ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

390 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIPThis insight leads to a further point. Many assumptions aroundmission, goals, means, measurement systems, roles, and relationshipscan be superficial within the total structure of the cultural paradigmyet very important for the organization’s functioning on aday-to-day basis. The assumption that the headquarters functionalgroups had worldwide responsibility for tracking everything was nota very deep assumption within the whole Ciba-Geigy culture, butit had a major impact on business performance and managerialmorale in the country companies. Changing some of these superficialassumptions was crucial to Ciba-Geigy’s effective adaptation.The deeper assumptions may drive this whole process but may nothave to change.It should also be noted that the deeper assumptions are not necessarilyfunctional. The commitment to science continued to bemanifested in commitment to scientists, especially some of the olderones who had helped the company to become successful. In oneextreme case such a person was a country manager who was performingpoorly in that role. A more skillful general manager hadbeen groomed to take over this country, but the decision to give himauthority was held up for two full years in order to let the scientistretire at his normal time. It was felt that to force him into earlyretirement would not only be destructive to him but would send thewrong signal to the rest of the organization.What, then, really happened in the redirection project and why?Many in the company asked this question in order to understand thereasons for the success of the change effort. My own observationis that the effort was successful because the executive committee(1) sent a clear message that a change was needed, (2) involved itselffully in the change process, (3) tackled the impossible job of reducingheadquarters staff as well as the power of the functional groups,and (4) thereby not only created involvement and ownership downthe line in the country groups but made it clear that operationalproblems would increasingly be delegated down. Even though communicationlaterally was still minimal, the vertical channels weremore opened up. Financial information was shared more than be-