The World’s Most Toxic Culture?

Organisational culture

If you have been reading this blog for a while you will have noticed that I am a caught in a repeating loop.  The human equivalent of a stuck record.

I write about organisational improvement.  There are lots of fascinating advances in technology, management thinking and other whiz-bang solutions that I could pontificate about, but I invariably bounce back to the topic of culture.

Culture is nebulous thing, there is more to it than “the way we do things around here”, behaviour is only the tip of the iceberg.  But the tip of the iceberg is very revealing.   There are plenty of hints when things are rotten…

• Management is all about control
• Targets are rife
• Intimidation and casting blame are core competences
• Leaders don’t listen and staff don’t speak up
• Failures are buried
• Good news abounds

It is easy to see how my list of behaviours fits together, but is changing culture the biggest lever you can pull?  In the modern world, with all our data, technology, innovation and infrastructure, surely there are bigger, easier more lucrative fish to fry.

After all, how bad can your culture be?

The great leap forward

From 1958 to 1962 Mao Zedong, chairman of the communist party of China, attempted to transform his country.  He wanted to change it from an economy based on agriculture to an industrial power house that rivalled Britain and the United States.  Chinese historian Yang Jisheng chronicled his attempts in the book Tombstone.  Mao’s desire to overtake Britain within 15 years became “the guiding ideology of the party and the country”.

Policy change

Chairman Mao forced through many radical changes to achieve his dream:

• He abolished private ownership of land and property, creating state operated communes instead.
• The communes were set stringent food production targets to feed the cities and provide export revenue.
• To boost industrial output the communes were urged to build backyard steel furnaces.
• New agricultural methods were adopted, close planting of seeds to improve yields was enforced.
• Manure was concentrated on the most fertile land to increase productivity.  Other land was left fallow.
• The four pests campaign was introduced to eradicate mosquitos, rodents, flies and sparrows.  The government declared that “birds are public animals of capitalism”.

To help motivate the people and encourage compliance with the new policies loudspeakers boomed out propaganda and songs.

The impact

Local party officials swung into action to force through the changes.

Peasants and other workers battled to build and operate the backyard furnaces.  They stripped local forests of trees to fire them.  Knives, pots, pans, plates and other “scrap” were requisitioned then melted down to produce low quality pig iron.  All to hit production targets. This all took people away from work in the fields.

Of the four pests, sparrows were the easiest target.  People banged pots and pans together. The resulting racket frightened the birds so much they wouldn’t land in the trees.  Many died from the exhaustion of flying.  Sparrow nests were sought out, their eggs were smashed and chicks killed.  Propaganda forced the activity on, particularly in rural areas. “Killing sparrows serves to protect crops. Sparrows in cities and forest areas do not necessarily have to be eliminated.“

The Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko was the source of the agricultural innovations.  His ideas are now rejected.  Close planting of seedlings gave reduced yields. The plants competed with one another for resources.  Liu Shaoqi, Mao’s deputy at the time suggested that peasants use tweezers to weed the seedlings.

Despite the havoc caused by Lysenko’s ideas the weather in 1958 was ideal for agriculture.  But because people were so busy with Mao’s steel furnaces and other projects, much of the harvest rotted in the fields.  A plague of locusts exacerbated the problem.  The insect population flourished in the absence of its major predators, rodents and sparrows.

Self-deception

The harvest was disastrous, but nobody admitted it.

Local officials, motivated by fear or power, declared record breaking yields.  Senior officials then swooped in to commandeer the grain “surplus”. It was taken to fill government warehouses.  The lack of food caused a famine in rural areas.

As disquiet spread amongst the population there were vicious attacks on anybody who dared question the policies.  When the head of one agricultural commune dared to point out the obvious — that there was no food — a party leader warned him: “That’s right-deviationist thinking. You’re viewing the problem in an overly simplistic matter.”

Local leaders started to cover up the famine and cast blame on the peasants, protecting their own positions.  When Mao visited Henan province in 1958 the fields he saw were carefully prepared. Local officials transplanted healthy seedlings from other parts of the region. They were densely planted giving the appearance of abundance.

Only one of Mao’s senior leaders spoke out about what was happening. Marshal Peng Dehuai was the minister for defence.  Mao denounced him as “bourgeois” and sacked him.  His successor Lin Bao then went on to purge the military of Dehuai’s supporters.

Mao’s attacks cowed his opposition.  At local party level, gangs of Mao’s political supporters harassed or killed anybody who dared speak out.  Doctors were forbidden from using the word starvation on death certificates.

Despite the famine, China was a net exporter of grain between 1958 and 1960 .  When news of the disaster reached the outside world the Japanese offered to ship 100,000 tonnes of wheat to China secretly.  The offer was refused.  When asked about the famine in a news conference in 1961 John F. Kennedy said “we’ve had no indication from the Chinese Communists that they would welcome any offer of food”.

Mao Zedong did not want to lose face.

Human cost

Estimates vary on how many people starved to death.  The most that has ever been admitted is 20 million, though some estimate the number was as high as 45 million.  But those are just big numbers.  It is the small stories that show how horrific the situation was.  According to the author and academic, Frank Dikotter:

• One man was found guilty of stealing a sweet potato.  Officials forced him to eat excrement.
• Another man was forced to bury his son alive for stealing a handful of grain.
• People turned to cannibalism, one teenage orphan killed and ate her four-year-old brother.
• In one village 44 of the 45 residents died.  The last one, a woman in her 60’s went insane.

In an internal Party communiqué in 1959, Mao admitted, “Much of the falsehood has been prompted by the upper levels through boasting, pressure, and reward, leaving little alternative to those below.”

In 1961 the agricultural policies were curtailed and agricultural production started to rise.  Grain exports were stopped and shipments were accepted from Canada and Australia.

It would have been easy to avert the disaster

All the country’s leadership had to do was face into the issues and admit their failings.  Arrogance, self-deception and blame got in the way.

Culture will have far more of an impact on performance than any technology, management idea or whiz-bang solution ever will.

I hope your organisation is less toxic than Mao’s.

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Image available at chinese posters.net