Corporate Culture Continued from page 33 In other words, all of our aerospace vehicles are incredibly intolerant of mistakes. He insisted on maintaining an appropriate corporate culture that can shine a light in dark corners and keep you from making certain errors. My fellow pilot considered culture to be a set of beliefs and behaviors that determined how a group of people interacts. Since it was in- fluential in determining what each considered important, it controlled how the group thought and acted. He explained it as some crazy form of mind control that stemmed from our tribal mentality. As tribal animals, we want to align ourselves with a given group’s culture to minimize tribal friction. His research had convinced him that while many things can improve corporate culture and align it to help the company achieve its goals, there were multiple dark sides of culture that required constant vigilance. One problem he found was that culture tended to stifle change and reform. A second was that if a culture were not expressly defined and guided by corporate leadership, it would develop organically as a natu- ral function and reflect the traits of the dominant people hired. My friend had never seen an organically grown culture that was desirable, healthy, or beneficial for the group. It turns out that culture is like any other aspect of the leadership of an organization. It must be measured and managed. I told him he’d lost me at this point, and he asked if I knew the story of the Spencer rifle. When I said I didn’t, he explained that in the mid-1800’s, the Spencer company married precision manufactur- ing and copper milling. This odd Aviation Business Journal | 4th Quarter 2015 combination ultimately allowed the manufacture of the repeating rifle. The Spencer rifle was a game changer, but the Generals were baffled by its disruptiveness. Unbelievably, the Department of War initially rejected it since the soldiers would be firing too many bullets. I kid you not! Their thinking was that it would be impossible to keep the front lines supplied with bullets if the soldiers discharged their weap- ons at these much higher rates of fire. The rejection was the first level of resistance to change. I learned that in a functioning but stagnant culture, “better” is the enemy of “good enough.” I also learned the trap of “not invented here,” or NIH. Fortunately for the story, Christopher Spencer was not de- terred. He knew how valuable his weapon was to the war effort and finally gained an audience with President Lincoln. He allowed the President to shoot the weapon and the President loved it. This politi- cally dangerous end run around the War Department worked. Lincoln ordered that the rifle be adopted immediately. Spencer’s gamble paid off and gave me yet another lesson: the leader defines the cul- ture. In the case of Christopher Spencer, he had to get to the leader. So, the repeating rifles were finally purchased and deployed to the front, but the tactics were not changed. I didn’t understand this, so he explained. If your enemy is equipped with muzzle loaders, they are limited to one shot approximately every minute. Worse, the accuracy of a muzzle loader is a function of the precision with which you load it. Although experts with muzzle loaders had been reported to be accurate to 1,000 yards, a foot soldier in the heat of battle would regularly miss a target twenty yards away. Consequently, a tactic for the attack of positions defended by muzzle loaders had been developed and proven effective over the years. One side’s soldiers would charge the enemy soldiers and take advantage of the inaccurate, low fire rate. Charging in this manner enabled one side to overrun their enemy’s position. Many War College articles of the period had been written about this tactic. In fact, since no other tactic was discussed, the frontal at- tack rose to the status of dogma. But the repeating rifle was a disruptor and a game changer. In the face of the repeating rifle and its ten times greater volume of fire, a frontal charge was the worst possible tac- tic conceivable. Failures in the field were spectacular and immediately blamed on officers’ incompetence. It had taken a string of field disasters before anyone questioned the tactics. Only then were the tactics changed. The failure to change the tactics in the face of changed conditions gave me the next lesson: stagnant cul- tures always prepare for the “last war” and always get caught flat- footed in the face of anything new. I was stunned and said so. The officers that were commanding these troops had to be the best and the brightest, yet they fell into a trap that, while obvious to us today, was invisible to our forefathers. Unbeknownst to them, the tac- tics they had learned had become dogma. A culture will tend to forget Continued on page 36 35
