboration in one
8:48
organization and surveillance in another.
8:53
The second level is this bound's values.
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These are the strategies, the goals, and the philosophies that
9:00
leadership articulates. The company mission statement,
9:04
The stated commitment to innovation, the formal values
9:08
printed on the wall. Espouse values represent what
9:12
the organization says it believes, and they're often
9:15
where transformation initiatives are framed.
9:19
Leadership announces that we value agility or we're committed
9:23
to digital transformation, and these then become the Espouse
9:27
values driving the change effort.
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The third level, and this is where the immune system resigns,
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is basic underlying assumptions. These are the unconscious, taken
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for granted beliefs that actually govern behavior.
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They're so deeply embedded that people don't question them, and
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often they can't even articulate them.
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Shine described them as the ultimate source of values and
9:53
action within a culture. They're invisible to the people
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who hold them, which is precisely what makes them so
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powerful as a resistance mechanism.
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Here's the critical insight from Shine's research.
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When a change initiative aligns with artifacts and espouse
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values, but conflicts with the basic underlying assumptions.
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The assumptions when every time, every time you you can't
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redesign the office, update the mission statement and deploy new
10:26
technology and the underlying assumptions or reassert
10:29
themselves through behaviors that no one consciously chooses
10:33
but everyone unconsciously enacts.
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Jim, in your work with hundreds of companies, how have you seen
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this play out? Can you give us an example where
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the espoused value said one thing, but the underlying
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assumptions drove completely different behaviors during your
10:51
transformation I. Can in fact, I can give you
10:53
many, we've had numerous clients change leadership and during
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that leadership change, a new person comes in with a lot of
11:04
excitement, but sometimes dislodges the current people
11:09
that are that are underneath management.
11:12
And they don't spend a lot of time acknowledging that a
11:15
company really operates by its holistic self, that sometimes
11:21
the most important person in a company is actually the
11:25
assistant to the president. It's not the president.
11:28
It's the darndest thing you've ever seen.
11:30
And you've got to make sure that in transformation you touch, you
11:35
know, from an outsider, you touch everyone and you don't
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forget that from an inside perspective, you've got to
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really work time, spend time on your culture, and you've got to
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make sure that everybody's aboard with what you say.
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I've seen many, many times that the people that come in will
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have this particular philosophy, but they haven't really
12:01
pollinated it. They haven't sold it in to the
12:03
stakeholders. And then the stakeholders are
12:06
going well, this person will be there for a year or two and and
12:09
gone, but I'll still be here. What Jim is describing maps
12:12
precisely to what we can think of as the organizational immune
12:16
response. Let me walk through how this
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activation works because it follows A remarkably consistent
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pattern across different industries and transformation
12:26
types. The research and organizational
12:29
behavior, including foundational work by scholars like Carl White
12:34
on sense making and Amy Edmondson on psychological
12:37
safety, shows that when a change initiative enters an
12:41
organization, it goes through what I call the cultural
12:44
recognition process. The organization's embedded
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assumptions essentially scan the incoming change and ask, is this
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consistent with who we are? If the change aligns with the
12:57
basic underlying assumptions, it gets adopted relatively
13:00
smoothly. This is why some change efforts
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feel effortless while others meet fierce resistance.
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It's not about the quality of the change, or even the quality
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of the change management. It's about whether the cultural
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immune system recognizes the change as self or foreign.
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When the immune system identifies something as foreign,
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it deploys what I call cultural antibodies.
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These are the organizational behaviors that function to
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neutralize a perceived threat, and they come in several
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distinct forms. The 1st is narrative
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neutralization. The organization generates
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stories and explanations for why the change won't work here.
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We tried something like that before and it failed.
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That might work in tech companies, but our industry is
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so very different. The people proposing this don't
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understand how things really work around here.
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These narratives aren't manufactured.
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By a few. Resistors, they emerge
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organically from the culture because the underlying
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assumptions need a conscious explanation for the discomfort
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that people are feeling. The second antibody time is
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procedural absorption. The organization doesn't reject
14:21
the change outright. Instead, it absorbs it into
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existing processes until it's completely unrecognizable.
14:30
The new agile methodology gets implemented, but wrapped in so
14:34
many existing approval processes that it functions exactly like
14:38
the waterfall approach it was supposed to replace.
