Choosing Between Tightness or Looseness

I recently finished reading Michele Gelfand’s 2018 book, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers, which is based on research she has been doing over the past several years (I have referenced her work in my own book, Successful Global Leadership). Her book details a different way to look at cultures by examining the dimension of tightness-looseness – the degree to which social norms are pervasive, clearly defined, and reliably imposed within nations. Tight cultures, her research shows, have strong social norms and little tolerance for deviance, while loose cultures have weak social norms and are highly permissive. Furthermore, people from tight cultures “view effective leaders as those who embody independence and great confidence – that is, as people who like to do things their own way and don’t rely on others”, whereas people from loose cultures prefer “visionary leaders who are collaborative.”

Her measure of tightness-looseness, which she and her team have administered in over 30 countries, uses the following six items which individuals respond to on an agree-disagree scale:

1.    There are many social norms that people are supposed to abide by in this country.

2.    In this country, there are very close expectations for how people should act in most situations.

3.    People agree upon what behaviors are appropriate versus inappropriate in most situations in this country.

4.    People in this country have a great deal of freedom in deciding how they want to behave in most situations.

5.    In this country, if someone acts in an inappropriate way, others will strongly disapprove.

6.    People in this country almost always comply with social norms.

Countries that she has found to be more tight include Pakistan, South Korea, Turkey, Malaysia, and Singapore, while countries that are more loose include Brazil, New Zealand, the United States, Greece, and the Ukraine.

Gelfand’s framework is but the latest in a number of frameworks studying cultural differences across nations. Hofstede’s is perhaps the most well-known, although his research, as well as those of others, has been subject to some criticism. His construct of Uncertainty Avoidance (which he defines as a society’s tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity) seems to overlap with the tightness-looseness distinction. In my own book, I propose Preference for Structure as one dimension that also seems to overlap with Gelfand’s concept.

Gelfand believes, and I agree, that her framework can be applied to organizations. Substitute “employees” or “workers” for “people“, and “organization” for “country” in the six statements above and you can see the applicability easily. For example, her book explains that part of the reason why the Daimler-Benz and Chrysler merger failed was due to the vast difference in cultural tightness-looseness between the two companies:

“Daimler had a top-down, heavily managed, hierarchical structure devoted to precision. As a result, the company’s manufacturing operations were rigid and bureaucratic. Much like its country of origin, Daimler leaned tight. Chrysler, on the other hand, was a looser operation with a more relaxed, freewheeling, and egalitarian business culture. Chrysler also used a leaner production style, which minimized unnecessary personnel and red tape.” (p. 140)

She acknowledges that differences in industry pressures may also explain the collective tightness or looseness of different organizations. For example, hospitals, police departments and airlines tend to have tighter cultures than R&D groups and start-ups because failures in the former tend to have greater life-and-death consequences. She also suggests that an organization’s country of origin plays a significant role in influencing its tightness or looseness; for example, Israeli companies tend to be loose, while Japanese companies tend to be tight.

In a Fortune piece (September 11, 2018) as well as in her book, Gelfand explains that many companies today want to develop tight-loose ambidexterity. Loose organizations that are capable of deploying the opposite set of norms she refers to as having structured looseness. Flexible tightness, on the other hands, happens when a tight organization tries to deploy a looser state. What’s the right balance and how do you manage the transition? For example, when start-ups start to scale, they introduce hierarchy and rules over time, and these can stifle the looseness that led to the initial success of these start-ups. On the other hand, tight organizational cultures that move toward looseness might suffer from an “anything goes” mindset.

Having had experience interviewing and consulting with many managers from global companies, and having worked as an executive with several multinationals, I can confirm that her observations seem to make sense on the surface. However, the reality is more complex. Let me explain. As we know, all organizations have cultures that are shaped by many things: the behaviors of top leaders, the history of the organization (including certain events which have influenced it), the industry in which it belongs, its national origin, and its goals and strategy. For example, Apple and Amazon’s cultures have been heavily influenced by Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos respectively. As another example, I know managers who work in the U.S. subsidiaries of Samsung and Michelin who have described to me organizational norms in these companies that are heavily influenced by their home countries’ cultures (South Korea and France, respectively).

