A Grounded Theory of Togethering

A GROUNDED THEORY OF TOGETHERING: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PATTERNS OF ENGAGEMENT OF A TOP MANAGEMENT GROUP FROM POLITICAL AND STRATEGIC JOUSTING TO TRUST, OPENNESS AND UNITY.

b y

MAURICIO PUERTA

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

For the degree Doctor of Philosophy

Dissertation Adviser: Dr. Eric Neilsen

Department of Organizational Behavior

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

May, 2008 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES

We hereby approve the thesis/dissertation of

______

candidate for the ______degree *.

(signed)______(chair of the committee)

______

(date) ______

*We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein.

To Isabel, Noa, Mali y Kenu, you are my home, you are my roots.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ...... ix

Acknowledgements ...... xi

Abstract ...... xv

1. Introduction ...... 1

Purpose of the Study ...... 1 Opportunity for the study ...... 1 Background of the Study ...... 5 Researcher Assumptions ...... 13 Study Methodology ...... 14 The Emergent Theory ...... 16 Justification for Research ...... 20 Potential Significance of the Research ...... 22 Outline of the Thesis ...... 23 Summary ...... 26

2. Personal Statement ...... 27

Discovering my purpose ...... 27 Organizations as creation of human encounters ...... 29 Organizations can kill or give life ...... 30 The transformation of the emotional domain at the core of organizational transformation ...... 32 My Inquiry ...... 35

3. Story of the Costa Rica JourneY ...... 37

Introduction ...... 37 Overview of the Journey ...... 38

The Context of the Journey ...... 38

The Purpose of the Journey ...... 44

The Actors ...... 44

The Owners and Designers ...... 44

The participants ...... 45

Preparing the Journey ...... 45

The Design of the Journey ...... 46

Organizing Principles ...... 47

Sequence of the Journey ...... 48

The Outcome ...... 49

Account of the Costa Rica Journey ...... 51

A Letter of Invitation ...... 51

First Day ...... 52

Miami Beach ...... 52

A welcome from the chairmen ...... 54

Sharing Totems ...... 56

On the School Buses ...... 59

Fourteen Executive Jets ...... 60

In San Jose, Costa Rica ...... 62

Second Day ...... 65

Breakfast at La Condesa Hotel ...... 65

Visit to InBio ...... 66

The Jeep Ride ...... 69

Camp in Matapalo ...... 71

Third Day ...... 74

A hike to the beach ...... 74

Cruising south on the Pacific Ocean ...... 76

At Corcovado National Park ...... 82

Corcovado Ranger’s Stations ...... 84

Fourth Day ...... 87

Morning meeting ...... 87

At the Marenco Lodge ...... 90

Conversation with the two Chairmen ...... 91

The Party ...... 93

Fifth Day ...... 94

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The Last Meeting ...... 94

Return to Miami ...... 95

Epilogue: the journey continued in business groups and operating companies 97

A multilevel and midterm approach ...... 99

Using a new language ...... 102

Co-invention and personal Growth ...... 105

Reclaiming time and space for the individual...... 106

4. Methodology ...... 108

Introduction ...... 108 Gathering Data and Redesigning the Inquiry in the Field ...... 109

Modifying the Interview Protocol...... 110

Adapting the sampling strategy ...... 114

Other data sources ...... 117

Analyzing and Redefining the inquiry on the desk ...... 118

Clarifying the purpose of the dissertation ...... 120

Opting for Grounded Theory ...... 121

Resonance ...... 122

Emergence of theory from data ...... 123

Analyzing the data: doing Grounded Theory ...... 126

Identifying the core category ...... 126

Selective Coding ...... 129

Theoretical Sorting ...... 130

Theoretical Writing ...... 133

Use of extant literature...... 134

5. Results: A Grounded Theory of Togethering ...... 137

Introduction ...... 137 Theoretical Overview ...... 138 Conditions Precipitating Togethering ...... 141

Crisis in Market Performance ...... 142

Structural interdependence ...... 144

Awareness of behavior as an internal barrier to growth ...... 147

Needing new ways of working together ...... 149

Attending to the need: creating a space for engagement and connection ...... 150

The Process of Togethering ...... 151

Disruption of Political Pattern of Engagement ...... 151

Dimensions of the Disruption of the political pattern of engagement ...... 152

Dissonance and Contrasting: the core mechanism of the Disruption...... 161

Responses to the disruption ...... 163

Getting to know each other...... 164

A Turning Point ...... 171

Communion: a new group emotion ...... 172

Reverberations of Togethering ...... 178

1. Whole Company ...... 179

2. Executive Boards ...... 180

3. Working Partners ...... 180

4. Interpersonal Relationships ...... 181

5. Individual Leaders ...... 181

6. Discussion of findings ...... 183

Introduction ...... 183 Summary of the emergent theory ...... 184 Togethering and Behavioral Integration of Top Management Groups...... 186

My findings ...... 187

Behavioral integration of top management groups ...... 188

Link between my findings and extant theory ...... 193

Contributions of the grounded theory to the concept of behavioral integration in top management groups ...... 196

Implications ...... 197

Togethering and Group Development Theory ...... 198

My findings: the Process of Togethering ...... 199

Two theories on group development ...... 201

Group development by Punctuated Equilibrium ...... 201

Tuckman’s sequence of development of small group ...... 208

Togethering and the principles of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy...... 212

My findings ...... 212

Foundations and principles of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy ...... 213

The transformation process in AEDP ...... 217

Link between my findings and extant theory ...... 222

Togethering as ritual ...... 228 Conclusions and modification to the model ...... 233

Conditions and reverberations as part of the model ...... 235

On the disruption of political patterns of engagement ...... 236

On Getting to know each other ...... 237

Summary of Discussion ...... 238

7. Conclusions ...... 240

Introduction ...... 240 Achievement of Study Aims ...... 240 Summary of the Emergent Theory ...... 242 Contributions to Knowledge ...... 244

Theory A: Hambrick’s behavioral integration of top management groups ...... 244

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Theory B: Gersick’s group development by punctuated equilibrium ...... 245

Theory C: Tuckman’s sequence of development of small groups ...... 246

Theory D: Fosha’s principles of accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy ...... 247

Theory E: Turner ‘s Rites of Passage ...... 248

Implications for Management Practice ...... 248

Implications for Consulting Practice ...... 250

Implications for Classic Grounded Theory Methodology ...... 251

Evaluation of Study Findings ...... 252 Limitations of the Study ...... 255 Areas for Future Research ...... 256 Personal Conclusions ...... 258

Appendices ...... 264

A. Sample of data, field notes, and conceptual memos leading to the emergence of the concept of Getting to Know Each other ...... 265 B. All Free Nodes Data Table ...... 272 C. Initial Interview Protocol ...... 275 D. Sample of questions of final set of interviews ...... 278 E. IRB Approval ...... 283

Bibliography ...... 285

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 TururuCo Market Performance 1980-2001 (from TururuCo

Chairman’s Report 2004) ...... 40

Figure 2 Timeline of events related to the Costa Rica Journey ...... 43

Figure 3 Togethering in context ...... 141

Figure 4 Conditions Precipitating Togethering ...... 142

Figure 5 Model of the Togethering process ...... 151

Figure 6 Disruption of Political patterns of Engagement ...... 153

Figure 7 Getting to Know Each Other ...... 165

Figure 8 Communion ...... 173

Figure 9. The elements of a top management groups (Donald C.

Hambrick, 1994) ...... 192

Figure 10 The Top management Group in Context (from (Donald C.

Hambrick, 1994) ...... 195

Figure 11 Punctuated equilibrium model of group development (adapted

from(Gersick, 1989)) ...... 203

Figure 12 Tuckman's Developmental sequence of small groups (based on

Tuckman 1965 p. 296) ...... 209

Figure 13 The 3 states and 2 state transformations of processing

emotional experience to completion in AEDP (Fosha, 2006) ...... 218

Figure 14 Phases of Rites of Passage (adapted from Turner 1969, p. 94-

95) ...... 230

Figure 15 Revised model of Togethering ...... 233

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Although many times I felt this dissertation was the loneliest of my journeys, I realize now at the very end that I was never alone, that the only way I could have created this work is by being helped, supported, cared for, encouraged, challenged, admonished, invited, appreciated, envied, loved, pushed, admired, pitied, carried, guided, freed. Every person along this journey lend (past tense?) me a hand in their own and special way. They generously shared with me their gifts.

Isabel, my life partner, creator of order and certainty, was my home, my roots. She sustained and nourished the life of our growing family, my foundation, when I was absent. She created space and time beyond measure for me, many times at the expense of her own needs and dreams. My children: Noa, Mali and Kenu, kept me grounded in this world during this unsettling years, and reminded me with their unapologetic existence of what is vital in our lives together.

Eric Nielsen, the chair of my committee, gave me the space and the support to get lost and find my path for this dissertation, and then joined me as a thinking partner, giving me unconditional support and firm

guidance every step of the dissertating process. Ron Fry, David Kolb and

Peter Whitehouse, the committee members, helped me sharpen my ideas and create connections with the field of Organizational Behavior. The patience and openness of my committee allowed me to explore, grow and learn in unexpected ways.

Annie McKee and Fran Johnston from Teleos, believed in my inquiry, they encouraged and helped me to get this project off the ground. They also answered many of my calls for help as I learned how to navigate the organizational waters.

The director of Human Resources at TururuCo and his staff gave me tranquility and a secure base by providing the necessary conditions and logistical support for me and my family during the months of field work in Europe. The head of Leadership Development was a generous partner who always pushed my learning in service of the organization.

The 47 senior executives who gave me their time and their stories; this work is the fruit of our dialogue.

Bibi Potts generously open for me the door to the vibrant Grounded

Theory community and to Barney Glaser, who gave me togethering , the name of my theory, and also inspired me to create and share grounded ideas. Judith Holton and Alvita Nataniel gave my clarity and

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encouragement to trust the Grounded Theory process. Their dissertations were invaluable maps of how to write a Grounded Theory dissertation. The participants to the Grounded Theory Workshops gave me my first experience of a collaborative academic community.

