ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

410 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIPsenior managers of a given organization may not be willing or ableto provide such culture change leadership. If a leader is imposedfrom the outside, he or she must have the skill to diagnose accuratelywhat the culture of the organization is, which elements arewell adapted and which are problematic for future adaptation, andhow to change that which needs changing.Conceived of in this way, leadership is, first of all, the capacityto surmount one’s own organizational culture, to be able to perceiveand think about ways of doing things that are different from whatthe current assumptions imply. To fulfill this role adequately, learningleaders therefore must be somewhat marginal and somewhatembedded in the organization’s external environment. At the sametime, learning leaders must be well connected to those parts of theorganization that are themselves well connected to the environment—thesales organization, purchasing, marketing, public relations,legal, finance, and R&D. Learning leaders must be able tolisten to disconfirming information coming from these sources andto assess the implications for the future of the organization. Onlywhen they truly understand what is happening and what will berequired in the way of organizational change can they begin to takeaction in starting a learning process.Much has been said of the need for vision in leaders, but too littlehas been said of their need to listen, to absorb, to search theenvironment for trends, and to build the organization’s capacity tolearn. It is especially at the strategic level that the ability to see andacknowledge the full complexity of problems becomes critical. Theability to acknowledge complexity may also imply the willingnessand emotional strength to admit uncertainty and to embrace experimentationand possible errors as the only way to learn (Michael,1985). In our obsession with leadership vision, we may have madeit difficult for the learning leader to admit that his or her vision isnot clear and that the whole organization together will have tolearn. And, as I have repeatedly argued, vision only helps when theorganization has already been disconfirmed and members feel anxiousand in need of a solution. Much of what the learning leadermust do occurs before vision even becomes relevant.