Digital Transformation
Test History
When we want to enhance applications by making them behave differently, we change their code. Organizations also operate according to “codes,” but these are not rewritten by swapping out blocks of code. To change them, it is often necessary to address the organizational culture.
Every large organization with a history has undergone transformation processes, whether technological or not. Electricity didn’t just light up factories—it changed the way they were organized. The Internet didn’t just connect companies—it reshaped how they relate to one another. Artificial intelligence follows in this tradition, but it goes even further. It doesn’t just change processes—it changes the very nature of productive labor, which ceases to be exclusively human and becomes hybrid. And any transformation of this magnitude inevitably impacts culture.
Customs, behaviors, values, beliefs, ways of speaking, symbols: all these elements make up what we know as culture. When these dimensions are reasonably confined to organizations, we define an organizational culture: a framework of meanings that strongly influences the way people act in the workplace. And this significantly affects how easy it is to implement change.
In this article, we briefly explain what organizational culture is and why it—rather than technology—is often the factor that determines the success or failure of a transformation to an AI-based operating model.
Culture is so essential to understanding human societies that an entire scientific field is dedicated to studying it: anthropology. Among the anthropologists recognized within the field, two have proposed conceptual frameworks for culture that remain benchmarks for the social sciences to this day: Clifford Geertz and Lévi-Strauss.
According to the first view, culture is a web of meanings that, while woven by groups of people, also serves as the lens through which that group views the world. Geertz argues that culture is not something confined within people’s minds: it is embodied in symbols through which members of a group communicate their worldview and value orientations, both to one another and to future generations.
For Lévi-Strauss, culture is also a system of meanings. The main difference between his view and that posited by Geertz is that culture derives from universal cognitive structures of the human mind—structures that were constructed over generations by our ancestors. In other words, although cultural practices and systems are not arbitrary, they reflect logical codes of a universal architecture governing the thought processes of certain human groups.
When we apply these reflections to companies and other organizations, it is easy to see that the group of people who make up the organization:
According to psychologist Edgar Schein, a former MIT professor and author of the book*Organizational Culture and Leadership*, organizational culture is the set of basic assumptions that a particular group has invented, discovered, or developed in the process of learning to solve its problems of external adaptation and internal integration. These assumptions have worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, are taught to new members of the group as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel about these problems.
As we have already mentioned, culture has a strong influence on how people behave in the workplace, and this significantly affects how easily a change can be implemented. It is to be expected that a group of people who consider a set of assumptions to be valid—and who have seen them work well enough in practice—will be reluctant to change them.
This resistance has been confirmed by McKinsey studies for years: 70% of transformation efforts in organizations fail. When groups of people feel that their histories, traditions, roles, and—even more profoundly—the values and very vision of human nature that define that group are under threat, they will resist.
This debate becomes evident in the context of artificial intelligence. What many people—even unconsciously—believe is at stake is the role of humans in companies, a role that is thought to be under threat due to the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence systems. On the other hand, it is undeniable that artificial intelligence establishes a new technological paradigm, reshaping the way work is done. Delaying the transition to AI puts the very existence of the organization at risk.
How, then, can we address the resistance created by organizational culture and promote change within the company? Although the process necessarily involves effective communication—highlighting the benefits for everyone—the answer is not self-evident. But it is pointed out in a contemporary classic of management theory:*The Fifth Discipline*by Peter Senge. The book argues that organizations that do not limit their future growth are those that learn. For this to happen, communication gaps must be eliminated, and leaders must be less centralized.
Here at Inmetrics, we have a unit dedicated to driving the transition to a world where artificial intelligence is already an integral part of the workplace. AI Transformation redesigns and reorganizes roles, workflows, decisions, metrics, and governance so that collaboration between humans and AI agents results in a hybrid, well-governed, and results-oriented workforce. In other words, it goes far beyond simply implementing tools.
Click here to contact us and speak with one of our experts to learn how we help AI become a new operating model that minimizes resistance and maximizes potential gains.