John Carter and Veronica Hopper opened my heart and guided me in finding my center and ground the many times I lost touch with the essence of my inquiry. Rachel Ciporen was a tender and implacable journey companion, she comforted me when I was in despair and pushed me when I gave up. Ana Maria Ramos and her family gave me peace of mind when I was working or traveling; they cared for my children with love and respect and have been a wonderful support to my whole family.

My colleagues and professors at the Department of Organizational

Behavior were a continuous source of ideas and inspiration. Latha

Poonamallee reminded me, when I most needed it, of the value of my inquiry and my reason for being on this journey. Ned Powley, always one or two steps ahead of me, showed me the path to complete this work.

Duncan Coombe was a wonderful thinking partner who gently helped me make sense of so much information in light of my intent. He also was a generous reviewer of many preliminary versions of this document.

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I am forever grateful to all of you for your generosity and your friendship. Thank you.

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A GROUNDED THEORY OF TOGETHERING: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PATTERNS OF ENGAGEMENT OF A TOP MANAGEMENT GROUP FROM POLITICAL AND STRATEGIC JOUSTING TO TRUST, OPENNESS AND UNITY.

ABSTRACT

MAURICIO PUERTA

The purpose of this study was to explain the effectiveness of an offsite workshop involving the one hundred top managers of a large multinational enterprise. The workshop created a shift in the participants’ pattern of interpersonal engagement from one marked by political and strategic jousting to one marked by trust, openness and unity. The transition facilitated a shift in corporate strategy from a highly diverse to a unified global strategy, and was engineered through group

and interpersonal exercises interspersed with informal conversations with the firm’s chief executives.

The theory of togethering emerged from a Grounded Theory analysis (Glaser, 1978, 1998; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) of the field notes and video footage of the workshop’s facilitators, transcripts of interviews done retrospectively by the author with the participants, and company documents. It explains a transformation in the participants’ experience as triggered by shifts in strategic needs, punctuated by two orchestrated interventions, and manifested in three group states. The first intervention involved the disruption of political patterns of engagement

(first state) and was accomplished by creating insecurity and anxiety, overexposing participants to each other, taking them out of their natural environment, divesting them of their symbols of status, and having the top leaders engage with them in an unexpectedly informal manner. This lead to a state of confusion (second state), setting the stage for the second intervention, which the participants characterized as getting to know each other. Here they bonded with eac h other both interpersonally and as a group through a reinforcing cycle of introspection, sharing, and witnessing. Getting to know each other in turn led to a s t a t e o f

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communion (third state) in which members felt open towards each other and experienced a sense of collective endeavor. This in turn had reverberations that attended to strategic and structural needs in other parts of the organization, for example, in submit boards, in interpersonal relations within and across subunit, and in the styles of individual leaders.

The thesis extends theories of strategic management (Donald C.

Hambrick, 1994), group development (Gersick, 1988; Tuckman, 1965), attachment theory (Fosha, 2000; Fosha & Yeung, 2006), and ritual processes (Turner, 1969).

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1. INTRODUCTION

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to explain the effectiveness of an offsite workshop involving the one hundred top managers of a large multinational enterprise. The workshop created a shift in the participants’ pattern of interpersonal engagement from one marked by political and strategic jousting to one marked by trust, openness and unity. The transition supported a shift in corporate strategy from a highly diverse to a unified global strategy, and was engineered through group and interpersonal exercises interspersed with informal conversations with the firm’s chief executives.

Opportunity for the study

In the spring of 2003, as I was concluding my qualifying paper, I shared the ideas that emerged from that work with a senior leadership

development consultant. I said to her I was convinced that the quality of interpersonal relationships was one of the pillars for organizational transformation. I told her that the energy to generate and sustain life in organizations is linked with how people feel about each other. The more secure people feel with each other the broader the possibilities of the organization to face changes, threats, and adapt to the environment.

The less secure the members of an organization feel with each other, the more the rigidity of the organization in the face of environmental fluctuations. I concluded by saying that a fundamental function of organizational development practitioners should be to support the transformation of interpersonal relationships, towards a culture of care and acceptance, so that the energy for organizational transformation could be unleashed and sustained.

The consultant was very excited about these ideas and she shared with me her recent work with the senior leadership of TururuCo, a European multinational holding company. Since 2001, the Chairmen had taken every year a group of top leaders of the company on what was named

Leadership for Growth Journeys. The journeys were trips to different regions of the world, lasting three to five days. The purpose was to ignite

the leadership to foster company growth, under the premise that

“personal growth fosters business growth”1. The consultant had the impression that my ideas described and explained what she had witnessed during and after the TururuCo journeys. She asked me if I was interested in using this as a site for my dissertation.

After learning more about the journeys I became more interested because it combined many of the elements I had been working on and that brought me to the Organizational Behavior Department at Case Western

Reserve University: group work, outdoor activities, leadership development, and organizational change. It also became apparent to me, as I looked into company documents and testimonies from participants, that the first journey had created, for the first time in the history of the company: 1) a shared sense openness and trust among senior executives;

2) a sense of being part of one company, not isolated operations; 3) and a feeling that they, the leadership of the company, could finally be able to address the challenges of the time. The executives described that they, as

1 personal conversation with Global Personnel Director

a collective, became more open, and as a result more willing to explore uncharted territories as individual leaders and as a company. I accepted the consultant’s suggestion and she arranged for me to have conversation with the Human Resources department.

In October of 2003 I had my first encounter with the Head of Learning and Organizational Expertise, who was the person in charge of leadership development programs and the journeys. From that meeting it became clear to me that the company was very interested in assessing the impact of the journeys on the performance of the company as they were contemplating if and how should they continue with the journeys.

He was particularly interested in the “unintended consequences of the journeys” and what he could learn from them for the design of new journeys. I told him that my interest was to study the impact of the journey on the interpersonal relationships among executives and how, in turn, that had affected the way they worked together. We agreed that I would collect the data for my dissertation and share relevant information or insights that would help them make some decisions about their leadership development programs.

Background of the Study

Initially I set the inquiry to explore how the journey to Costa Rica transformed the interpersonal relationships among the participants and what the impact of such transformation was. I was ready to hear stories about memorable interpersonal encounters and amazing projects tackled by renewed partnerships in the aftermath of the journey. I was ready to learn how a single event had transformed the entire company by transforming the relationships among those that lead TururuCo. As is common in this kind of endeavor, one does not always find what one is looking for. I did not hear the stories I expected, nor did I hear about the transformation of the company because of the journey.

In October 2003, after the first meeting with the Head of Learning in the

HR Group, I wrote a letter summarizing the main points of our conversation. In regards to my interest in the project, I said,

“Theoretically… I am deeply interested in the ways in which interpersonal relationships are transformed by the journeys and the

consequences of these transformations in the culture of the organization.”2

I started the inquiry to explore how the journey to Costa Rica transformed the interpersonal relationships and the impact of that transformation. I was ready to hear stories about memorable encounters in Costa Rica, and amazing projects tackled by renewed partnerships in the aftermath of the journey. I was ready to learn how a single event had transformed the entire company by transforming the relationships among those that lead TururuCo.

My inquiry was based on a set core assumptions which I made explicit during the interviews as follows:

Many African societies have as spiritual foundation the proverb "a person is a person through other persons". Known in Zulu and Xhosa language as Ubuntu, this proverb conveys that each one of us subsists only in the relationships that unite us with others, and that we change as our relationships change. This notion has profound implications to understand the life in our organizations and the concept of leadership. As leaders we are our relationships. And the quality of our leadership is bounded to the quality of our relationships. Are our relationships inspiring and energizing? Do they bring out the best of us and of others? Do they generate wealth and well being for us and the communities we are part of? In one sentence, are our relationships life-giving for us and for our

2 E-mail O 1303

organizations? Because when they are we thrive. When they are, our organizations grow and generate benefits for us and society at large. When relationships inside an organization are life-giving we all live better lives.

I believe TururuCo, with the Leadership for Growth Program, has embarked itself in a very special journey, a journey to generate wealth through the transformation of the way its leaders work and live with each other. And one can say that this was one of the purposes of the Costa Rica Journey.3

The strategy of the field work was to interview the leader and board members of a sample of business units. The Head of Learning and I identified four business units4, out of eight units inside TururuCo, to be the starting point of the exploration of the impact of the Costa Rica

Journey. These business units were selected based on two criteria 1) the diverse level of impact of the journey in the business unit, and 2) diverse geographical representation of the members of the boards of each business unit. The selected business units were Hygiene Europe,

Hygiene Latin America, Nutrition Europe, and Frozen.

The plan was to spend four weeks studying each one of the four business units: interviewing its board members, gathering archival information

3 Interview Protocol 4 At the time of the inquiry TururuCo was structured in Business units that reflected regional and functional divisions.

about the business unit and journey related activities, and making ethnographic observations about the physical space and social interactions.

Based on my assumption that the Costa Rica Journey had a generative impact on the company and its leaders, I thought most appropriate to use Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987) to unveil the forces that generated such impact. Accordingly, I developed an interview protocol that could allow me to gather stories and information to attend to the double purposes of my study. The interview protocol focused on two areas: 1) the transformation of significant interpersonal working relationships during the journey; 2) and how those relationships influenced the work environment and performance of the business unit.

In order to get at these two areas I structured the interview into 6 sections5:

Reverberations of the Journey: my aim was to identify an emotionally significant event for the interviewee during the journey. This, I believed,

5 For the details of this protocol see Appendix C

would in turn help the interviewee to reconnect with the experience that occurred three years before, and it would provide me with concrete information about the experience.

Life-giving Relationships: my aim was to identify five significant working relationships for the interviewee with people who attended the journey.

This, I thought, would provide a pool of names from which we could explore the transformation of the relationship with at least one of them during the journey.

