IB graduate profile - Claudia Nario

Graduated in 1984.

"1983. Buenos Aires, rainy afternoon. 150 teenagers from different South American countries, in a theory of knowledge course.

I was there, a 16-year-old girl from the Chilean delegation, watching and participating in sociological games, reflecting on the relativity of perception, for the first time in my life. The impact of the insight I had those days is still imprinted in my mind.

Instead of being taught "truths", we were taught to question them. Nowadays, in my work as an organizational consultant, I often meet with clients who would have greatly benefited from such an insight. I remember the case of the CEO of an important and traditional Chilean company, who was interested in changing his organization’s culture. He had read Peters and Waterman’s famous book, and was attempting to reproduce the "culture of excellence"—oriented to high performance and to high quality, agile in responding to market changes—within his own company. When he came to me, he was frustrated and tired. He felt that, in spite of his efforts, nothing had been changed.

The problem of cultural change through a voluntary intervention is comparable to the process of individual personality change through therapy. Clinicians know that it is very difficult to provoke deep, lasting changes on individual personality. It requires an important amount of self-awareness, together with motivation and will-power, to change emotional, mental and behavioral habits which are deeply rooted in the person’s unconscious (blessed theory of knowledge course!).

Culture shares many of the functions of individual personality: it models perception of reality, it tends to stability through a self-perpetuating process, it is a system of interrelated emotions, cognitions and behaviors, it gives meaning and identity, it helps avoid anxiety, and it is protected by defense mechanisms. Culture is deeply rooted in the unconscious of the group, as personality is rooted in the unconscious of the individual. In fact, cultural change is even more complex, because it necessarily involves change in many individuals. 

In this sense, cultural "change" is very much like the process of individual evolution. Personality’s basic structure and essential traits do not change, but personality does develop through awareness and conscious effort. And the more it develops, the more it becomes flexible and free to choose its own destiny, aware of itself and others, internally integrated, capable of coping with problems and conflicts, well-adapted and successful in every sense. 

The same may happen to culture. And in this sense, the best choice may not be to try to change culture, but to explore it and understand it more deeply. A new concept could be then derived: that of "cultural awareness". This would imply organizational members becoming more conscious of their culture’s strengths, weaknesses and blind spots so as to gain a greater control of it.

And just as the therapist helps the individual develop through self-awareness, the consultant can help the organization look at its own culture.  There are many cultural manifestations that can only be "perceived" by an external agent, through direct, unprejudiced, free and insightful observation of a culture that is not his own. He can then help the process of organizational members becoming aware of it. 

So, going back to my client: What did we do? Instead of actively promoting the characteristics of the "culture of excellence" he wanted to install, we gathered the "leadership team" and we conducted a series of activities to create awareness of the characteristics of the current culture. After some days, the presidents and managers of the company started looking at their own company with new eyes. 

They gradually became aware of their own attitudes that favored the paternalistic, bureaucratic, and reactive culture they lived in. After several weeks, a hint of change slowly began to show up within the leadership team. The CEO was elated. I will not tell the rest of the story here. I will just say that for this awareness to cascade down the organizational structure, it was a slow but successful process.

The sort of activities that changed the attitudes of those managers was very much of the sort I experimented with on those winter days in Buenos Aires, 20 years ago. These are the sort of activities that change your mind."