In my experience, there is something missing in this dichotomy between tight and loose, and that is the strength of the organization’s culture. As Sorensen (2009) and other researchers have pointed out, companies with strong corporate cultures tend to be higher-performing than companies in the same industry with weaker cultures. Now what is a “strong culture” exactly?  This is Sorensen’s definition: “An organizational culture is said to be strong when the basic assumptions of the culture are widely shared and deeply held by members of the organizations.” In other words, there is a shared understanding among organizational members of what the basic values of the organization are. Talk to individuals in these organizations, such as Johnson & Johnson, Google, Wegmans, and the Navy Seals, and they will be able to tell you what the organization stands for and what its purpose is. Not only that, most of them are committed to these values.

On the other hand, the degree of tightness or looseness of an organization refers to its practices, social norms and customs rather than deeply held values. These espoused values will not always translate to practices and customs unless the organization’s senior leaders model and reinforce these practices through the organization’s systems, processes and structures. So you can envision a 2 x 2 matrix, where you have strong and weak cultures on one dimension, and tight and loose organizations on the other dimension:

	Tight Organizations	Loose Organizations
Weak Cultures	1 (Tesla)	3 (Uber)
Strong Cultures	2 (Apple, Goldman Sachs)	4 (Southwest, Twitter, Zappos)

Some examples might help. In Cell 4 you will find companies such as Southwest Airlines, Twitter, and Zappos. At Southwest Airlines, for example, the late Herb Kelleher instilled a very strong culture through his own behaviors and reinforced the company’s values in many different ways, such as hiring employees with the right attitude. Yet Southwest leans very loose; this has been widely reported in the press as well as in several interviews with Mr. Kelleher and his successors. For example, you can watch many YouTube videos where Southwest airplane crew members are playing pranks or improvising pre-flight announcements.

In Cell 1, on the other hand, you will find companies where there is a strong emphasis on procedures and practices, but values that are not strongly emphasized and reinforced.  One of my colleagues once consulted for a mid-sized, family-owned business where rules and protocols were tightly enforced. For example, employees had to follow a dress code strictly, and the CEO believed that this level of tightness was what has made the firm successful to this point. The firm paid its employees way above the market, which has kept its turnover rate low. Yet, in my colleague’s opinion, the company seemed “soulless.” Employees did not seem engaged, and there was no passion or higher purpose other than making money for the company.

Based on my readings about Tesla, it seems to fall in this category. Elon Musk runs a very tight ship and fires executives seemingly willy-nilly. A number of people I have talked to who know employees in Tesla say that they remain there mainly for the opportunity and not necessarily because they believe in the company’s culture.

In Cell 2 you will find companies such as Apple, which is run very tightly yet manages to have a very strong, values-driven culture. Tim Cook and his executive team, and Steve Jobs before him, make sure that everything is very buttoned-up. Finally, in Cell 3, you will find companies such as Uber and other startups, where cultures are not well-defined and there is a looseness to the organization. The past scandals involving Uber’s founder are a reflection of this.

What’s the best cell to be in for an organization? It depends on at least four factors: the industry or sector it’s in (e.g., hospitality versus hospitals), its own strategy and long-term goals, its competitive pressures, and its own core competencies. There is no magic bullet here. However, as far as tightness or looseness is concerned, I agree with Gelfand that companies in today’s complex and turbulent environment need to strive toward greater flexibility and looseness. In addition, I would suggest that organizations should also strengthen its culture; the evidence on the positive relationship between cultural strength and performance is quite strong. In other words, moving towards Cell 4 would make a lot of sense as a go-to strategy for many organizations today.

Gelfand, M. (2018). Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World. New York: Scribners.

Gelfand, M. (2018). Is Your Organization Tight or Loose? How to Tell – and Ways to Fix It. Fortune, September 11.