A life-giving relationship: here the aim was to go deeper into the features of one significant relationship and explore how it was transformed by the journey and what had been the impact for the company.

A Successful Project: the aim of this section was to identify successful projects in which the interviewee and at least one of his significant relationships were involved. This would provide concrete information about the relationship and its relevance for company.

Working among Life Giving Relationships: the aim in this section was to gather information about what kind of relationships were valued by the interviewee. This would provide a point of reference to assess the

significance of the journey in terms of fostering or not the favored relationships and features to be considered in future events.

Transforming the Relationships: my aim was to gather concrete suggestions from the interviewees, on how to organize future journeys that would support the development of life-giving relationships.

I expected the interviews would provide concrete stories of transformed relationships during the journey and outstanding business outcomes related to them. The plan was then to analyze these stories in a way that would unveil the factors and conditions which triggered the transformation of the relationships, and the connections between those renewed relationships and business outcomes.

At the time of starting the project I thought about using some of the techniques developed by Strauss and Corbin in Basics of Qualitative

Research (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). However, I was aware at that time, that maybe the data from the interviews could require a different analytic approach. In other words, I was open to wait and see what the data would bring, and then identify a method of analysis that would be appropriate to answer the research question.

Months after coming back from Europe, and having written the report to the company (Puerta Armenta, 2004), I was still unclear as to how I would make sense of all the information I had collected: interviews, documents, web sites, video, publications, personal memos, etc. I was stuck and I did not know how to proceed. One thing was certain; the topic of the dissertation could not be what I set out to do in the beginning, namely the study of the transformation of interpersonal relationships and their impact on the business, but instead it became clear that the focus needed to be on the collective affect of the top management group. Forty-seven interviews had showed me the journey to Costa Rica was significant in the minds of the interviewees for different reasons. As I looked at all the information I had gathered two questions lingered in my mind. First, if my original topic was not it, what could the topic be? Second, how would I analyze all this data in a way that would allow me to discover what was the topic? As I pondered about these questions, I wrote “Mauricio, just free the angel, unleash the life

trapped within the words, the images and the documents of the Costa

Rica Journey.”6

I started to reflect in my journal about these two questions in the context of all the information I had gathered and my recent work on the report to

TururuCo. One morning in December of 2004, I woke up with a great sense of clarity about the general question that all this material posed to me, “How does one create spaces where members of an organization can

“recognize” and meet each other in life-giving ways for themselves and their organization?” 7 As I read the question I noticed that the interviews and information had left me with a sense that indeed the Costa Rica

Journey had been life-giving for both the individuals and TururuCo

(Puerta Armenta, 2004), and that the journey could be seen as one way of creating life-giving spaces. If that was so, I could look at the process of the journey as a case to start an exploration into the general question of the creation of life-giving spaces in organizations. Then the purpose of the dissertation became apparent to me. If I could find the explanation

6 Personal memo O 2904

7 Personal memo D 0204

for the significant shift in the group climate during the Costa Rica

Journey, I would gain some insight in to how to create such spaces.

Researcher Assumptions

Organizations are by nature strategic collective initiatives to achieve certain goals. An organization is a device to obtain what a group of people wants. However, given that organizations are fundamentally a network of relationships between human beings, they are founded on how human beings experience those relationships. The issue of intimacy

(how safe and whole a person feels with another) becomes the bedrock of organizational life. Without intimacy, strategic interactions (interactions bounded by a predefined outcome) are more difficult, and rigid, thus affecting the possibilities of the organization to adapt and respond to the ever-changing circumstances of the environment where the organization operates.

Given the organizational setting, the interactions among members need to be strategic to the extent that they are working towards a predefined outcome. In this dimension persons are roles and functions, their identity and their feelings are irrelevant, what is relevant is how well they

perform their function and how integrated they are into the network of interactions that make the organization do what it does. However, the alienation of the need for intimacy is as detrimental for organizational life as it would be the alienation of strategic behavior; both are needed to run a healthy organization. Nonetheless, most organizations do not accept this premise and most people’s organizational energy is devoted to strategic behavior. The human need for contact, which is non-strategic in nature, is subdued and with it goes down the human capacity for adaptation and change.

Therefore, it is in every organization’s interest to attend to the need for contact and intimacy among its members. The challenge for the administrative sciences is therefore to explore and create social technologies that support organizations in attending such a need in service of organizational evolution towards becoming life giving entities.

Study Methodology

This study is the product of using grounded theory methodology as created by Glaser and Strauss (1965; 1973) and developed by Glaser over the last four decades (1978; 1992; 1998; 2005; 2004a). In its simplest

definition Grounded Theory “is the discovery of theory from data” (Glaser

& Strauss, 1967, p. 1). Its goal is to generate “…conceptual theory abstract of time, place and people.” (Glaser & Holton, 2004a) And its product “...is an integrated set of conceptual hypotheses. It is just probability statements about the relationship between concepts.” (Glaser,

1998)

Strauss and Glaser (1967) make a distinction between substantive and formal theory. Substantive theory can be used to explain and manage issues in particular settings, whereas formal theories are less specific to a setting and have a broader range of applications. My dissertation fits the notion of substantive theory, for it applies to a particular setting and it is not derived from studying phenomena from a variety of settings.

As will be shown, the theory of togethering of a top management group presented in this study emerged through the systematic application of the constant comparative method and theoretical sampling, the two core grounded theory procedures, in the analysis of the data gathered about a five day executive retreat.

At its core grounded theory methodology provide a set of procedures to keep the inductive process grounded in the substantive area under study while generating abstractions through the formulation of concepts and their relationships. With the systematic application of grounded theory methodology the researcher is enabled to identify the latent patterns in the phenomenon under study and allow the emergence of a grounded theory that explains the core problem and its resolution.

The Emergent Theory

The changing conditions of international markets are pushing multinational companies to rethink their operations and structures at a global level. Economies of scale are essential for competing in the international market. Multinational organizations are now pushed to use structures with high levels of interdependence across the globe, which requires less reliance on authority lines and more on partnerships, i.e. matrix structures. These new structures diminish the positional power within the leadership and require its members to coordinate, negotiate and collaborate, rather than dictate and impose. Thus, there is an individual and organizational need for high-quality connections within

the leadership --connections that do not get in the way of getting the work done, furthermore, connections that expand the organizations capacity to respond creatively to changes at a global scale, both in the environment and within the organization.

This study’s theory of togethering addresses the concern of TururuCo’s leadership with the need for high quality connections among its members and explains how TururuCo’s leadership resolved its concern.

For TururuCo, operating at a global scale created a dramatic shift in the patterns of connection within the leadership: local executives, until then accountable only to their counterparts in headquarters, were now members of regional and multifunctional teams, a complex net of connections. However, the leadership attitude had not changed and congruently with the new structural demands; it still perceived itself and acted as a group of individuals operating in isolation and competition rather than connected and in partnership. To respond to the need for a heightened sense of connection and unity, as required by the new structural and strategic demands, the leadership underwent the process of togethering. Through togethering the leadership experienced a sense of openness and trust, leading to a sense of “being in the same boat” and

“talking the same language”8, which inspired individual executives and executive teams to lead in creative ways in the service of global and regional operations.

The participants began to feel that there was no purpose to their meeting and that their leaders were behaving in an unexpectedly informal way.

There was a growing sense of confusion, frustration and anger among the leadership group; they had been deprived of all the reference points that sustained their traditional political and strategic patterns of engagement.

Now that the leadership was confused, the construction of a new collective experience of the top management group began with getting to know each other. Through getting to know each other the group

8 Interview 47

members bonded to one another in a reinforcing loop between introspection into their life-history, sharing the findings of that introspection and witnessing their colleagues’ introspection. This bonding experience constituted the catalytic event that transformed the confusion generated by the disruption into a sense of clarity about the purpose and meaning of the event. The leadership recognized that the key issue was to connect with one another and as a collective. Not having information about the next steps in the process became irrelevant, the new environment was perceived as conducive to connect, the lack of symbols of status allowed for a personal encounter which was reinforced by the overexposure to one another, and the personal style of leadership was now seen as model of how to engage with each other. Rather than chaos, all these features of the process provided the right conditions for the development of connections. In this last stage the leadership began to feel open towards each other, they were honest and trusted the other members of their group, which led to the experience of a growing sense of communion, that they were indeed together in this journey.

As the members of the leadership resumed their daily activities togethering reverberated in the life of the company by providing a

language to reframe the patterns of engagement and foster connections, by providing a model to create connections across the company, by inspiring its executives to lead with their personal style and beliefs, and by legitimating personal growth and interpersonal work as part of the life of the company.

Justification for Research

Over the last decade there has been a growing recognition that the top management group has the greatest effect in the life on an organization

(Donald C Hambrick & Mason, 1984; Huber & Glick, 1993) and that quality of the relationships among the members of this group and its level of cohesion, social integration, and behavioral integration, have a great impact on its capacity to deal effectively and creatively with its environment (Donald C. Hambrick, 1994; Simsek, Veiga, Lubatkin, &

Dino, 2005). Little however has been done to explore social technologies that can contribute to the development of these groups in particular.

This study aims at addressing this gap.

The above has even greater significance if one accepts that organizations are important because they are instruments of human societies. To a

large degree the well-being of the world lies in the hands of what we make of our organizations. Thus the well-being of the world, of which we are part, is intimately related to the evolution of organizations. The evolution of organizations towards more integrative forms is essential for the survival, well being and the evolution of our species and the biosphere at large.

Organizational evolution requires openness in the systems comprising it.

This includes a willingness on the part of its members to engage with and explore the unknown. Openness among organization members starts with non-strategic encounters, encounters that allow for the existence of members in multiple dimensions. The more we feel whole in the organizations we are part of, then the more energy and capacity is unleashed to create vibrant, life-giving and productive organizations for the well-being of all. The experience of being whole is tapped in my encounters with others through engagements where members feel secure and free to bring multiple dimensions of their existence into awareness.