14:41
The new collaboration platform gets adopted, but used in
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exactly the same sideload way as the old e-mail system.
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The change, of course, is technically present, but
14:52
functionally completely neutralized.
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The third antibody type is selective adoption.
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The organization adopts the parts of the change that align
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with existing assumptions and then quietly drops the parts
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that don't. A customer centricity initiative
15:08
gets enthusiastic adoption of the new CRM tools, but the
15:12
underlying assumption that internal expertise matters more
15:16
than customer feedback remains completely untouched.
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The artifacts change, the assumptions of course don't.
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And the 4th antibody type is champion isolation.
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When individuals genuinely embrace the change and begin
15:32
working differently, the organizational immune system
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isolates them. They get labeled as outliers,
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idealists, or people who don't understand the real constraints.
15:43
Their success gets attributed to unique circumstances rather than
15:47
the merit of the new approach. The culture protects itself by
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ensuring that successful adoption doesn't spread
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anywhere. Tim, which of these antibody
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types do you see most frequently in your consulting work?
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And are there organizations that are particularly susceptible to
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one type over another? Not as as prolific as yours in
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the academe world, but you know that I was chairman of the
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school that was also junior college.
16:21
And I saw a part, the second one in that repeatedly.
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We tried this, we tried this, we tried this as a regular excuse
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coming out of the the staff there.
16:34
I've seen that in nonprofits all the time.
16:38
We tried that. Oh yeah, come on, it's not going
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to work. But then when you examine it
16:43
more carefully, you determined that A couple things.
16:47
Maybe you tried it but the timing was wrong.
16:50
Maybe you tried it, but you really didn't put everything
16:53
into it. Baby management wasn't really
16:57
behind it when you tried it. There's a holes and there's
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probably a dozen more variables here.
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So I see that a lot on that on that last one, the one that I
17:10
see more often now in the is, you know, we have we we have
17:16
nonprofit B to B and consumer, particularly in the nonprofit
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side is this fight between the two distinctive forces.
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They're very, very obvious. Force One is the new leader and
17:38
staff comes in and they're progressive.
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They want, they see change. They know change is necessary
17:48
and they are committed to change within within their
17:52
organizational capabilities. But the other side is you're
17:57
working on a client and suddenly they bring in the executive
18:00
director who was brought in by the board to go backwards.
18:05
Well, we want to be the way it was, and we see a lot of that,
18:11
particularly in the nonprofit side.
18:13
Let's go back instead of forward.
18:17
So Jim in that regard, do you with with the associations or
18:23
really any organizations that you have long time company or
18:27
customers and clients, is it the longevity of the company?
18:33
So when an association is 100 years old, is that where there
18:36
is more? That culture is so much more
18:40
embedded, that immune system is so much more ingrained?
18:46
It really depends on the association.
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There are some that have been working on their culture for a
18:51
very long time. There are some that work on
18:55
their within their sandbox for a really long time.
19:01
And so in those cultures they are using up to date software
19:05
they're using. They have people that are really
19:09
coming out of the consumer end or coming, excuse me, let me
19:12
take that back, coming out of the commercial end.
19:16
So they have a different perspective.
19:21
I think that's, so you see that at the same time you see other
19:26
clients that we have had, thank God we don't have any now that
19:30
have gone really backwards. Well, this print product used to
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have, you know, 100 pages and now it only has 50.
19:41
At the same time the they're not doing anything to enhance their
19:47
digital presence in the digital transformation, you know, but we
19:54
we go both ways. We've had a long term client
19:57
that had a print thing but then went into digital and replaced
20:02
the revenue over time with all the kinds of digital products.
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But the the woman that runs it came out of the commercial side.
20:13
It's very, very progressive. Let's make the invisible
20:18
visible. This is where measurement
20:20
becomes critical, and it connects directly to what we
20:24
have discussed in Season 1, Episode 10 on measuring the
20:28
human factor. The challenge with
20:30
organizational immune systems is that it operates below the level
20:34
of conscious awareness. People don't wake up in the
20:37
morning and decide to deploy cultural antibodies.
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The responses emerge from the collective enactment of shared
20:45
assumptions that nobody can see. So how do you diagnose something
20:50
invisible? The answer is that you look for
20:54
the behavioral signatures that immune activation leaves behind.
