The Positive Organization
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Mental Maps and Culture

Like the surgeons, all of us have a set of assumptions or beliefs that help us navigate the world we live in. These beliefs are acquired over time from the people we live with and work with. We learn from these people and from our own experiences what works and what doesn’t. These assumptions and beliefs then become like maps in our minds that guide our responses to what we observe and experience around us.

Our mental maps guide us in all areas of life: they create our picture of what family life is like. They tell us what to expect in areas like education, religion, and recreation. Because our assumptions are a product of our experiences, we take our beliefs as truth and seldom doubt them. We hold them tightly, and we tend to deny messages that challenge them. The tendency to defend our beliefs is called the “confirmation” or “my side” bias. Research suggests that we look for, interpret, and remember information that supports what we already believe. See Jonathan Baron, Thinking and Deciding, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 203.

The mental maps we hold influence our approach to, and our beliefs about culture in our organization. In my experience, there are a few common ways that managers tend to think about culture. Group one, “The Discounters,” ignore the fact that culture exists, and they often completely overlook or discount its impact. Group two, “The Skeptics,” recognize that culture exists, but they have tried to make change, failed, and then incorrectly concluded that the culture is unalterable. Since experience doesn’t lie, “The Skeptics” “know” that aspiring to excellence is both unrealistic and impractical.

Finally there are the few “Believers.” These managers have also experienced organizational constraints, but they know culture change is possible because at some point they have tried and succeeded. In succeeding they learned something important. Instead of seeing the culture as a fixed constraint, they see it as the key to success. They recognize that their job is to lead culture change so as to create a more positive organization. Carol Dweck’s research may support the existence of this third orientation. Dweck finds that some managers have what she calls a “growth mindset.” They believe that people can learn and change, and this belief leads these managers to behave differently. They are more likely to persist to win-win outcomes, more open to discussion, more willing to forgive and forget, more oriented to challenging and developing people, more likely to reinforce the successes of their people, and have more zest for teaching. In other words, they have very positive mental maps. See Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Ballantine Books, 2006).

Managers in all three of these groups carry a conventional mental map. We call this map conventional because it is guided by normal or common beliefs. For example, one conventional belief is that stability, hierarchy, and control are the keys to running an efficient and profitable business. There is truth in this conventional belief, so that map can be useful. However, when the conventional map is used alone, it can actually become a constraint. It can prevent people from pursuing the creation of an organization in which people flourish and exceed expectations.

The rare supervisors, managers and executives that fall in to the group of “Believers” have an advantage. They accept the conventional map and all of its very real beliefs and constraints, but they have also acquired a positive mental map. The positive mental map allows them to see possibilities that “Discounters” and “Skeptics” cannot see. They see the constraints and possibilities simultaneously, which allows them to do things the others cannot do. In chapter 2 we refer to this advantage as being a bilingual leader. Normal either/or thinking processes cause us to evaluate leaders in one of two ways: as task oriented or as people oriented. Studies of transformational leadership regularly show that effective leaders are bilingual—that is, they are high on both task and person. Because this both/and orientation violates our normal either/or categories, it is difficult to see; even experts took years to notice the patterns in front of them. Leaders who are more behaviorally complex, or bilingual, have been shown to be more effective generally. See K. Lawrence, P. Lenk, and R. E. Quinn, “Behavioral Complexity in Leadership: The Psychometric Properties of a New Instrument to Measure Behavioral Repertoire,” The Leadership Quarterly 20, no. 2 (2009): 87-102; and C. A. Schriesheim, R. J. House, and S. Kerr, “Leader Initiating Structure: A Reconciliation of Discrepant Research Results and Some Empirical Tests,” Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 15, no. 2 (1976): 297-321.

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