It is vital to find ways to support the transformation of human relationships in organizations if we want those organizations to thrive for the well-being of our species and the planet. Organizations are at their

core relational entities. The building blocks of organizations are the interpersonal relationships of their members. Organizational evolution rests to a great extent on the evolutionary qualities of the relationships that make it a reality. Thus, to transform the quality of those relationships towards more expanding domains of existence is a prerequisite for organizational evolution.

Potential Significance of the Research

Togethering —the social process of transformation of the emotional domain in a top management group towards a sense of communion through the psychological process of getting to know each other— highlights the relevance of community building in modern enterprise and presents a theory that could inform practitioners interested in creating the foundations for organizational transformation, and scholars interested in understanding what creates community in the today’s organizations and how does it happen.

In addition the psychological process of getting to know each other highlights the importance of personal and non-strategic engagements for the creation of bonds and high quality business relationships among

senior executives. By providing spaces for such engagements organizations can unleash generative capabilities of people working together towards a common goal.

Outline of the Thesis

This dissertation is comprised of seven chapters as follows:

Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the purpose of the study, background, the opportunity for the research, the researcher’s assumptions problem, , justification for the research and its potential significance. The chapter also comments briefly on the study’s research methodology and the emergent theory.

Chapter 2 is a personal statement addressing three fundamental questions: Why am I writing on this topic? Why am I passionate about it?

And how is it related to my life?

Chapter 3 presents a rich and thick description of the journey. First I provide an overview of the journey where I explain the context from which the journey emerged, describe its purpose and the main actors involved in its preparation and delivery. Also in this overview I describe

the design and the design process and provide a summary of the sequence of events during the five days of the journey. Second I describe the journey day by day: what participants did, what they said, and what the designers had in mind. My hope is that the reader will have at the end of this chapter a clear image of the substantive data from which the theory of togethering emerged.

Chapter 4 describes and explains the inquiry process that led me to the discovery of the theory of Togethering. I open this chapter by describing my entry point to this inquiry: the research question, the underlying assumptions, the purpose, the intended methodology, and the original interview protocol. Then I explain how and why I redesigned, in the field, the interview protocol and sampling sequence. In the next section, I describe how the research question and topic of the study underwent another level of transformation as I prepared a preliminary report for the company. After that, I explain my decision to shift my analytic approach from Thematic Analysis to Grounded Theory, and describe the discovery process using the latter.

Chapter 5 presents the grounded theory that emerged from this study: a grounded theory of togethering a social process through which the

leadership of a multinational company connected and created a sense of collective endeavor in order to facilitate the leadership’s response to crisis. The chapter describes the properties of togethering and the stages of the process: disrupting the traditional patterns of engagement, getting to know each other, and communion. It also describes the conceptual reverberations of the theory. Footnotes throughout the chapter tie the conceptual development of the theory to empirical indicators and conceptual memos. The chapter concludes by offering a number of theoretical propositions that encompass the emergent theory.

Chapter 6 explores relevant extant theories in order to position the grounded theory in the context of the larger academic discourse, and to expand the original conceptual model. Four extant theories are presented: behavioral integration of top management groups (Donald C.

Hambrick, 1994), group development by punctuated equilibrium

(Gersick, 1988), the developmental sequence of small groups (Tuckman,

1965), and the process of ritual in rites of passage (Turner, 1969). The chapter concludes with a modification of the model vis-à-vis the insights from the extant theories.

Chapter 7 offers conclusions from the study findings and addresses the study’s contributions to knowledge in relation to theory, practice and research method. The chapter continues with a comment on the achievement of the study’s aims, an evaluation of the study findings, limitations of the study, conclusions regarding the research approach and implications for future research.

Summary

This chapter has provided the reader with an overview of the thesis by presenting the opportunity for the research, the research problem and the purpose of the study including aims and objectives, justification for the research and its potential significance. The chapter continued with a brief statement on the study methodology, the emergent theory and a chapter by chapter overview of the thesis structure.

2. PERSONAL STATEMENT

This study spring from the understanding and believes I have developed about human organizations and their transformation. This chapter is an exhibition of some of these ideas, in the hope that the reader will have a better understanding of the origin of my inquiry and its relationship with my professional life.

Discovering my purpose

This dissertation is the latest step in a long journey that began in the highlands of Peru fifteen years ago, where I worked as a geographer studying the forces that drove the social construction of the space among urban and rural communities, and brought me to Cleveland and the field of Organizational Behavior, in an effort to understand and find ways to support human systems to transform and transcend their reality.

During this journey I have come to understand that that the creation of a better world for all rests in the capacity of the human species to make organizations of all kinds, engines for the welfare of the world. And I have also realized that I want to contribute to this endeavor by studying, teaching and creating spaces to support organizational transformation towards more effective, humane and generative institutions for their members and the communities they touch. I am particularly interested in studying, teaching and creating processes that unleash the individual and collective energy of human systems to drive and sustain generative or life giving organizations. This clarity of purpose emerged from the work of my qualifying paper. I wrote then:

“...from all the possible lines of inquiry that emerge from this paper I am most attracted to the phenomenon of the generation of well-being in organizations through the transformation of the relational space. I am intrigued by the survival of individuals and organizations beyond mere survival but survival with well being. The kind of survival that expands our domains of existence, the kind of survival that gives meaning to who we are, the kind of survival that brings happiness to our lives, the kind of survival in which the other emerges as a legitimate other in co-existence with oneself.” (Puerta Armenta, 2003)

Organizations as creation of human encounters

I believe we discover the magic of being alive through the encounter with the other, and so we surrender to the game of life. In the eyes of the others we exist and become beautiful beings, and it is then when new unimaginable and unconceivable forms of existence together are possible, and we are surprised by what we are capable.

We get involved in organizations to maintain our families, to defeat our enemies, to help our neighbor, to satisfy our ambitions, to subjugate our fears, our terrors. But when we arrive to an organization, when we start working, we realize we are surrounded by others like us, and it is our encounters and dis-encounters what build and transform the place we live in. Any organization is the living fruit of the interaction among human beings. A school is only a school when those that live in it meet.

Without them, the school is just an empty building, a book of norms, a contract on a desk. School is built in the multitude of interactions between students, teachers, parents, employers. School emerges when these actors converge.

Organizations can kill or give life

We often forget we create the organizations we live in through our interactions with others, and we lose the perspective of our authorship in what constitutes and makes organizations a reality. And as we forget we become careless about who we are and what we do to others. The other ceases to be a companion, and becomes just an instrument for the reproduction of the organization. It is then when an organization becomes inhumane, and we, who live in it, die of cancer, heart attacks, anxiety or depression. Our organizations slowly kill us, and they kill us because they are no longer life-giving. And they not only kill those who belong to them, they also kill everything they touch.

And yet, organizations also host life-giving seeds, those that if recognized and nurtured will multiply and trigger the expansion of life all around us.

Our organizations can become centers of energy that reverberates in our hearts, in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our cities and our fields.

It does not matter if they are private or public, or that their purpose is money or God; if we can meet through love life will emanate from them.

Neither purpose nor vision defines the character of an organization; it is

the nature of the encounter among those who live in them what does.

Encounters through love will bring life. Encounters through the absence of love will bring dead.

When I speak of love I am speaking about the love that manifests itself through a full engagement with the other, in pain and in happiness, in conflict and in friendship. Such love creates the space to bring our whole self, it does not require of us to compartmentalize nor fragment our being. Such love welcomes us and cares about us9. And, this love co-exist with the world of politics, the world of strategies, the world of hierarchies, and the world of power struggles10. And these worlds are necessary to accomplish all the things that brought us together in the first place. It is the dance between love and strategy what keeps us alive and thriving. It is the tension between these opposing forces what sustains our organizations. It would be naïve not to acknowledge this reality, for it would deny the very nature of any human effort to satisfy

9 My understanding of the power of relationships in organizational life is inspired by the work of Humberto Maturana ((H. R. Maturana, 1999; H. R. Maturana & Varela, 1992) and Martin Buber (Buber, 1970) 10 My recognition of the other side of the polarity in human relations is inspired by the work of Machiavelli (Machiavelli, 1975)

any collective desire. The encounter through love expands what is possible in the strategy, and transforms pure force into power11, it is then when our organizations and ourselves connect with life on Earth and the Cosmos. Our actions and thoughts can only move then in the direction of that which gives life, of that which makes us happy.

The transformation of the emotional domain12 at the core of organizational

transformation

I now think that the transformation of the relational space in organizations is important because it is necessary to create the foundations for organizational change and transformation that would take any organization to a more evolved state. A more evolved state is to me a state where there is a collective awareness, within the organization, of being part and connected to the world at large13. This awareness

11 The distinction between force and power comes from the work of David Hawkins (Hawkins, 2002) 12 An emotional domain is the range of possible actions and behaviors of an organism or group of organisms given a particular emotion. In other words, it is what we can do when a particular emotion is trigger in a relational context (H. Maturana & Bloch, 1996) 13 This statement was inspired by Wilber’s comment on the waves of existence as presented by Beck and Cowan on their work Spiral Dynamics (Wilber, 2000). The basic premise is that the lower the wave of existence the more centered on the immediate needs of the self and less attention to the needs of others, the higher waves

drives the organization to act with a high degree of interdependence within the economical, social, cultural and ecological systems. This, I believe, will bring forth life-giving organizations.

I believe that the path towards life-giving organizations, —that is organizations that expand the well being of our species and the planet at large, organizations that expand the possibilities of existence for our species and the biosphere— lies in the transformation of the emotional domain in which the members of the organization interact. If the emotional domain continues to be fear, fear of competition, of scarcity, of

of existence integrate more and more the other until there is only a sense of the oness on the universe. In addition, higher waves of existence contain lower levels, which mean a higher wave of existence can be more generative for the whole.

the other, then the decisions and structure of the organizations would only generate forms of co-existence that protect, fence, isolate, alienate.

