Evolutionary Culture in Organizations
Human experience is unique because we use culture to aid our survival as a species. We form groups, religions, and political systems based on philosophical ideas. Some keep family connections much closer than others, while others live as individuals. Human experience diversity has been considered part of our biological evolution.
Indeed, we have been using our capacity to create organizational structures as a set of cultural tools to deal with the realities we have to face. Each historical moment, each new wave of knowledge and possibilities has brought with it the types of organizations that prove to be functional in that context, generating economic development, prosperity for participants, and cultural diffusion for management practices.
In its progression, this evolutionary mechanism (new types of organizations emerging for new contexts) has seen both times of excellent illumination and many shadows. The lights point to better results, sustainable ways to scale organizational capacity, broad coverage, and impact. The shadows are related to depersonalization, a lack of commitment to the environment, ethical dilemmas, stress, and other issues.
All these shadows have occurred in attempts to solve complex problems with types of organizations that have yet to be willing (or available) to adapt to the increasing complexity of the times in which they are immersed. They think that with the typical way of doing things, they can handle any problem. The consequence has been a mismatch that disconnects the organization from its historical, social, biological, and cultural context, preventing (or hindering) its evolution and causing problems.
Modernity has accelerated development, expansion, new possibilities, and sustainability, improving the quality of life in many ways. However, are the systems we have used to approach problem management in the past sufficient to deal with today’s complex environments?
The process of cultural evolution occurs through an algorithm. When there is inheritance, variation, and selection, it operates through an evolutionary mechanism that allows new generations (from a genetic perspective) to adapt better to the contexts in which they live.
At the cultural level, change happens in the same way. However, the replication systems are not genes but units of cultural transmission that are inherited, varied, and selected from person to person (or group to group) depending on the context in which they participate. We imitate what we see and generate complex systems of beliefs, values, and paradigms that make us, on the one hand, perceive reality in a particular way and, on the other hand, act, teach, and manage according to this conception of reality.
This form of evolution becomes increasingly complex when we face more complexity. New inheritance, variation, and selection conditions occur as the environment changes, mainly due to the same outcomes we foster.
Cultural evolution creates an “immune system” that attracts practices, values, and systems consistent with the central cultural system while repelling those not in harmony with it.
This generates articulated systemic structures that seek to preserve the system and reject other ways of seeing, thinking, and acting.
Systematic observation of human behavior over the past 40 years has shown the existence of an evolutionary process that has generated various forms of thinking in people, each adapted to the context, and many of them are only enabled to address the problem they are facing in that particular context. Now that these contexts are constantly changing, relationships, information, and globalization have brought more complexity to managing dynamic, cultural, and relational processes and result evaluation. From there, emerging organizations have reproduced these paradigmatic systems in their design and modus operandi. For example, an organization that appeared to address the challenges of the Industrial Revolution needs to be fixed for the current challenges.
This is where new types of organizations emerge to address current challenges and provide a more integrated and evolved view of their management paradigms. These organizations recognize the tremendous variety of forms that coexist with them, valuing diversity as an opportunity to become a more resilient, connected, and influential organization in complex contexts.
In some way, these organizations find their adaptive purpose (continuing to exist and improve) aligning with an evolutionary sense (transcending and evolving in a complex context). These two forces (consolidation and change) are the constant paradoxes that the organization must overcome in order to succeed in changing conditions in today’s world.
The current challenge is to find managers capable of understanding and operating in these contexts, applying new approaches that, in many cases, will make them lose the illusion of control that has been in place since the Industrial Revolution. This, in itself, will be a challenge to overcome as part of the cultural evolution process.
Author:
Pablo Reyes Arellano, Executive Director of Memética
Imagen de: https://acortar.link/INs2KI
