Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Introducing a KSP culture

The culture of a group can now be defined as:
A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.
In other words, as groups evolve over time, they face two basic challenges: integrating individuals into an effective whole, and adapting effectively to the external environment in order to survive. As groups find solutions to these problems over time, they engage in a kind of collective learning that creates the set of shared assumptions, conclusions, acknowledgements, affirmations and ratification we call "culture."
Now describing the KSP culture as "an active living phenomenon through which people jointly create and recreate the worlds in which we live."
It focuses attention on the human side of organizational life, and finds significance and learning in even its most mundane aspects (for example, the setup in an empty meeting room as a discussion site).
It makes clear the importance of creating appropriate systems of shared meaning to help people work together toward desired outcomes.
It requires members—especially team coordinators—to acknowledge the impact of their participation on the organization’s culture. To find answers to "What impact am I having on the social construction of reality in my organization?" "What can I do to have a different and more positive impact?"
It encourages the view that the perceived relationship between an organization and its environment is also affected by the organization’s basic assumptions.
Using open-systems concepts, we know that members of a group culture may also belong to subcultures within an organization, as in many orchestra organizations, the subcultures have had different experiences over time, and their group learning has produced very different sets of basic assumptions.
The organizational culture model suggests reinterpreting such a conflict as a product of different sets of experiences. Instead of looking at conflict as "right" versus "wrong," this approach suggests that subsystems examine the assumptions underlying their participation, honor the experiences and learning that led to those assumptions, and then investigate whether those assumptions still work well in the present in order to go into the future.
"The bottom line for team coordinators is that if they do not become conscious of the cultures in which they are embedded, those cultures will manage them."

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