Introduction to Our Core Beliefs

Understanding our Core Beliefs will give you a window into our motivations. The values and services we deliver to our clients are in harmony with our Core Beliefs.

By the way, the same is true for your customers. If you understand their core beliefs, you will understand why they do what they do.

People in Business

Our People Are Our Most Important Asset

Business managers very often say to us with pride that their people are their company's most important asset. If that statement of belief were generally true, there would be no Dilbert, and Scott Adams would still be working for the phone company.

In our opinion, very few business managers understand the fundamentals of human behavior that cause people do what they do! Consequently, they are not getting the level of performance they should expect from their company's most important asset!

But What Makes People Do What They Do?

To understand what makes people do what they do, look to the psychologists and the sociologists. They have researched human behavior far more thoroughly, deeply and accurately than most business executives and managers.

The Thought Leaders Are Changing

In fact, more and more of the thought leaders in the leading business schools are psychologists and sociologists. Peter Drucker, Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Daniel Kahneman come quickly to mind as examples.

Categories of Human Behavior Important to Businesses

Among the findings of these thought leaders and others are the following three bodies of knowledge, all vital to business success.

Cognitive Consistency

People are driven to balance their cognitions - their feelings, actions and beliefs. Usually that leads people to behave in ways consistent with their beliefs to avoid feeling badly about the inconsistencies.

This has important adverse consequences in business organizations. A good example is business managers feel fine about ignoring the facts and making quick decisions based on their established beliefs! It delivers cognitive consistency.

Think about it. What was the biggest obstacle Columbus faced in getting backing for his voyage to prove the earth is round? Most of the people with the resources to fund his exploration believed the earth is flat! They were confident in that belief. Were they right?

Browse the About Learning section to get more information on how cognitive consistency can obstruct learning, and our views on how this leading business problem can be turned into a competitive advantage.

Group Dynamics

People are strongly influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people. Humans have a fundamental need to belong. Understanding that is one of the missions of the social psychologists.

Of primary interest to businesses is the concept of ingroups and outgroups. People will do heroic things to please ingroup members, and they will do even more heroic things to oppose outgroup members.

Browse the About Uniting section understand more about group dynamics and how to use that understanding to achieve breakthroughs in the performance of your business.

Businesses Are Social Groups

Peter Drucker, Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Srully Blotnick and many other learned people have concluded through sound research that people behave in a business organization about the same way they behave in non-business organizations. Yet businesses cling to the unproven belief that people in businesses are rational actors who can operate most efficiently in isolated functional groups organized in vertical lines of authority.

We seek out the rare business people who can grasp the newer concepts - that businesses are social groups - and help them tap into the potential competitive strengths social groups have to offer.

People who feel at home in strictly hierarchical business organizations pretend that businesses are not social groups. They are sitting ducks, like Montgomery Wards' stores were sitting ducks for Walmart.

Please Contact Us for more information about what we stand for and how that drives everything we do.