Gelfand, M. et al. (2011). Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study. Science (332), 1100-1104.

Henson, R. (2016). Successful Global Leadership: Frameworks for Cross-Cultural Managers and Organizations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sorensen, J. (2009). Note on Organizational Culture. Stanford Graduate School of Business Case OB-69.

The Perils of Disruptive Leadership

 The headline in one of the New York Times’ sections recently read: San Francisco Lands a Disrupter. Who was the Times referring to – another Silicon Valley entrepreneur, perhaps? No, this was the well-regarded conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, who will be taking over the San Francisco Symphony and is referred to by the paper as one of classical music’s great disrupters. While the paper did not define exactly what it meant by referring to Mr. Salonen as a disrupter, there are clear hints all over the article. For example: “Mr. Salonen hopes to shake up the standard orchestral structure … and to …  “rethink the possibilities of what a symphonic ensemble can be.” One of the experimental flutists who the reporter spoke to said she was attracted by “his willingness to break rules.” Salonen has worked with the Philharmonia Orchestra on virtual reality projects, immersive installations and an iPad app. The committee searching for a new conductor said it summarized the job description in terms of five bullet points: musicianship, leadership, vision, motivation, and evangelism.

In the May-June 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review, the recruiting firm Korn Ferry has a two-page advertisement with the heading entitled, “Self Disrupt or Be Disrupted.” The advertisement explains the need for “self-disruptive” leaders in a time when disruptive forces are at work.

Now you may recall when you were in elementary school (I certainly do) and some teachers would scold those children who were being disruptive. Or in middle school, teachers would single out those kids who were a disruptive influence on others. So I had grown up believing that being disruptive was not such a good thing.

Not any more, it seems! I’ve been reading a lot about disruption lately – many positive, but also some not so positive. The driving forces behind the need for disruptive leadership seem to be the following. First, the environment has become so dynamic and unpredictable and will become even more so, especially with the advances in AI and digitization, that leaders are needed who can anticipate this disruption. Second, in many organizations, the status quo is so entrenched and so intractable that the current state of affairs requires disruptive leadership to unmoor it. Third, businesses are counting on innovation more than ever to grow, and the perception is that disruptive leaders are those in the best position to lead such innovation.

In addition, we have seen executives from the outside who have been hired to “shake things up.” Some, such as Alan Mulally, former CEO of Ford Motor Company and Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM, succeeded; while others, such as Bob Nardelli (former CEO of Home Depot) and Ron Johnson (former CEO of J. C. Penney) did not.

Recently, several executives I have spoken to have also mentioned the need for more “disruptive” leaders in their organizations. From my small sample, these are the four characteristics that the executives I spoke with said that they see in disruptive leaders: bold; willing to challenge, question the status quo and break the rules; an ability to think “outside of the box;” and remaining doggedly persistent. And why, I asked, are they looking for these disruptive leaders? What do they hope to accomplish by having such leaders? Almost unanimously, the responses were:  to spur greater innovation and breakthrough thinking, and to transform the culture into one that is more agile, nimble and resilient.

These two objectives – of producing greater innovation and a nimbler culture – are ones that many organizations are pursuing these days, whether they are budding start-ups or more established firms like Unilever and General Motors. And many believe that one way to get there is by having more disruptive leaders who can be “game changers” in their organizations. However, the research shows that individuals who have some of the characteristics of disruptive leaders also tend to have other less desirable characteristics. Let’s take a look at the Hogan Development Survey, a well-known assessment instrument for measuring a leader’s derailing characteristics. According to Hogan (2007), most people will display certain counterproductive tendencies when under pressure.  In fact, “under normal conditions these characteristics may actually be strengths. However, when you are tired, pressured, bored, or otherwise distracted, these risk factors may impede your effectiveness and erode the quality of your relationships with customers, colleagues, and direct reports.”