20:59
Research on organizational resistance, including work by
21:02
Jeffrey Ford and Laurie Ford, was published in Harvard
21:05
Business Review. It suggests that resistance is
21:09
actually a form of engagement, not disengagement.
21:12
People resist because they care about the organization and the
21:18
immune response. Is the organization caring about
21:22
its very own survival? The 2040 digital.
21:26
We look for several diagnostic indicators.
21:29
First, we examine the gap between a spouse support and
21:33
behavioral adoption. As we discussed in Season 1
21:37
stated, support for transformation typically runs 40
21:40
to 50 percentage points ahead of actual behavioral change.
21:44
But the pattern of that gap, it tells you which assumptions are
21:48
being violated. If adoption is high for
21:52
technology tolls but low for new decision making processes, the
21:56
immune system is protecting assumptions about authority and
22:00
expertise rather than assumptions about the
22:03
technology. Second, we track narrative
22:06
patterns. What stories are people telling
22:09
about the transformation? Stories that begin with that's
22:13
great in theory, but or what leadership doesn't understand is
22:19
our diagnostic of which underlying assumptions are
22:23
actually being threatened. The content of the resistance
22:26
narrative reveals the content of the underlying assumption.
22:30
Third, we look at where workarounds emerge.
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Workarounds are the most reliable behavioral indicator of
22:37
immune activation. They show you exactly where the
22:41
new approach conflicts with the deeply held assumptions.
22:45
If people are finding ways to maintain old approval
22:48
hierarchies within a new flat decision making structure, the
22:52
immune system is protecting assumptions about how authority
22:56
should actually work. 4th, we examine social network changes.
23:02
When transformation begins. Do informal networks reorganize
23:07
around old versus new approaches?
23:10
Do early adopters become isolated from their peer groups?
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These network dynamics reveal the immune systems champion
23:17
isolation response in real time. Jim, when you're brought into an
23:23
organization that's struggling with a transformation, when are
23:27
the first diagnostic signals that you're going to look for?
23:30
How do you determine whether you're dealing with an immune
23:34
response versus other types of implementation challenges?
23:38
I think it really it depends on whether or not you have access
23:42
to the executive director or the president of the company and you
23:46
really, it really starts by talking with them to really
23:49
understand where they're coming from.
23:51
So that's your first sign. If they are not aboard, you need
23:54
to run, you need not to do the deal.
23:58
I think that's the first thing. Second thing in anything like
24:01
that is you propose a contract, but you really spend time on
24:07
that. I'm from a legal family and I
24:10
spent a great deal of time on contracts.
24:13
That's your most important thing.
24:16
And so you define all of those things in a contract that could
24:20
be problems, right? And you account for them, I
24:24
think, I think the set the third thing we do in that I may be
24:29
slightly off top topic here, but we match salespeople with it
24:36
with what we think the client, who they're going to be dealing
24:39
with inside the client. Meaning that we do such crazy
24:43
things that you would only see in California as a skill based
24:46
testing. I, I actually test our, our
24:50
sellers. And then we, we marry that with
24:52
a profile of what we think that the person they're going to be
24:56
working with is like within the organization.
24:59
Now that becomes problematic when you have change.
25:05
There's a lot of change now in media, people come, they go.
25:10
But at least in the beginning, we try to do that.
25:13
If we have a little bit of time to establish ourselves, then
25:16
that helps, even if they bring in somebody else.
25:19
And Jim, coming at this from when you your your team's doing
25:23
a consulting role and looking at it to where you've done your due
25:30
diligence, right? You have access to the CEO
25:33
president, you have the agreement in place and you walk
25:37
in, you're like, Oh my God, you know how how when you're
25:41
starting to see some of that negativity or other, how are you
25:44
diagnosing what you should be doing next?
25:48
Yeah, The first and well, first Kevin, let me explain.
25:51
We don't go, we don't take anything on if they retain their
25:54
sales force, we are their sales force.
25:57
That's the end of that question. But one of the things that you
26:00
can you can tell so much about a company is when you take a look
26:05
at their CRM system in sales, have they bothered to fill it
26:10
out? You know, how were they working
26:13
on that? You, you, I'm going to tell you
26:16
something that will shock your audience.
