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“Fortunately history does not pose problems without eventually providing solutions. The disenchanted, the disadvantaged and the disinherited seem, at times of deep crisis, to summon up some sort of genius that enables them to perceive and capture the appropriate weapons to carve out their destiny. Such was the peaceable weapon of nonviolent direct action ...there is something in the American ethos that responds to the strength of moral force.”
--the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King was just 39 when an assassin’s bullet took his life. He wrote this book at age 34. It became a classic text of the civil rights movement and contains eloquent, insightful lessons on leadership. CultureConnects brings you the following summary of key concepts from Martin Luther King’s Why We Can’t Wait (New American Library, 1964 edition), and offers ideas you can use:

Civil rights, in relation to poverty, economic and technology opportunities:

“The Negro also had to realize that one hundred years after emancipation he lived on a lonely island of economic insecurity in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity... They live in two concentric circles of segregation. One imprisons them on the basis of color, while the other confines them within a separate culture of poverty. ...Compounded by the emergence and growth of automation...there was not in existence the kind of vigorous retraining program that could really help him grapple with the magnitude of his problem.”

Inclusiveness, universal concern, faith:

In armies of violence, there is a caste of rank. In Birmingham, outside of the few generals and lieutenants who necessarily directed and coordinated operations, the regiments of the demonstrators marched in democratic phalanx. Doctors marched with window cleaners. Lawyers demonstrated with laundresses. PhDs and no-D’s were treated with perfect equality by the registrars of the nonviolence movement. ...When a police dog buried his fangs in the ankle of a small child in Birmingham, he buried his fangs in the ankle of every American. The bell of man’s inhumanity to man does not toll for any one man. It tolls for you, for me, for all of us. Somehow God gave me the power to transform the resentments, the suspicions, the fears and the misunderstanding I found that week into faith and enthusiasm.”

Power of the media:

“Washington is a city of spectacles...But in its entire glittering history, Washington had never seen a spectacle of the size and grandeur that assembled there on August 28, 1963. [N]early 250,000 people who journeyed that day to the capital...As television beamed this extraordinary gathering across the border oceans, everyone who believed in man’s capacity to better himself had a moment of inspiration and confidence in the future of the human race. And every dedicated American could be proud that a dynamic experience of democracy in his nation’s capital had been made visible to the world.”

Civil rights in a global community:

“Eventually the civil rights movement will have contributed infinitely more to the nation than the eradication of racial injustice. It will have enlarged the concept of brotherhood to a vision of total interrelatedness. On that day, Canon John Donne’s doctrine, “No man is an islande,” will find its truest application in the United States. ...It is no longer merely the idealist or the doom-ridden who seeks for some controlling force capable of challenging the instrumentalities of destruction. Many are searching. Sooner or later all the peoples of the world, without regard to the political systems under which they live, have to discover a way to live together in peace.”

Do you and your organization:

--Support, communicate and consistently demonstrate diversity and equal opportunity as core values?
--Attract a larger and more diverse pool of qualified constituents (job applicants, customers, etc.) via contextual outreach to communities and cultures?
--Have ways to orient newcomers to the culture of the organization? (e.g. mentoring, shadowing, training programs)
(Adapted from group discussion, “Multicultural Issues in the Workplace”, Penn State-York.)

Democracies vote about a government's policies every two to four years. But the Electronic Herd votes every minute of every hour of every day.
—Thomas L. Friedman

CultureConnects brings you the following summary of key concepts from Thomas L. Friedman's book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999 edition), and offers ideas you can use:

• Frame for viewing globalization: Thomas Friedman views the world from his vantage point as foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, wearing "6-D" glasses and learning from all kinds of sources--from heads of state to hedge fund managers. His six-faceted perspective includes: politics, and culture; geopolitics (national security/balance of power); international finance; technological advances; and environmentalism. "Without multiple perspectives you 'pendulum swing' between opinions." Individuals and organizations of the future will need to be able to see multiple perspectives and accomplish "information arbitrage" (buy information cheap, sell knowledge at a premium.)


How does your organization capitalize on "information arbitrage"? Are you managing information--or creating knowledge as a strategic capability?

