ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

HOW LEADERS EMBED AND TRANSMIT CULTURE 263sistent with the primary mechanisms discussed above. When theyare consistent, they begin to build organizational ideologies andthus to formalize much of what is informally learned at the outset.If they are inconsistent, they will either be ignored or be a source ofinternal conflict.All these secondary mechanisms can be thought of at this stageas cultural artifacts that are highly visible but may be difficult tointerpret without insider knowledge obtained from observing leaders’actual behaviors. When an organization is in its developmentalphase, the driving and controlling assumptions will always be manifestedfirst and most clearly in what the leaders demonstrate throughtheir own behavior, not in what is written down or inferred from visibledesigns, procedures, rituals, stories, and published philosophies.However, as we will see later, these secondary mechanisms canbecome very strong in perpetuating the assumptions even when newleaders in a mature organization would prefer to change them.Organizational Design and StructureAs I have observed executive groups in action, particularly firstgenerationgroups led by their founder, I have noticed that thedesign of the organization—how product lines, market areas, functionalresponsibilities, and so on are divided up—elicits high degreesof passion but not too much clear logic. The requirements ofthe primary task—how to organize in order to survive in the externalenvironment—seem to get mixed up with powerful assumptionsabout internal relationships and with theories of how to get thingsdone that derive more from the founder’s background than fromcurrent analysis. If it is a family business, the structure must makeroom for key family members or trusted colleagues, cofounders, andfriends. Even in publicly held companies, the organization’s designis often built around the talents of the individual managers ratherthan the external task requirements.Founders often have strong theories about how to organize formaximum effectiveness. Some assume that only they can ultimately