On the contrary, if the emotional domain is love then openness, integration and transformation are possible for the organization as a whole, for its members and for the community where it exist. I believe the future of human kind depends in the capacity of modern organizations to operate from the emotional domain of love14. Underlying my believe is the assumption that emotions, the primal feelings, are the bedrock of all human endeavors and actions, and that the transformation of the human experience on this earth requires us to pay attention to the emotional realm of our existence as individuals and collectivities, and this is especially important when working with the most powerful engine in the construction of human existence: the organization, a group of human beings working together.

14 My understanding on the function of love on human flourishing is inspire by the work of Teilhard de Chardin (Teilhard de Chardin, 1964)

My Inquiry

Organizations are the ongoing creation of our relationships, of the way in which we meet the world around us. I believe through a curious and attentive regard I will discover the secrets of those organizations that give life, and those small ways in which we survive despite the circumstances.

I am simply trying to understand how we meet through love and what this encounter triggers in our organizations.

At the beginning of this study I wrote:

I want to study the Costa Rica Journey as a mode of transforming the relational space of a top management group of a multinational company. I believe that daily co- existence, personal introspection, being exposed to nature, being in a new environment, and in the midst of an institutional crisis, created the ideal conditions to experience the relationships with one self, the others and with the environment, in a way that opened up the possibility of making “contact”. This contact brought about individual change and change in the relationships among the members of the top management group, thus creating the conditions for the development of more fluid and creative ways of working together.15

This study, at a personal level, is just one more step in my journey towards the understanding of the creation of life-giving organizational spaces. The Costa Rica journey provides an opportunity to learn about

15 Personal Memo F0904

the specific forces and mechanism that support the creation of such spaces.

3. STORY OF THE COSTA RICA JOURNEY

Introduction

The following chapter describes in detail the Costa Rica Journey, the event from which the grounded theory of this study emerged.

The chapter is organized in three sections. The first section is an overview in which I present the context o f the vent occurred, its purpose, its core actors and its design. The second section is a detailed account of the event day by day; it includes a description of the actions, the participants’ experience and com ments on the design. The third section is a depiction the impact the event had in the company, through vignettes of follow up actions in four business divisions.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with as much information as possible ab out the ground from which the theory of this

study emerged. I believe this ground will prove useful in both understanding and demonstrating the fit of the emergent concepts.

Overview of the Journey

The Context of the Journey

During the eighties and part of the nineties TururuCo went through a process of simplifying its portfolio with a series of divesting initiatives such as the selling of the chemical business and the transportation business among others. During the mid nineties TururuCo started to rest ructure the company with the intent of running the operations regionally and globally instead of locally. These efforts had the clear purpose of strengthening the company’s performance and therefore its value in the stock market. By the end of the nineti es, it was clear that despite the improvements in processes the company was not growing.

In response to the growth challenge and the loss of market share (see

Error! Reference source not found. )Error! Reference source not

f o u n d . , t h e Executive Committee 16 (ExCo) designed Path to Growth, a global strategy that redefined the structure of the company. The most significant shift was the shift towards economies of scale. TururuCo was now a global operation and not a conglomerate of local o perations. The era of the “lonely rider”, which defined most of the history of the company, was over. This shift implied regional coordination of operations through the business group and a centralized administration and planning of operations in the two m ain headquarters. All of a sudden operations across the globe were interdependent and the people were not prepared to d o t h a t .

16 The executive committee is the highest governing body of the company, it was composed by the two chairmen, the heads of corporate development, personnel, finance, and the heads of the two business divisions.

Figure 1 TururuCo Market Performance 1980-2001 (from TururuCo Chairman’s Report 2004)

E c o u b l a y 17 p u r p o se was to create a sense of unity and coordination within regions and industry (food or health care) with regional strategies and objectives. But the issue of the relationship between headquarters and local operations was not addressed. The chairmen and Ex Co had no close contact with executives abroad and the new structure required a fluid and

17 Ecoublay was the code name for a series of strategic planning workshops by business units to implement Path to Growth, the global strategy.

dependable relationships between the head and the satellites. The need of an event to create the link emerged here. It was more than selling Path to

Growth to the lea dership of the company. It was about opening direct channels of communication between ExCo and local executives. The journey appeared as a good option to create that connection.

Before Path to Growth the relationship between headquarters and local c o m p a n i es was just that of a clearing house for budget and business plans. The meetings were solely reports to the main house to assess delivery of results. Each company president and his team would once or twice a year meet with ExCo and report the progress. A good president was one that could deliver results and was independent from other companies or operations.

With Path to Growth, local companies became parts of a larger machine, in some cases global but mostly regional. What a company did was defined i n r e l ationships to the plans for the region and the family of companies to which it belonged. Furthermore, there were some functions (research and development, supply chain, personnel and marketing) that were now run

from headquarters. Executives were now force d to become team players and they did not know how to do it.

In 1999, the value of the TururuCo share in the stock market reached one of the lowest points of the last 25 years (see Error! Reference source not f o u n d . ), as a response the ExCo decided to launch Path to Growth. Path to Growth was the first global strategy in the company, until then the company had been run from his local operations, with local strategies, with little impositions from headquarters. Path to Growth was a m u l t i d i m e nsional strategy to be applied across all the businesses and operating companies in the world. It was perceived by the chairmen that the implementation of such a strategy required the engagement of the top leaders of the company, those that were running l ocal and regional operations, for without them Path to Growth could not be implemented.

(for a sequence of events see Error! Reference source not found. )

A team of internal and external consultants was gathered to think and design a proces s to bring the top leadership of the organization on board of Path to Growth. The first proposal was to run a series of strategy development workshops with each one of the business groups, Ecoublay,

but soon the chairmen realized that in order to do that something else was needed, something that could facilitate the emotional engagement of the top management with this strategy, but most importantly with the two leaders of the company. Inspired by the journey that transformed one of the original operating companies, and a national branch of the company, the team proposed to the chairmen the Costa Rica Journey.

1999 Fall market share

2000 Launching of global strategy Path to Growth

January 2001 5-day Journey to Costa Rica

June-August 2001 Ecoublay: Strategic planning retreats per Business Unit

February-August 2004 Interviews and field work for this study

Figure 2 Timeline of events related to the Costa Rica Journey

The Purpose of the Journey

The stated purpose of the Costa R ica Journey was “to be a personal and professional journey from which people would return re -engaged with

TururuCo and its growth agenda, prepared to significantly change their behaviors to make that agenda successful.”

These statements encapsulated what the chairmen expected of the j o u r n e y :

To help the group to feel at ease with each other as a team,

To build ownership of the Path to Growth agenda,

To get people to live a spirit of enterprise,

To create a group emotion of “starting to do impossible things.”

The Actors

The Owners and Designers

The Costa Rica Journey had emerged as part of a series of actions to launch the path to growth strategy, and as the result of a collective effort

in which the two chairmen were closely involved. The Costa Rica J o u r n e y was to be owned and led by the two chairmen; this was a central feature of its design, for one of the objectives was to model the new type of leadership that was needed to deliver Path to Growth. To support this work the chairmen would have two p rocess consultants in the field, and one in charge of the planning and management of the logistics of the trip.

The participants

The participants were a selection of one hundred level six and five executives from around the world. They were considered t h e m o s t influential executives of the company and the one that would be in charge of the implementation of the new strategy. All of them were middle age men from multiple nationalities, mainly from Europe.

Preparing the Journey

The Design Team in close co ordination with the two Chairmen prepared the Journey. This coordination included feedback on the design and an inspection trip to Costa Rica to refine the design. During this inspection,

the Chairmen went through all the activities and adjusted the design according to their personal preferences and abilities.

The Design of the Journey

The Costa Rica Journey w a s a f i v e -day journey from Miami Beach to the rain forest of Costa Rica and back. It was meant to be a physical and emotional journey for the top le aders of the company; In order to do so the journey was a structured in such a way that the participants were constantly exposed to the natural surroundings, the other participants

(through specific activities), and themselves (through personal reflection exercises). The participants were asked to reflect about their lives and aspirations, to share thoughts and space with other participants, to pay attention to what was around them, to walk in silence, talk in small groups, and to reflect on the consequen ces of this experience for their work and TururuCo. The journey was not meant to be a conversation about the business but an experience of the people that lead this b u s i n e s s .

Organizing Principles

The journey was organized around three facilitating princi ples (TururuCo

2 0 0 0 ) :

From Experience-to-Practice, this is depicted by the Adult Learning

Cycle, which explains behavioral changes as a result of a process that involves experiencing, reflecting on that experience, creating a mental model of that experience, and finally practicing new behaviors based on this new mental model.

From Individual to Whole-Group, the transformation of the group is seen as a recurrent process that starts with reflections at the individual level, then moves to the pair level, then creates some synergy in small groups, and finally engages the group as a whole.

From outside in to inside out, individual and group transformation occurs by attending constantly to what is inside the individual or group, and what is outside of the individual or the group, in a movement that supports continues adaptation.

Sequence of the Journey

The journey was designed in a sequence of five steps, each step coinciding with a day in the journey (for specific details on the events of each day see

D e t a i l e d S chedule of the Journey on the appendix):

Day 1.

Setting the group: this was the work of the first day from the moment the participants gathered at Miami Beach through the meeting they had with the chairmen and the end of the day in San Jose.

Day 2.

Start personal reflections on self and growth: this was the work of the second day, which started with the visit to Imbio facilities and ended up, after a jeep ride, in a difficult night at the tent camp in the rural community of Matapalo.

Day 3.

Articulate personal vision and connect to entrepreneurship: this was the work of the third day, which started with a morning hike to the beach, continued with a profound bonding experience in a boat in the

middle of the Pacific Ocean, and ended with a renewing group conversation in the middle of the night.

Day 4.

Building a team picture of “we can do this together”: this was the work of the fourth day, starting with a silent hike through the rain forest, having a refreshing shower in a comfortable lodge at Marenco, and concluding the day with a new experience of the two chairmen together in a plenary session.

