American Red Cross: Part 2

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

It’s time for Part Two of the American Red Cross case study. In my March 9 posting, I talked about how we can look at corporate culture through the lens of social or behavioral styles and described how the styles of Dr. Healy and the American Red Cross culture were polar opposites, the Driver-Steadiness tension. I wanted to spend a little more time talking about these two styles and the dynamic that can often surface from their interaction.

Let’s start with the Steadiness style as it relates to a culture. Given that the mission of the American Red Cross is to “provide relief to victims of disasters and help people prevent, prepare for, and respond to emergencies,” it’s reasonable to assume that the culture of the rank-and-file would be Steadiness. Think about it. Unpredictable, and often catastrophic, events, along with all the stress that comes with such responsibilities, define the whole operation. By virtue of its mission, preventing and responding to disasters and emergencies is the daily mindset of anyone involved in the Red Cross, particularly the closer the person is to the front-line.

Naturally, people who work in such daily circumstances would probably look to their work environment, whether consciously or sub-consciously, to be as predictable and stable as possible. Therefore, both individually and collectively, the Red Cross rank-and-file is likely to reject and resist anything that threatens to disrupt stability or add unnecessary distractions.

My experience with this type of organizational culture and the individuals that support it is that they are not necessarily opposed to change but they are very skeptical about the transition required to get from the current way to the new way of doing things. Their experience tells them that leaders don’t often have the patience or devote the necessary resources to ensure that everyone experiences an orderly, logical, and supportive transition. Too often, in their eyes, the change is abrupt, poorly justified, and under-financed.

So enters the Dr. Healy character into this drama. Hard charging, intelligent, impervious to excuses, more interested in the future than the past, thrives on challenges: the classic change agent. She comes in talking about the need to change, pointing out where there are problems (which only injects conflict into the work environment, in the minds of a Steadiness culture) and starts to set aggressive goals.

The Steadiness culture often pulls back at first, in some ways recoiling from the push of a Driver leader and in other ways, stepping back to take in the entire situation. It usually doesn’t take long for the Steadiness culture to conclude that they can wait out this leader and all the changes he or she is pushing down their collective throats. Their mindset is one of, “I can wait you out because I know I am here forever. Your track record is one of not staying long at an organization. You will get bored or get in trouble. You will be gone long before I am.”

And in most cases, they are right. The Driver leader does get bored when progress towards the new way slows down or others stymie his/her push. Regardless of how the Driver leader responds to the resistance, the Steadiness culture knows the leader’s days are numbered. There is a sense of impatience in the leader’s body language and actions. He or she starts to overreach, frustrated by the lack of progress and desperate to experience any sort of movement forward. The Steadiness culture digs in deeper, walking a delicate balance between resistance and perceived effort, waiting for others to step into the fray. Often it is the Board of Directors, concerned about the lack of progress, or complaints coming from the organization about the leader’s style, or questionable actions the leader took when overreaching. The Steadiness culture smells blood in the water. Be patient, lay low. Rumors begin to fly. And then the magical day arrives. The announcement. “President and CEO Dr. Bernadine Healy to Leave the American Red Cross.”

But wait, there’s even more. To be continued…