Journey to the Emerald City

“Journey to the Emerald City” by Roger Connors and Tom Smith is an interesting book about organizational culture. The premise of the book is based on the belief that culture is a result of experiences that people have that determines their beliefs about the organization. These beliefs typically translate into actions which in turn produce results. Thus, to truly change culture in an organization, one must start with changing beliefs through experiences.

As people, our perspective on life is most often shaped by experiences. We have good experiences such as spending time with family during Christmas, and bad experiences such as waiting too long in a line at a store. Our experiences shape our beliefs about every aspect of our life. Hence, for us to have the organizational culture we want, we must shape beliefs. The book focuses a lot of its attention on this point, and it really stresses how experiences and beliefs are most critical to results. Thus we must consciously and proactively strive to create experiences for people that will shape their beliefs.

Reflecting on this, it is a powerful insight to realize that the majority of our memories and beliefs are based on experiences. Thus, what kind of experiences are we creating for others? Are our actions allowing others to have a positive experience or negative one? Experiences are so powerful because of how they shape our lives, and make us who we are. Powerful experiences, both good and bad, are never forgotten.

The book offers strategies for helping us understand beliefs and experiences and how we can shape them. One way to accelerate belief change is through feedback. The book illustrates how feedback is a useful tool that can help create good experiences for others, because when we seek honest feedback and take action, people notice. One of the points the book makes is feedback should be viewed as a “perspective shared” rather than a “truth declared.” Feedback is simply a perception, not necessarily truth; however to most people, perception is reality--thus we must work on changing perceptions based on the feedback we receive.

Another strategy to accelerating culture change is through alignment. By creating alignment among individuals, the opportunity to create positive experiences is greatly enhanced. The book clarifies that organizational alignment is a continual process rather than a desired destination, and it is something an organization should always be striving to achieve. The more alignment increases, the quicker positive experiences will be felt by all.

In the end, the main message of the book is that as leaders, we must manage our organizational cultures or it will manage us. Through creating positive experiences, we can shape the beliefs of others which will translate into to action and produce results. Overall I thought the book was worth reading and I would recommend it to those interested in the topic.


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