• The growing divide between Old Economy vs. New Economy: Or to use Friedman's metaphors, the olive tree (tradition, rootedness) and the Lexus (change, technology). Friedman uses metaphors effectively. Consider: The Golden Straightjacket (free market capitalism; only way to grow it is to wear it tight, add padding here and there); The Electronic Herd (digitally empowered and faceless stock, bond and securities traders; and multinationals); the Microchip Immune Deficiency Syndrome (the "defining political disease of this era";, a cold war mindset that can't speed up); and the global economy's current "software"; standard for principles and processes, "DOS Capital 6.0"; (U.S., Hong Kong, Taiwan, U.K. have it) versus those who have earlier versions (e.g. France, Germany and Japan with 5.0; Indonesia and Thailand, 3.0; Hungary, 1.0; China, 1.0-4.0, depending on whether rural or urban). And there's only one "hardware": quality.


How does your organization "listen to the local herd" to get a jump on economic trends? Are you leading or lagging in "software" (principles, processes) and "hardware" (quality)?

• Habits of Highly Effective Countries: Friedman asks these questions to assess the economic power and potential of countries. Substitute "countries" with "companies" and the list is equally valid:

...How wired? (# of PCs, degree of connectivity)
...How fast? (Process speed. How long to get approvals, loans, etc.)
...Are you harvesting knowledge? (Tapping it; networking)
...How much does it weigh? (Miniaturization)
...Do you dare to be open? (Transparency)
...How good are you at making friends? (Alliances, not mergers)
...How good is your brand?

• Will the Internet become another Tower of Babel? The author worries about the backlash consequences of the economic and technologic gap between "haves" and "have-nots", arguing that countries and companies need to close the gap, and help nurture "real" communities. "America, at its best, is not just a country. It's a spiritual value and a role model."

CultureConnects brings you the following summary of key concepts from Edgar H. Schein's classic text, Organizational Culture and Leadership, (Jossey-Bass Inc., 1997 edition), and offers ideas you can use:

• Coping cycle: Schein specifies a "coping cycle" organizations use to survive in their changing environments. The cycle is comprised of categories on which all organizations must achieve consensus (have "shared assumptions" about) or risk conflict and creation of subcultures. The cycle categories include: 1. mission and strategy; 2. goals; 3. means; 4. measurement; and 5. correction.


Has your organization gained consensus in these areas? Are there signs of "subcultures" forming around non-consenting views?

• Crisis: An organization's response to crisis is revealing and yields opportunities to build culture. Therefore organizational adaptation is one of the most important areas to "analyze, understand, and if possible, manage"… "Neurotic organizations, whose culture becomes chronically dysfunctional, often arise from a series of such crisis resolutions". Crisis (as defined by leaders) powerfully embeds learned assumptions because people share intense emotional experiences and collectively learn and remember.


Has your organization:

• Learned more about its strengths and challenges, by examining past crises?
• Evaluated areas of dysfunction from an organizational culture perspective?
• Developed a crisis response plan?

• Leadership: One definition of leadership: a manager who consistently uses all six "culture embedding mechanisms": 1. what leaders measure, control, pay attention to; 2. how leaders react to critical incidents and crises; 3. deliberate role modeling, teaching and coaching; observed criteria by which leaders: 4. allocate scarce resources; 5. allocate rewards and status; and 6. recruit, select, promote, retire and excommunicate organizational members. The sum total of these mechanisms constitute an organization's "climate". The power of these mechanisms resides in their consistent use.


As a leader, are you consistently using all six mechanisms?

• Mergers and acquisitions: "Rarely checked [in due diligence] are those aspects that might be considered cultural. Yet a cultural mismatch in an acquisition or merger is as great a risk as a financial, product, or market mismatch."


Is there a combining of cultures in your organization's future? Have you factored in "cultural due diligence"?

• Thought worlds: D. Dougherty's research on "thought worlds" suggests that successful new product introductions depend on the degree to which the product development team is successful in understanding these five separate "worlds" of perceptions about customers: engineering, manufacturing, marketing/planning, sales and distribution.


As a leader, have you considered the ways in which operational, divisional, and other segments of the organization impact business by having their own "worlds" of perception?

Also by Edgar H. Schein

The Corporate Culture Survival Guide