26:18
I have had worked with massively large companies that have used
26:23
XLS their CRM. Well, last time I looked, Excel
26:26
is not ACRM. So what when when you go in and
26:31
and we always insist on looking at their data.
26:35
If they don't have any and you'll be shocked.
26:38
A lot of times they don't. We will then take another month
26:42
to create it before we really start and we'll help the
26:46
organization create incentives for the current staff that's
26:50
still there for the moment to input their data.
26:58
But it, it, that is a, that's a real red flag.
27:04
We sometimes will talk with the sales force, sometimes we'll
27:09
hire people from that organization, but what we really
27:13
look for there is the kind of the understanding of the
27:16
products. And when they talk about how,
27:19
you know, they're best friends with, you know, the ad director
27:24
of some large company, that's a big red flag because I, in my
27:30
experience is they're usually not.
27:33
That's usually defensive stuff that's thrown out within an
27:36
organization to get you not to spend, not to fire that seller
27:41
because they're talking about their relationship with somebody
27:45
that by and large probably doesn't exist.
27:48
One of the things that we can tell within the first month is
27:52
if we get any, we just took on a huge association about a year
27:57
ago how many phone call and we put three people on the account
28:02
they had, you know, I don't know how many.
28:05
If you get phone calls within the first month or two saying
28:09
where is so and so, you know, I really, if you get none of
28:13
those, you know, or if you get one or two of them, doesn't
28:17
matter in most cases now you get 0.
28:24
And the reason you get 0 is because the environment, at
28:27
least in media, has changed. It's a little bit like going to
28:31
your local Starbucks or or Peet's coffee and you walk in.
28:36
And yeah, I, I did that for you, Kevin.
28:39
I know you. I knew, I know that.
28:43
Yeah. We've had many discussions at
28:44
Peet's by the way, the you when you go into Pete's regularly and
28:53
the barista says, hi, Jim, how you doing?
28:56
Do you want your, you know, soy latte with whatever, right?
29:00
That is kind of the way it is now in advertising.
29:04
Even though a lot of, let's go back where I said some of these
29:08
people that are coming back into the business, particularly in
29:10
nonprofits, they go back to a time where the relationship was
29:16
such that you could take someone out to dinner, you could you
29:19
could do that kind of stuff. That doesn't exist now.
29:22
It doesn't exist now. I don't care if someone tells
29:26
you that it exists. It does not exist.
29:29
What exists is your understanding of the particular
29:32
product that you're selling and then your ability to go in and
29:36
to try to help that person do a better job.
29:41
One of my clients has a brand studio, which is a marvelous
29:46
idea about walking in and selling a client to keeping your
29:51
mouth shut, listening to what they're trying to do, and then
29:54
taking a look at all of your assets and creating something
29:58
around that before you open your mouth.
30:02
I think so that's an example of people going back time.
30:06
Times have really changed. Sales hasn't changed, but the
30:10
way you sell has changed. You know, I'm crazy ideas.
30:16
I mean, you know, today with so many people working from home,
30:20
is, is someone is working in Alexandria, is are they going to
30:26
come into the office? Let's say they're not.
30:30
Let's say they're only coming in three days a week or two days a
30:32
week. What about the idea of going to
30:35
see them at the local Pete's or Starbucks?
30:38
What about the idea of doing a Zoom call and sending them Uber
30:42
Eats so that you're eating with them over a Zoom call?
30:46
I mean, things like that, creative ways to, to, to take a
30:50
look at what's going on in the world today.
30:53
And, and Speaking of that, I have no idea what's going on
30:58
with working at home, not working at home.
31:01
Companies are shifting positions left and right.
31:05
They, they have this idea that coming back will somehow resolve
31:09
their culture. I'm not sure it will without a
31:13
lot of cultural changes. I really, I really don't know.
31:18
And you asked about, you know, in, in my business, I have no
31:22
idea what the next platform is. I don't know.
31:27
I'm involved with an organization overseas in London.