Day 5.

Action planning: this was the fifth and last day of the journey, which started with a plenary session to distil the key learning of the journey and how this could be used in the delivery of Path to Growth.

That afternoon all flew back to Miami and from there to their home countries.

The Outcome

At the end of the five days, the participants described the journey “as powerful and moving, a major turning point”. T hey identified the core

elements of what was needed from them and each other to transform the c o m p a n y :

“In the end, it was agreed that if the relationships of TururuCo’s leadership can be characterized by integrity, truthfulness, caring, and mutual suppor t, and if empowerment means taking power for oneself, and if accountability means taking responsibility for oneself, then indeed the enterprise culture so sought by the organization will finally become a reality.” (TururuCo 2000) This was transmitted to t he rest of the organization with the image of a triangle that represented the spirit of

Costa Rica.

“The journey to Costa Rica opened a window of what might be possible among the organization’s leaders. It created awareness of the relevance of being open for the business and themselves, and most importantly defined a template or a model on how that openness looks like and can be obtained within this community of leaders. That is, the Costa Rica journey created an image and an experience in the minds and bo dies of the participants, of what is like to engage in non -strategic relationships and

what are the positive consequences of this type of engagement at a personal and institutional level.”(Puerta Armenta 2004)

Account of the Costa Rica Journey

A Letter of Invitation

In December of 2000 106 top executives of TururuCo received a strange letter signed by their two chairmen. In this letter they were asked, with out explanation, to be at Miami Beach cryptic letters instructing them to be on the beach at Miami Beach, between 12th and 13th Streets, at 10 a.m. on January 14th . The letter did not explain the purpose, or the agenda of the meeting. And not all the executives of same hierarchy received it. The letter just instructed t h e m “ to get certain visas, shots, et cetera, and to bring swimming trunks and sunglasses . ” .

From the designers perspective the letter was to create a sense of surprise and anticipation, thus the lack of specific information about the event .

This was very unusual for TururuCo standards, and participants had mixed feelings about the letter. The letter of invitation aw ok e anxiety for its lack of clarity, as Interviewee 24 recalls it, “[the journey] started off with

the insecurity of what was going to happen. I mean we got an invitation to go somewhere, and it was absolutely unclear what the hell was going to h a p p e n ”. The letter also gave assurances of status, for it was a demonstration that the invitee belonged to the elite of the company .

Interviewee 41 said:

I was pleased [with letter of invitation]. I was privileged to be one of only a hundred people that was involved in this activity, because TururuCo is an extremely big and complex organization, and it’s quite hard when you’re in the middle of it to know whether you’re at the top of the middle or the bottom of the middle or the middle of the middle.

First Day

Miami Beach

The morning of Sunday 14 t h , 2001, was a normal day on the beach: it was sunny, the usual runners were passing by, the old retired couple exercising, the sunbathers wel l tanned and in full display. Then, hundred and six white middle age men walked on the sands of Miami Beach dressed as if going to an executive meeting in suits and sport coats, pulling expensive suitcases. The two chairmen of TururuCo, dressed in e x p e d i t i on gear, were waiting for the participants next to the canopies and

tables full of clothes and equipment. Used to meet the chairmen in elegant boardrooms in London or Rotterdam, many of the participants were surprised with the setting and anxious about the meaning of such a reception.

As the participants arrived they were told to collect their clothes, back pack, hiking boots, hat, and additional equipment from the tables. Then, they had to change their clothes inside the tents, pack their original c l o t h e s and leave their suitcases in another tent. As most of the actions in this journey, the change of clothes, was conceived as a signal from the c h a i r m e n 18. In this case the signal was about the need to leave things behind because “we are creating a new futur e together” (T u r u r u C o , 2 0 0 0 ) .

Even though the process was p l a y f u l , some participants reported a f e e l i n g of anxiety in sight of the unknown. “I think this is frightening” said a participant as he was collecting his gear (T u r u r u C o Corporate HR Group,

2001a, min. 33:22) . Some participants were excited about the prospect

18 In the Instructional design the design team makes an explicit statement in this regard: “What we do this morning at the beach is absolutely ‘mind-setting’ for the total event and how people will remember the event (story telling). We need to use every opportunity of ‘symbolic leadership impact.” (TururuCo, 2000)

that this reception was announcing about the event, they were starting from an equal stand:

[with the change of clothes] you felt immediately equal. Equal not in terms of hierarchy, but some people were basically, because of the invitation, put on the wrong [sic]. Miami was much more warm than maybe some people expected, so some were overdressed in terms of the weather, but some were overdressed as well in terms of how they like to come with a business costume. So I think it was within a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, everybody was laughing about everybody because you look a bit different, not weird, but different in your tropical suit and your backpack. Then immediately, of course, there was this kind of equality.19

A welcome from the chairmen

When they were all dressed in their hiking gear and their backpacks were ready, the chairmen asked them to gather around. Then, taking turns, each chairman spoke o f the need and purpose of the event. One of the chairman started by saying:

We are here because we are starting a journey. A journey that is physical, intellectual, emotional. It is one that would get at your heart, you head and I hope at your soul. … You are here because this is the leadership of TururuCo, and the leadership of TururuCo, we, have between us an extraordinary challenge over the next few years. And

19 Interviewee 28

that challenge, which is very exciting, very stimulating, very engaging, is only one however, that we will manage to complete if we are clear that as a team and together, we know what we have to do an we are determined to do it for each other, collectively, individually, but specially for each other. … I hope that during this journey we will open up to each other as individuals, and to understand what we can do for each other and together. (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001a, min. 40:30)

The chairmen added, “…it is a discovery journey. We will have the opportunity to connect, or reconnect, with three things: with yourself, with the company and with the world in which you live.” (T u r u r u C o C o r p o r a t e

HR Group, 2001a, min. 45:05)

From a design point of view the intention be hind the chairmen’s speech was to set the tone of the event by conveying f i r s t that the event was not about the specifics of the business, but about changing behavior; second that this was the way to face the challenges of the implementation of the n e w s t r ategy; and third that the purpose was to have an impact on both the group and the individuals. In addition, there was also the intent of positioning the two chairmen as the leaders of the event, and not the group of consultants who designed and advised the chairmen before and during the event. (T u r u r u C o , 2 0 0 0 )

As participants listened to the chairmen a sense of skepticism grew among them, a sense that this event was not a serious one, althou gh the intentions were good. Few participants were excited for what they saw this event was responding to a much needed change. In general, the rationale the charimen laid out was not very appealing for it did not include the most urgent business matters, for which this group of people could do a l o t t o g e t h e r .

Sharing Totems

The first structured activity in groups was the “Totem Sharing”. Each participant was asked to bring an item which symbolized the kind of leadership that was needed in TururuCo (T u r u r u C o Chairmen, 2001).

Before asking the participants to do so, the chairmen divided the g r o u p i n two, one went with one of the chairman, and the other with the other chiarman. In these subgroups each chairman presented his totem to the entire group, setting in this way the tone of the conversation the participants were to have in small groups: the presentation of the totem should be personal and through stories. In groups of four to six people, the participants presented their totems one by one. The totems were

diverse: a jar of jam, a picture of a statue, a stick, a compass, nothing, a n d s o f o rth. “I am surprised with the diversity of items. I thought we would all bring similar things with similar meaning, but that was not the case” said one of the participants at the end of the activity (T u r u r u C o corporate HR Group, 2001a) . There was a diversity of meanings and expectations about the kind of leadership that participants felt were needed. For some it was about setting direction, for others about modeling new behavior, and for others about having initiative. (T u r u r u C o c o r p o r a t e

HR Group, 2001a)

From a designer perspective the intention behind the Totem Sharing was to serve as personal introductions while at the same time se tting the blue print of the content and process for the entire event. The activity signaled that the conversations during the following days would be about oneself in relationship to the organization in terms of values and aspirations. It also signaled tha t the conversation should revolve around personal experiences and not theoretical or abstract statements.

The Totem Sharing continued after lunch and was blended with a conversation about the “most exhilarating challenges” of 2000 and the

“best hopes and w orst fears for TururuCo”. Through out these initial conversations “it was clear there was a high level o cynicism [among participants], yet there were moments of sincerity, even passion”

(T u r u r u C o Corporate HR Group, 2001d) . And some excitement:

We then did the icon sharing thing which made me think that this is going to be really interesting because if you ever visited the board room of TururuCo in TururuCo House or if you even sat in a board meeting, the atmosphere in those meetings is not exactly conducive to collegiality, you know. It’s a big room with high things. There are pictures on the wall, and they’re frowning down at you. The central chair is bigger than the other chairs. It’s all set up to be, we’re it folks. You’re down there. So the chairmen of TururuCo had been historically rather distant figures. They certainly had chats with you, but they worked from the room, so it’s “Hello. How are you?” three or four sentences of light exchange, and they move on work the room and so forth. You either meet them that way or the senior people or you meet them in a formal presentation where you’re quickly told to keep it brief, keep it sharp, move on. Here were the chairmen expressing personal things to everybody else. You just looked at that and you say, “I’ve known six TururuCo chairmen, and I can’t imagine the six previous ones ever doing that.” So the notion that the top leadership of the business should be reaching out to personalize themselves was not only interesting; it was extraordinary. For somebody who had been in the business for thirty-one years, it was simply extraordinary. I had sat on Chairman’s emergency executive. Those meetings were all arranged in format, all fixed. You speak when spoken to, get it through, say your piece, move on. It was all absolutely no personal interfacing… So I feel that I don’t know what’s happening; hey, this looks interesting; and this is probably going to be extraordinary. So what is it? 20

20 Interviewee 37

On the School Buses

At 3:00 p.m. the expedition of 106 executives, plus consulting and logistic teams, follow the chairmen in a double line through the streets of Miami

