The Hindu Business Line : Making good manners a part of core competence

BRINGING about change can be tough. New CEOs come in hoping to put their stamp on the organisation and some even last long enough to try their hand at it.Often, major changes in strategy need to be accompanied by a change in the culture of the organisation, which can be an even greater challenge. Strategy changes may work through pronouncements, but culture changes rarely do.

CEOs of software companies who first set up a free-wheeling informal culture often have a hard time bringing about some element of accountability as the organisation positions for growth. The former CEO of HP, Ms Carly Fiorina, came in with ambitious plans of changing the strategy and the culture of the organisation but had to leave before she could make much an impact in either area.

The company, which was used to several hundred fiefdoms with a culture of decentralised decision-making, resented all the centralisation that her style involved and resisted her efforts, making her job that much more difficult.

Japanese organisations love slogans as a way of influencing how their employees work, and in a culture where the employees implicitly believe in the wisdom of their leadership, powerful slogans achieve their purpose by enthusing the employees towards a goal.

For example, Komatsu was at one time a small manufacturer of equipment in Japan. Its top management took on the ambition of challenging the supremacy of the market leader Caterpillar with a slogan `Maru C' meaning `encircle Caterpillar.' The slogan went a long way in juicing up the competitive spirits of the employees.

How does it work when you try to change the culture of the nation? Well, not change the whole culture, but at least tweak it in a direction you want the people to go? `Hum do hamare do' (We are two and we have two') as a slogan to make Indians limit the size of their families to two children has been around for long. While the population growth has slowed, I wonder how much of the credit can go to the slogan.

Perhaps, it did create an awareness of the problem while all the other measures worked to change the values of the nation towards family size. Beijing has several signs asking people not to spit. They are warned that it is not healthy to do so. But it is only a suggestion, one that does not seem to be taken too seriously, yet. If it was Singapore, there would be someone nearby ready to levy a fine to make sure you follow the advice. Perhaps, China is too big to monitor those who are or are not spitting.

But the Chinese have another reason now to bring about some change. The Olympics are coming in 2008 and the leadership of the nation has decided that the people need to improve their manners, especially when they are on display for the rest of the world to see. China would like to be more than just a low-cost manufacturing powerhouse of the world and would like to do it with a smile. So there is now a public campaign not just against spitting or urinating in public, but for good behaviour in general.

Newspapers report that slogans, hoardings, and even television programmes have all been brought into play. Lessons are being provided on proper use of cell phones, for instance. Talk shows discuss good manners, and overeager sports fans are chastised for rude behaviour.

Looking at a smiling face or a charming person can make a difference to your day. Check-out clerks in retail outlets in the US are taught to smile, and make small talk. Even if you know it is part of their job to be pleasant and they are not spontaneously responding to your charm, it makes you feel good! Whenever I enter an elevator in the US, I emerge in a more pleasant mood. Although all those present may be strangers, there is someone who smiles at me when I make eye contact.

Cell-phones, being new to us as a society, are proof that it takes time for people to accommodate new items within a culture of god behaviour. What else can explain the behaviour of the average cell-phone user who talks in a voice reminiscent of a muezzin calling to the faithful?

But Kemal Ataturk's record must clearly stand as the most significant success in bringing about major change in society. Ataturk emerged from the First World War as a war hero and the one who saved Turkey from total dismemberment by the victorious powers grabbing pieces of the former Ottoman Empire. With his charisma, he could do no wrong.

But he also had the objective of modernising Turkish society. Both through his presidential fiat and with the help of a supportive legislature, Ataturk made changes to several fundamental practices of his fellow countrymen. He abolished the Caliphate, wherein the Ottoman Sultans had claimed for themselves the spiritual and temporal leadership of the Islamic community. He removed the Sharia as the basis of the legal system and introduced elements of the French, German and Swiss legal codes.

He made his fellow citizens take on last names (they used to have only one name), abolished the fez cap as being symbolic of the Ottoman era, and encouraged the wearing of Western style clothes. He changed the writing of the Turkish language from Arabic to the Latin script. It is said he would go around to schools personally conducting classes to make an impact. He even made the nation switch from the lunar to the Gregorian calendar. And all this was accomplished over a 15-year period!

One can find other examples around the world where dynamic leaders have tried to force through major changes to society, but the changes in Turkey have stood the test of time. It is ironical that Ataturk's model of being a modern society was that of Europe and it has taken so long and so much struggle for Turkey to get the members of the European Union to even begin talking on its application to join the EU.

(The author is a professor of international business and strategic management at Suffolk University, Boston, US. His Internet address is: cgopinat@suffolk.edu)

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