31:31
And so I'm involved with a lot of European initiatives, some
31:36
Asian, some Indian initiatives. I I'm shocked every time I go to
31:45
an event in Madrid or whatever about how advanced some of these
31:49
companies are. Jim and you hit on, so I'm going
31:52
to kind of not jump to a question, but it's important
31:55
because you hit on the defensiveness that you guys
31:59
experience from the people who have not changed or where
32:04
they're seeing that there's there's change on the wall
32:09
aren't rallying to to that cause.
32:13
And I talk a lot about identity threat and identity
32:19
protectionism, which, which often is, it's not the
32:23
resistance as much as people are trying to redefine themselves.
32:29
And that's fearful, they feel threatened professionally.
32:34
And that often infuses them personally as well.
32:38
And so a lot of what you brought forward, right, hits on, on that
32:43
very important point. And I think I have that in
32:46
pretty much almost every episode.
32:48
So we're in season 2, right? So there's this is episode 18
32:54
and always bringing that forward both in the newsletter and here
32:58
because it's it's something I think that gets so easily
33:01
overlooked because we may not often realize we're doing it.
33:05
And, and having that hydration and that awareness that actually
33:11
recognizes I don't know what I don't know and I need to go find
33:14
it out is, is critical, particularly in how fast these
33:19
are moving today. This is one of the things that
33:22
I've had to do throughout my career, which is really rough,
33:26
is recognize that I may have to change the business model here.
33:34
A guy that you and I both know, John, you know, he wrote an
33:38
article that I thought was great and that was, do you know what
33:41
business you're in? You also need to know that you
33:46
have to hydrate as ACEO of a company.
33:49
That doesn't mean you become an expert on anything, but you need
33:52
to know what Umita is doing. You need to know what these
33:57
massive technology companies are doing and how it all works, but
34:03
you know, you have to be an expert on it.
34:06
Running a company now is is, you know, you have to hydrate, you
34:10
have to stay on top of things. If you don't know something, you
34:13
better bring somebody in as a consultant to help you.
34:18
You know, Kevin in in your, you have knowledge that way beyond
34:23
in certain things that I don't know a thing about.
34:25
And we've worked on stuff together where it just needed
34:29
your expertise and you're an expert at what you do.
34:33
So I don't try to go out of my swim lanes here at all.
34:37
I try to stay in and then when I don't know something, go to, you
34:41
know, Professor Novak. So in gentleman context of with
34:47
talking about the immune system and the way you describe that is
34:52
in many ways being the bacteria or the virus that's coming into
34:56
the organization. So you have your tactics in
34:58
which you're helping the organization.
35:00
How do you and your team prepare yourselves for that negativity
35:04
that you're going to experience? I I think there there is
35:10
something that everyone has to deal with when you do skill
35:13
based testing, either sophisticated skill based
35:17
testing or something like a Myers Brig.
35:20
I mean, you could even use that if you had to.
35:24
There are some people out there that do not have the capability
35:30
of changing and you just have to accept it.
35:34
And so then you have to decide whether you keep them or you,
35:38
you take their task and you do something that that fits or you
35:43
train, you try to train them if they're, if they're trainable.
35:47
Not everybody is or you have to suggest that they find other
35:51
work in today's environment. You have to be so flexible here
35:59
now and willing to at least when you're running a company or my,
36:03
my son is running the company to really, really shift on a dime.
36:09
And and you and I collect, and we've both seen us together.
36:13
That's a, that's actually a really great example because
36:17
they're so ingrained and holding on to what was and they just
36:20
can't see that well, the ship has sailed and they need
36:24
actually to make that transition away from what was to to what is
36:30
current. And given the fact we're in such
36:32
a dynamic environment, changes are happening so quickly.
36:36
We've seen it a lot. And then and, and, and, and then
36:39
if I can say comment about one other thing, and this is one of
36:43
my two other things. One of my big deals is you also
36:51
have to determine what the client, what their hidden agenda
36:53
is at the top. Are there, are they really
36:56
talking about folding something down?
36:58
They're just using you as an excuse for the board.
37:01
Are they selling, you know, that kind of thing.
37:05
I think that's really critical. My second thought I forgot but
37:10
it'll come back to me. This brings us to what I think
37:13
is the most important insight about organizational immune
37:16
systems. You cannot defeat it.
37:19
If you try to overpower cultural resistance through a mandate,
37:23
you trigger a stronger immune response.