Beach. They did not know were they were going, as they would not know for most of the next five days. “ At no stage are we now being told what’s going to happen next. It’ s just sort of happening. We don’t know where we are going to go.” 21 Interviewee 28 recalls that march:

… I think it was just important to feel like this is a strong group of people, one hundred people marching over the promenade in Miami Beach. This is something, and the fact that it looked a little bit like soldiers, you felt being back in the army. I think there was a bit of a feel like, we are doing something very different from normal.22

After few minutes they arrived to a flotilla of buses waitin g for them. These were not the usual first class buses these executives were used to ride; these were “noisy, cramped, yellow school buses” (T u r u r u C o Corporate HR

Group, 2001d) . Interviewee 24 recalls:

We are going on a journey in a school bus. It sent a signal like you’re off to learn. We’re starting at the beginning. I’m someone myself who I do journeys with my people

21 Interviewee 38 22 Interviewee 28

a lot. I like to plan always the flow of the contents together with symbols, and you start reading symbols yourself. You could have gone into the bus without noticing it was a school bus. But the mere fact was it was not one, it was three or four or five buses in a row. It was clear it was not coincidence. There was purpose behind the school buses. It was to send a signal. Do you really want to go through all of this [laughs]?23

Fourteen Executive Jets

45 minutes later the five school buses arrive at Miami Airport. Here is how one of the interviewees remembers this moment:

Then we go off to Miami airport, and I got this little boy’s joy of the toy. Big boys, big toys. What was it? Twelve or fourteen Leer jets, white all of them standing seven by seven. I was saying, “Wow! This is going to be really great. We’ve got planes.” It was like small little kids - the school bus and then the toys. That creates suddenly that it was first insecure and what the hell’s going on and then suddenly excitement. “Wow! This is going to be great!” Everybody’s starting to talk, “Are we going here? Are we going down to Cuba?”24

For many participants the sight of the p lanes was a sign that this was a serious effort from the part of the two chairmen, and not something to be taken lightly. “ There was definitely then the first ‘wow’ factor. There was a line of planes on the airfield which suddenly told you that we were g o i n g somewhere and this is being taken seriously. ” Said interviewee 45 .

23 Interviewee 24 24 Interviewee 24

Before they boarded the planes the chairmen explained the task for the flight: on their seats they would find a booklet, called passport 25, w i t h instructions for the flight; they were t o write on their personal journals a list of their hopes and fears for the journey and then talk about them with the person seating beside them. “ I hope this expedition will make a difference. I hope people will talk about what's really on their minds. I hope that the Chairmen will work together to inspire us.” Said one participant to another during the flight. And other said “ I fear there will be no lasting change. I fear it will not make a difference. I fear that real issues won't be discussed.” (T u r u r u C o Corporate HR Group, 200 1 d )

As an observer one could see during the flight that:

The discussions varied. Some were passionate debates, punctuated with finger pointing and raised voices. Others were quiet, almost hushed discussions. Almost all were intense and serious. Some participants expressed doubts about the organization. Others questioned the Chairmen's ability to change. Still others doubted their personal commitment to change. (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001d)

25 During the next 3 days participants received a “passport” each day. These passports contained instructions for the activities that would be conducted individually or in small groups.

In San Jose, Costa Rica

“Mister you are in Costa Rica” said the airport employee to one of the executives descending from the plane. (T u r u r u C o corporate HR Group,

2 0 0 1 a ) An hour and a half later, the expedition toured the city of San Jose in 5 buses, as they were riding to the hotel in the San Rafael neighborhood. Before checking into the hotel La Condesa, the expedition had a brief tour of the San Rafael Church. A local guide explained history and the significance of this church.

For the participants these tour had very little meaning. For the most part, they did not see any value on learning about the city or the church. From the designers perspectiv e these brief activities were meant to serve a dual purpose: to provide participants with “a feel” for the new environment, and to overload their senses. “I want them out of their frame of reference”, said one of the members of the design team, “only then they would be ready to open up to the new experience.” 26

26 Member of the design team

T h e Chairmen hosted a welcome drink and dinner in the hotel’s restaurant. It was almost nine pm ., the view over San Jose city was magnificent. Two musicians were playing local tunes on marimbas on th e background. The executives were sitting on tables of four to six people talking about the events of the day, eating and drinking. Although it was an informal atmosphere people looked tired and serious. (T u r u r u C o corporate HR Group, 2001a)

At some point during the dinner the chairman, holding a beer on one hand and lining on a column of the restaurant, asked the participants

“lets hear some of your hopes and fears…” To which a participant replied that he hoped that “we get to the real issues, such as building a joint team, building collectively good teams, getting into the real essence and have an honest discussion.” Another participants said that he hoped “to get to know each other at a different level, which might start building a little trust, which might translate in it self into teamwork.” To these statement The cha irmen responded, “that was my most important hope, that the whole process would help us to get much more personal and that we would open up to each other in a way that is essential if you want to

have trust.” . As to the fears someone said, “we are frighte ned to expose our own weaknesses. We might fear to be ridiculed. We want to feel that this group will support us as human beings that have weaknesses and strengths.” (T u r u r u C o corporate HR Group, 2001a, min. 40:20)

The purpose of this open dialogue in the restaurant was twofold: (a) to h e l p the chairmen have a sense of the hopes and fears that participants voiced in the planes as they were flying to Costa Rica; and (b) to continue the chairmen disclosure, this time around their own fears and hopes about the journey. (T u r u r u C o , 2 0 0 0 )

For participant this dialogue was a first taste of the kind of conversations that they would have with the Chairmen over the next few days: on the one hand the Chairmen sharing their own thoughts an d feelings, and on the other the Chairmen engaging with the group to hear participants’ experience. The majority of participants were at best skeptic about the intent and commitment of the Chairmen to sustain this kind of dialogue over the following five d a y s .

That night participants had another surprise. When they went into their rooms, they found someone else’s backpack or someone else on one of the beds. They thought it was a mistake, and call the reception to complain to find out that the organizers had made these room arrangements. The designers wanted the participants to have the maximum exposure to each other. From this night on no one slept alone another night.

Second Day

Breakfast at La Condesa Hotel

In the morning of second day it was still dark when participants gathered for breakfast in the hotel patio. As they entered the room, they were offered a fruit juice, and they received the passport with the instructions of the day. It was a buffet breakfast. They sat in tables of 4 to six sits. The c o n versation were unstructured, and through them it was still palpable a sense of anxiety about the unknown plans for this and the following days.

One of the chairman (the Dutch chairman) spoke after most of the people had eaten. He explained the theme of t he day and what was expected of the participants: “Today you will have an opportunity to connect with the

Planet…I only have one plea today, open up to what you are going to s e e … ” (T u r u r u C o Corporate HR Group, 2001b, min. 1:24) . He then told participants that they would go to InBio National P ark, where they would explore and reflect on the concept of biodiversity.

Some executives were paying attention to The chairmen, others were reading news papers, while others were looking at maps of Costa Rica.

Most of them did not look very interested in what the chairman had to s a y . (T u r u r u C o Corporate HR Group, 2001b, min. 3:05)

This type of speech became customary during the following days. With it the chairmen explained the tasks and attempted to set the emotional tone for the activities that followed.

Visit to InBio

After breakfast every body got into four buses and was taken to InBio

National Park. The group was divided in small groups. Each one of these groups was assigned to one guide. The guide then gave a tour of the park and the facilities, explaining at every step the purpose of the p a r k , t h e

projects they were working on, and specific information about the exhibitions.

From the designers perspective the function of the visit to InBio was to get people out of their frame of reference” and introduce the theme of growth, birth and rebi rth from an ecological standpoint, but as an allegory about the growth and rebirth of the company (T u r u r u C o , 2 0 0 0 ) .

“Although intellectually stimulating and at times emotionally engaging, the anxiety and expectations of the past 24 hours began to take their toll. As the tour wound on, some participants began to lose patience and interest. Sidebar conversations about business issues erupted. Cynical comments were heard: Interesting, sure. But what had it to do with TururuCo?” (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001d)

At the end of the tours all the small groups gathered in a conference room were they watched a video about the destruction of the planet and the role of biodiversity in its survival. At the end of the video “The chairmen gave an impassioned and personal speech about what this meant to him ”

(T u r u r u C o Corporate HR Group, 2001d) :

I have a whole set of emotions tumbling around which are difficult to control, difficult to understand. The first one is shock. The shock that I knew so little about what we were doing. I was so unengaged. I was shocked with my own inability to engage before. [The second one is guilt] I have guilt of what we leave behind. Guilt about the legacy our children will have from us. [The third one is inspiration] I began to feel genuine inspiration that a little country like Costa Rica had the vision and found the way

to engage people behind this vision and get commitment. (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001b, min 25:53)

As The chairman closed his speech, he exhorted people to have a conversation during the rest of the morning and during lunch and “let surface the emotions, because they are extremely important, because I do not think that what we need to as inhabitants of this planet we can do unless there is an emotion in charge behind it.” (T u r u r u C o Corporate HR

Group, 2001b, min. 26:45)

As the visit to InBio came to a close one could observe that, “ Suddenly the mood began to change … It was a small, subtle turning point -- t h e moment when people got emotionally engaged in a way they hadn't before, and certainly had not with their colleagu e s . ”(T u r u r u C o C o r p o r a t e H R

Group, 2001d)

From InBio Park, the expedition went to Atenas, a small town north of

San Jose, for lunch. The restaurant in Atenas was in the middle of an exuberant garden with palm trees, mango trees, flowers, etc. The participants had a few drinks before lunch was served and then sat in small random tables. During lunch, participants continue the conversation about the experience at InBio and its consequences for

them as individuals and as a company. One of the participants said in regards to these conversations:

We talked about the individual challenge and we felt hopeless and ye we agreed that someone has to start. In terms of TururuCo we agreed that we have to be conscientious about the impact that our operations have on the environment, but at the same time we can not forget the competition for markets. You have to be careful that you do not do things that finish you off in the competition. (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001b, min. 35:09)

The Jeep Ride

If you think and talk about market share of the business, or your mps growth for the rest of the journey, I honestly think you will be talking about the wrong issues. This journey is not a holiday. It is about what I can do and what we can do. What are our collective responsibilities? Lets explore that a bit more this afternoon. (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001b, min. 38:05)

These were One of the chairman ’s words as he introduced the activity of the afternoon when lunch in Atena ended.

