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What are "Cultural Stages"? |
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- Organizations, organization sub-components (e.g. divisions, business units), and teams function at one of three expanding stages: Culture, Intercultural, or Transcultural. Each stage includes the features of the previous stage while also adding new complexity. The degree of successful functionality within these stages depends on the effective alignment of the capacity and the competencies of the responsible leadership.
- The establishment of a Cultural Stage is sufficient when an organization or team interacts in a reasonably stable environment where customers, life conditions, opportunities and challenges are all well-known and relatively unchanging. Best practices are established, repeated, tested and become almost formulaic.
- The development of an Intercultural Stage becomes necessary when the organization or team must work with people from a different cultural group who have different values and ways of “being” and “doing” (see Culture). It is also required when customers, life conditions, opportunities and challenges are continually changing at a fairly constant rate. In this complex environment, the organization or team must frequently create new approaches and solutions that resonate with decision-makers, key players and other stakeholders.
- The need to accelerate to a Transcultural Stage is mandated by the organization’s or team’s need to adapt to radically different customers, life conditions, opportunities and challenges. It is also required when change is dynamic and occurs in seemingly random and sudden jumps. In this unstable environment, the organization or team must create new approaches and solutions that resonate with decision-makers, key players and other stakeholders, and also match the requirements of life conditions, challenges, and opportunities that may suddenly emerge.
- Larger organizations may have several sub-systems that are at different cultural stages. In these cases, they will need to bridge the different sub-cultures for alignment of the organization, its goals and its stakeholders.
- An organization or team must be at a cultural stage at least equal to the challenges provided by their life conditions and stakeholders if it is to survive. The only effective way to manage Intercultural and Transcultural challenges is to place an appropriate number of leaders at aligned Leadership Stages in positions of power and influence.
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