37:26
If you try to bypass it through stealth implementation, it
37:30
eventually catches up to you. The only sustainable approach is
37:35
to work with the immune system rather than against it, and this
37:39
is where Shine's work becomes practically actionable, he
37:44
argued. The cultural change doesn't
37:46
happen by attacking the existing assumptions.
37:49
It happens by creating conditions where new assumptions
37:53
can develop alongside existing ones, until the new assumptions
37:58
prove more useful for solving the problems that the
38:01
organization actually faces. In practice, this means several
38:06
things. First, you need to make the
38:09
immune system visible before you trigger it.
38:12
This is the diagnostic work I discussed before.
38:16
Before launching a transformation, map the basic
38:19
underlying assumptions that the change will challenge.
38:23
If you're implementing A collaborative decision making
38:26
platform in an organization that deeply assumes decisions should
38:29
come from experts, you need to know that before day one, not
38:34
discovered in month 6 when adoption has stalled completely.
38:38
Second, you need to introduce change in ways the immune system
38:43
recognizes as compatible. Instead of framing a new
38:47
technology as replacing the old way of working, you got to frame
38:52
it as enhancing the things that culture already values.
38:56
If the organization's underlying assumption is that individual
39:00
expertise matters most, show then how the new tool amplifies
39:05
individual expertise rather than threatening it.
39:09
You're essentially coding the transplant and proteins the
39:12
immune system recognizes as itself 3rd.
39:17
You need to build psychological safety for assumption testing.
39:21
This connects back to season 2 episode 1 on identity crisis.
39:25
People need to feel safe enough to examine their own
39:29
assumptions, try new behaviors, and acknowledge when old
39:32
approaches aren't working anymore.
39:35
Without psychological safety, the immune system has no
39:39
mechanism for updating its recognition patterns. 4th use
39:44
early adopters as the bridges, not the outliers.
39:48
Instead of letting the immune system isolate people who
39:51
embrace the change, design structures that make early
39:55
adopters the connectors between old and new approaches.
39:59
Pair them with respected members of the existing culture That
40:03
helps. Then adoption spread through
40:05
trusted relationships rather than being perceived as an
40:08
invasion from the outside. And 5th measure assumption
40:13
shift, not just behavior change. The transformation isn't
40:17
complete when people use the new system, it's complete when the
40:21
underlying assumptions have evolved to make the new
40:23
behaviors feel organic and natural rather than forced.
40:28
This is the difference between compliance and culture change,
40:32
and it's the difference between transformations that stick in
40:35
those that regress the moment leadership attention moves
40:38
elsewhere. Jim, in your experience working
40:43
with organizations over the 30 years, what approaches have you
40:47
found most effective for actually changing those deep
40:51
underlying assumptions rather than just changing those surface
40:54
behaviors which separates organizations that achieve
40:59
genuine culture shift from those that achieve only temporary
41:03
compliance? When COVID broke out and talk
41:10
about my group, I came out and we had a all hands meeting and I
41:16
said I'm scared to death here. I don't know what's going on.
41:20
I don't know what's going to happen in advertising or exhibit
41:23
sales or any of it. No idea.
41:26
And I need you people to know that.
41:28
And I'll try to lead to the best I can with the information that
41:32
I can glean with a little bit of projection, but I can't project
41:38
for very far out. And you just need to know it.
41:41
And I'm going to do everything I can to protect jobs.
41:47
But there could be a point and just be honest.
41:50
And people don't don't quit when you talk like that.
41:54
They go, well, this guy or this woman is really trying to lead
41:58
this company properly. And that's again, honesty.
42:03
It's OK for the CEO to to be scared.
42:06
Yeah, the interesting thing Jim, is there's in last week's
42:11
episode and bringing up your point is if you're being honest,
42:20
your body language, your gestures, your facial expression
42:23
or be getting that honesty that you're putting forward.
42:26
Because what most people pick up on unconsciously is the body
42:29
movements, the gesture, not the words out of someone's mouth.
42:34
And a lot of CE OS who are are even managers who are coming in
42:39
trying to profess something company lying, you know, against
42:44
the culture, whatever we have to do this and not believe it
42:47
themselves. That disbelief is coming through
42:50
whether they realize it or not. And the people are picking up on
42:52
that. So, So what you shared is such a
42:55
incredibly important example for people if they're aspiring to be
43:00
a leader. And at the same time, there's
43:05
been a tendency to, you know, bring people in to run companies
43:09
that are IT people. Is that the right skill set?