In Hogan’s research, there are eleven such risk factors or derailers. The four characteristics of disruptive leaders I described earlier belong to a subset of these derailers; specifically:

·       Being bold can lead to a leader’s unwarranted self-confidence and an unwillingness to listen to feedback.

·       A willingness to question, challenge the status quo, and break the rules can lead to taking risks while ignoring the consequences and acting impulsively.

·       Consistently thinking outside the box  can lead to losing focus on the core aspects of the business and having so many ideas that execution gets sidetracked.

·       Being doggedly persistent can lead to stubbornness and not letting go of pet projects and ideas that may not be realistically executed.

So if you want to be a disruptive leader, or you already have some of the characteristics of a disruptive leader, what can you do to counterbalance these derailing tendencies, especially when you are under pressure? In addition to increasing your self-awareness and getting feedback from others, here are four quick suggestions for you to consider (actually, these can apply to any leader who wishes to successfully transform his or her group, team, or organization).

First, deeply understand the context or organizational situation in which you find yourself. Find out what has worked in the past, and what hasn’t worked. Understand the barriers to change, and the cultural heritage of the company. Internally, seek out those who have been with the company for a while, who are credible, and who know the skeletons in the closet. At the same time, talk to individuals who have joined the company in the past six months to learn what frustrations they might have. Externally, reach out to those working in the same industry as well as in other industries to get lessons learned about how these companies were able to shake up established markets to disrupt and succeed.

Second, complement your disruptive mind-set by building on specific skills. Here, I’d like to turn to the recent work by Dyer et al. (2011), in which they researched the 25 most innovative companies in the U.S. and came up with what they describe as the five “discovery” skills of disruptive innovators: associating (the ability to make surprising connections across different areas of knowledge, industries and geographies), questioning (asking a lot of questions, e.g., what, why; and a lot of provocative questions, e.g., why-not, what-if), observing (e.g., watching customers, learning to look for surprises or anomalies, finding opportunities to observe in a new environment), networking (not for career progression but to actively tap into new ideas and insights by talking with people who have diverse ideas and perspectives), and experimenting (trying out new ideas through exploration, taking things apart, testing ideas through pilots and prototypes). These are skills that you can build through practice, especially with the help of a coach.

Third, frame your ideas in a broader context; don’t just sow chaos without having people understand the big picture and especially what the impact of the disruption will mean - for the company’s future, its reputation and impact on society, and how employees will benefit. It is especially important to communicate what will not change. You want to create some sense of stability and not have people feel that you are throwing everything up against the wall and seeing what sticks. Beware of creating change just for the sake of change, and make sure that changes can ultimately be integrated into the fabric of the company. At the same time, you never want to allow the organization to slip back into a state of complacency; employees need to believe that they have to get out of their comfort zone.

Fourth, create a climate of “psychological safety” so your team will feel free to speak up - to be candid and to push back if needed. Amy Edmondson (2019) has written persuasively about the benefits of psychological safety, and what can happen when this is absent. In its own research, Google has found psychological safety to be one of the most important leadership practices for creating effective teams (Garvin, 2013.

With all this, what’s most important, in my opinion, is that you as a leader need to have the inner courage and determination to do what you (and those in your team you respect) believe has to be done for the good of the organization. It is what Andy Grove did when he made the decision to move away from the memory chip business to microprocessors, despite the success Intel was having at that time with the chip business. It is what Satya Nadella did when he made the decision to shift Microsoft’s business to cloud computing. It is what Hamdi Ulukaya of Chobani did when he acquired an old factory in upstate New York to start his dream of a yogurt business. And it is what Yves Chouinard of Patagonia is doing with his company’s environmental practices (e.g., introducing patented chocks to eliminate the harm to rocks from climbing products, encouraging consumers to actually buy less).

Dyer, J. et al. (2011). The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators.

Edmondson, A. (2019). Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace. Harvard Business Review.

Garvin, D. (2013). How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management. Harvard Business Review.

Hogan, R. et al. (2007). The Hogan Guide: Interpretation and Use of Hogan Inventories.