ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

382 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIPThird Annual Meeting:The Culture Lecture DisasterI had made it clear that one should think of change as a stage to bemanaged, with targets and assigned change managers (Beckhardand Harris, 1987). From this point of view, the third annual meetingprovided a natural opportunity to review progress, check outwhat problems had been encountered, share successes and goodinnovations, replan some projects if necessary, and, most important,announce newly defined role relationships among executive committeemembers, division heads, and country heads.The headquarters organization was too involved in the dayto-dayoperation of the local businesses. So as the functions wereshrunk and restructured, it also appeared desirable to redefine thecorporate headquarters role as more strategic, with the operatingunits to do more of the day-to-day management. This was possiblebecause country managers were now willing and able to assumemore responsibilities and because the executive committee increasinglyrecognized the importance of its strategic role.At the opening session I was asked to review the progress of theredirection project, based on interviews with a series of managersabout their experiences with the project. This lecture was designedto remind the participants of change theory, to legitimize their individualexperiences and frustrations by giving a wide range of examples,to illustrate how restraining forces had been dealt with byinnovative managers, and to introduce to the group the concept ofcorporate culture as a force to be analyzed. Based on my observationsand systematic interviews, I was to review some of the majorcultural assumptions operating at Ciba-Geigy.The reaction to the lecture produced an important insight.Many participants said that I had stated things more or less accurately,but they clearly were not pleased that I, as an outsider, hadmade portions of their culture public. Some of them insisted that Ihad misunderstood or misinterpreted the culture, and one or twoexecutive committee members subsequently decided that I there-