43:13
I don't think so. I was a member of Vistage, which
43:18
is ACEO organization, and they put me, I was probably the
43:22
smallest member that's ever been admitted in, but they put me
43:26
through an enormous amount of testing.
43:28
And what is your propensity to social optimism, to social
43:34
negativity? And the right leader has to be
43:37
negative, not negative. Pardon me, neutral.
43:40
Excuse me. They can't be overly negative.
43:43
They can't be overly positive. And they have to really take the
43:48
information that they're getting and really take a look at who
43:53
it's coming from, why it's coming from them, that kind of
43:56
stuff. And again, maybe that right word
43:59
is hydrate, but also just use your common sense.
44:02
And, and I guess the other thing is stop looking for the magic
44:05
bullet. There isn't any magic bullet.
44:09
This idea that technology is going to save you.
44:12
It's it's it it's a help, but it isn't it isn't going to save
44:18
you. So there is no such thing as a
44:21
magic bullet in my business. What I tell clients are look at
44:26
all platforms. What's working with your
44:29
audience? Why don't you talk to your
44:31
audience, right? Find out what the what's working
44:34
there and don't start cutting out stuff or using this because
44:37
you think it's going to be, you know, wonderful.
44:40
I could do a whole thing on AII, think AI is a great tool, but at
44:48
the same time it makes huge mistakes and you got to be
44:54
careful. I mean, there is no magic bullet
44:57
here. Before we close, I'm going to
44:59
connect today's conversation back to the full Season 2 arc so
45:03
far because the organizational immune system is really the
45:07
unifying framework for everything that we've explored
45:10
so far this season. The identity crisis we discussed
45:14
in Episode 1 is the immune system activating at the
45:18
individual level. When transformation threatens
45:22
someone's professional identity, their personal immune response
45:26
generates the protective behaviors that look like
45:29
resistance but are really self preservation.
45:33
Emotional contagion from Episode 2 is the transmission mechanism,
45:38
the way individual immune responses spread through the
45:42
organizational body until they become collective.
45:46
The structural traps from Episode 3 are the institutional
45:50
immune responses, the organizational designs and
45:54
processes that have evolved specifically to maintain the
45:58
status quo. And the algorithmic mirrors from
46:01
Episode 4 show how technology can either reinforce existing
46:06
immune patterns or, if designed thoughtfully, help organizations
46:10
see their own assumptions more clearly.
46:13
The organizational immune system is the meta pattern that
46:16
connects all of these. It's the system that coordinates
46:20
identity protection, emotional contagion, structural rigidity,
46:25
and cultural pattern recognition into a unified defense against
46:30
change. Understanding it as a system
46:33
rather than a collection of individual problems is what
46:36
makes it possible to design transformation approaches that
46:40
are actually going to work and succeed.
46:43
Jim, as someone who works with organizations through these
46:46
challenges every day, what are the things you wish more leaders
46:51
understood about organizational culture and its resistance to
46:55
change? Yeah, I think the the ones, the
46:59
things that really matter long term are the the the head person
47:06
really spending time on the culture, really getting to know
47:11
the people within their organization.
47:14
Really if they can do any skill based testing, really realize
47:19
what that is. What is Jim a person that is an
47:24
idea person or is he a tactical person?
47:28
Is he in the right role? If he isn't, what do I really
47:32
need? And so a lot of times what we do
47:36
on this is really we don't, we start with kind of a Ground Zero
47:39
approach and you just take a look at what's needed within the
47:43
organization, forgetting the people just pretend it didn't
47:46
exist and then build a plan from that and then see if you have
47:50
plug insurance on that to make that work.
47:53
And I think that's what a an effective CEO that comes in for
47:56
transformation needs to do. And he needs to articulate it
48:01
and not use words like mission statements or any of that.
48:05
Just get up and say, look, we're in this because of whatever and
48:11
we want to see everybody grow. It's a very, very challenging
48:15
environment. Just admit the environment.
48:18
We don't know how we're going to have to change, but we are in
48:21
this for the, you know, we want to keep jobs, we want to keep
48:26
you going in a very turbulent environment and just recognize
48:31
it and then go see everybody. And, and then if there's
48:35
acquisition involved, Oh my God, you've got to really, really
48:41
work on that. How do you integrate the new
48:44
company coming in? Are the compensations programs
48:48
the same, right Or did the the acquired company have a better
48:54
thing for advertising sales? How, how does that, you know,
48:59
really spend time and bring experts in to take a hard look
49:02
at that and then talk to these people up front about when you
49:06
do acquire them and and you know, make the hard call here.
49:10
Jim, thank you so much for joining us today.
49:13
Your 3 decades of experience working with hundreds of
49:16
organizations brings a depth of practical insight that makes
49:20
this research come alive for our audience.
49:24
Thank you for having me. Do you have any final comments?
49:27
Do you want to share? And that final comment is it
49:32
really appreciates you and the fact that you're doing this the
49:38
series and how you're coming out of academia and actually out of
49:44
you have a terrific career in B to B and in your consulting
49:48
business. But spending the time to
49:50
recognize the kinds of things that you are now putting on your
49:55
podcast and that this is not about technology, it isn't
50:00
about, it's about people. And how do you, you know, how do
50:06
you recognize people and how do you properly treat people and
50:09
all the things that many of your, you know, last 17 podcasts
50:13
have talked about? I so my, my, what I say to your
50:18
audience is let's give Kevin a crown a round of applause and
50:23
keep you going here because this is valuable stuff.
50:27
I'm actually not kidding. The organizational immune system
50:30
isn't your enemy, it's the mechanism your culture uses to
50:34
maintain coherence and stability.
50:37
The problem isn't that the immune system exists.
50:41
The problem is that most transformation approaches
50:44
trigger it unnecessarily by ignoring the deep cultural
50:48
assumptions that Shine identified decades ago.
50:52
When you understand the culture operates on these 3 levels, and
50:56
that the deepest level of basic underlying assumption is where
51:00
resistance truly lives, you can design transformation approaches
51:04
that work with human psychology rather than fighting against it.
51:09
You can introduce change in ways the culture recognizes as
51:14
compatible. You can build the psychological
51:17
safety necessary for assumption testing.
51:19
And you can measure whether genuine culture shift is
51:23
occurring, rather than just tracking compliance metrics that
51:27
mask the real picture. In our next episode, we're
51:32
looking at one of the most powerful antibodies in the
51:35
organizational immune system we discussed today.
51:38
Silence. Not the kind of silence that
51:41
comes from having nothing to say.
51:43
It's the kind that comes from having learned through years of
51:47
subtle reinforcement that seeing something carries more risk than
51:52
staying quiet. The data here shows that one in
51:56
three employees who know about problems in the organization
52:00
never report them. And nearly half of those who do
52:04
speak up face retaliation. Your organization says it wants
52:10
candor, but what it is actually teaching people to do?
52:14
Well, TuneIn next week to find out if you found today's episode
52:18
valuable. Here's how you can explore these
52:21
concepts further. Subscribe to the Human Factor
52:24
Podcast wherever you watch or listen to podcast.
52:27
Leave a rating and a comment. Share this episode with your
52:31
leadership team, because understanding the immune system
52:35
is the first step to working with it, rather than fighting
52:38
against it. And if you want weekly insights
52:41
about transformation psychology, organizational behavior, and the
52:46
human factors that determine transformation success,
52:49
subscribe to my Ideas and Innovations newsletter on 2040
52:53
Digital's website. We're on our substance.
52:56
Every week I share practical frameworks and research on why
53:00
change succeeds or fails and connect with me on LinkedIn as
53:04
well. I post regularly about the
53:07
psychology of transformation, and I love hearing from
53:10
listeners about their own experiences.
53:13
Today's subject? The organizational immune
53:15
response. Until next time, remember, your
53:19
organization's culture isn't resisting change to be
53:22
difficult. It's protecting what it knows.
53:26
The question isn't how to defeat that protection.
53:30
It's how to help the culture evolve its definition of what it
53:33
needs to protect. This is the Human Factor
53:37
podcast. I'm Kevin Novak.
53:39
Thanks for watching or listening.