They all walked towards t hirty brand new fo u r b y four Toyota S U V s . O n the window of each one there was a list of the four participants t h a t w e r e to go in that car. The task was to follow the leader car, and while doing so have a conversation according to the four questions contained in the passport of the day:

What has been your biggest risk – personal and business?

What makes you passiona t e ?

When were you last passionate about something in your business?

Give examples of where you hold your self accountable

As they drove north of Atenas “Initially, the discussions went well.

Fueled by the earlier discussions, the strange surroundings, and the events of the morning, participants engaged each other personally and emotionally. They became more forthright, open, and honest.” (TururuCo

Corporate HR Group, 2001d)

After driving almost four hours, the caravan stopped on the side of the road. As they watched the sunset over the Pacific Ocean participants started to talk about their frustration with the expedition “The "game" of not knowing one's destination was wearing thin. While the frustration and anger was initially focused on the drive, it slowly grew to envelop the trip and perhaps some of TururuCo's bigger issues.” (TururuCo

Corporate HR Group, 2001d)

Recalling this phase of the journey one of the participants agreed it felt very long and unnecessary, but on the other hand it was a great opportunity to get to know more about his colleagues in the car. “We usually in the business do not have the luxury to spend six hours with our colleagues without an agenda.”

However, for the Chairmen in the lead car it was clear “…that potential danger lay ahead … in the moods and minds of the participants. The journey was entering a critical stage.” (TururuCo

Corporate HR Group, 2001d)

Camp in Matapalo

One hour later the caravan arrived to a little village. They parked the thirty jeeps on the side of the road and walked toward the camp guided by a path of torches. At the end of the path there was a camp made of big tents that looked like military barracks.

Participants left their backpacks inside the tents and walked to the reception dinner. They had a cold bear an elegant barbecue, but “it did

little to improve the spirits” (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001d) of the group.

After diner, the group was divided into two groups and each group met with one of the Chairmen. Their goal in that evening conversation was to “surface the cynicism, skepticism, anxiety and frustration”(TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001b) in the group. Both

Chairmen became, during the last part of the jeep ride the Chairmen, aware of the frustration in the group, and realized there was a need to open the conversation so that participants could voice their feelings about the journey. This changed the original purpose of the meeting, which was to debrief the conversations they had on the jeep about individual responsibility.

In the middle of the field, each group sat on chairs around a candle. The Chairmen remained silent during most of the meeting, just receiving the statements from the participants “It was a tense dialogue.

People postured, challenged, pushed back, made terse, often awkward speeches that were at times followed by equally awkward silences”

(TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001d). Participants recall that at this point in the journey they had had enough. It was not just not being told

the destination of the journey, it was also that they were not having the business related discussions that were desperately needed. They were wasting their time, moving from one place to the next. On top of everything, they had to cope with the poor living conditions in which they were hosted: sharing bedrooms, riding school buses, insufficient food, and now they will be sleeping in tents with other six or eight people, and to make things worst not a proper bathroom on sight. Interviewee 27 remembers this dialogue went on for about 2 hours, after which people dispersed and gathered in small groups to continue the conversation.

There was the idea of sabotaging the journey by refusing to continue.

Many participants were ready to quit, yet others were saddened because they saw in the journey a real chance to change the course of the company. 27

Many participants had a bad night. In addition to the tense group atmosphere they could not sleep because their colleagues snoring, the

27 Interviewee 27

sounds of the forest and the honking of the trucks passing by. Some of then even went for a walk before dawn, because they could not sleep.

Third Day

A hike to the beach

At six o’clock in the morning people started to wake up. It was dark and the sounds of birds, insects and frogs from the forest were still loud and distinct. As participants rose, they got ready for the day. Some washed their heads and upper body with buckets of water available outside the tents were everybody could see them. There were not happy faces. It had been a rough night for most and they still did not know what was to happen that day. Slowly the entire camp was up and they realized they had spent the night in the soccer field of a small village, and were now watch with amazement by the villagers.

They had a quick breakfast and got ready for the morning activity.

They had their backpacks, bottles of water, wore their hats, and put on sunscreen. The chairman addressed the group and asked them to take

the next thirty minutes of the hike to reflect in silence about the past two days and the days to come.

They started to walk following the two leaders, first on a dirty road crossing cropping fields and then on a small path through the forest. At first many participants did remained silent and the group was still compact, but as time went by some started to talk and the group dispersed in small clusters according to the speed of the hikers. One of the interviewees recalls that hike:

As I was walking, I watched my colleague 20 years older than me and saw how difficult was a little walk for him. At first I felt compassion for him, and then I realized I was in the same path if I continued to neglect my health.

After an hour, the little path ended and the expedition arrived to a beach where several speedboats were waiting for them. They could now see the Pacific Ocean. It was a bright morning. And by then the mood of the group had started to change:

There was an interesting tenor and lightness in the air -- as if people had survived a difficult night and were proud of them. People

talked more openly. Laughter was more genuine and less forced.

Conversations were more relaxed, yet more personal. (TururuCo

Corporate HR Group, 2001d)

At the beach participants swam, talked, walked and reflected on their own. The chairman was one who spent some time alone, later on he recalls this walk:

I had to really re-engage with myself and to ask myself the question: Was I prepared to put the degree of emotional energy that it would require to continue on the journey? And as I got to the far end of the beach I was clear that not only was I prepared to do that but I was more convinced than ever it was necessary, and it had all my commitment (TururuCo corporate HR Group, 2001e, min. 29:00)

Cruising south on the Pacific Ocean

After a while, the speedboats carry participants to The Breeze, a big boat anchored far from the beach. When all participants where on board, the boat started to navigate south along the coast of Costa Rica.

Passengers could still see the beaches and the jungle from the deck of the ship.

One of the chairman explained the task of the day. In small groups of four “…they were to examine their lives, explore their hopes and fears,

and get in touch with their passions and dreams” (TururuCo Corporate

HR Group, 2001d). In order to do that they had first to work individually on their life-lines. The instructions on the passport of the day said:

“…draw a line (any shape) from birth to present, and write brief notes on highpoints and low points, “prouds” and “sorries” and transition points. Include the most important (good and bad) moments from your personal and professional life.” (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001c)

Over the following forty minutes, there was silence on the ship.

Everybody was working on the task. There were people on the stairs, on the deck, on the flour, on chairs and on tables. Once they finished they gathered in the small pre-assigned groups, and described their life-lines.

The conversations were deep and often moving, as participants spoke openly -- some perhaps for the first time -- about their own personal journeys: what they were proud of, what they were sorry for, their victories and their struggles. (TururuCo Corporate HR Group,

2001d)

It was a shocking moment for many. They thought they knew each other well, bus as they listened they realized they only know a very small part of each other’s lives. Now they were learning very intimate and sensitive issues from one another: a terrible disease, a drug addict

daughter, a divorce. As they listened, they started to see their colleagues as human beings, like themselves, for the first time. Most interviewees recognize this moment as the moment when they started to open up as individuals and as a group. Interviewee 38 explains: “when you start talking to each other about yourselves as human beings, as people, as individuals, not as members of an organization, then the barriers started coming down.”28

An interviewee describes an example of the opening up in one individual:

He said to the group, “I’m fine if you’re doing this exercise. I’m very happy to sit in, and I’m also very much willing to talk about business if you’d like, but personally I’m not so much into these personal inward looking exercises. If you excuse me, I won’t participate in that.” We started one after the other. After we shared our things for about half an hour, then he came in and he started to open fully, telling that he had had cancer ten years ago and he had overcome it. It had been a very difficult time for him, etcetera, etcetera.29

After all the groups had finished sharing the life-lines they were asked to go back to their journals and individually make notes about their values, their struggle, and what was most important to them.

28 Interviewee 38 29 Interviewee 18

Then they were asked to take three minutes to “…draw intersecting circles on a page, and in each one write a word that symbolizes an important arena of your life (i.e. family, relationships, career, physical health, etc.)” (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001c, p. 8)

Then, they were asked to “…write down 27 things you want to do before you die.” And to identify themes by using the following questions as a guide: “what seems to be most important to you? What do you really care about? What values are driving your choices?” (TururuCo Corporate

HR Group, 2001c, p. 9)

All this individual work fueled a second, very intense, round of dialogue in the small groups. The dialogue was structured by the following questions: “Are you living the life you want to live?

Accomplishing what you hoped to? Living your values?”(TururuCo

Corporate HR Group, 2001c, p. 9)

With the life-lines stories still fresh, they were now witnessing a personal assessment of each person’s life, and the balance was not very good overall, for most of them had neglected the circle they considered to be the most important, family. They had neglected it by favoring work

and professional life. As they talked, some of them cried, some of them became sad, and others became introspective. For one of the participants this conversation was

…a hell of a warning as well, but more by the stories from others. It was very impactful for a forty-year-old to hear a fifty-five-year-old which you see as very balanced, top caliber, very professional saying that he probably made a few mistakes when he was forty. The pain came through that day for too many people…30

At this stage, many realized that beyond the obvious differences in business ideas, ways of being, and status, all of them were sharing a similar tension: their families and friends were the most important domain of their existence and yet most of them spent most of their time in the business (TururuCo corporate HR Group, 2001b, min. 52:06)

Five hours of personal reflection and sharing with peers, on a ship cruising the Pacific Ocean, during a bright and fresh morning, had altered the tone and content of the conversations.

As the exercises and afternoon wore on, changes in the group became more pronounced. Participants were not only surprised by their

30 Interviewee 28

own revelations, but moved by the candid comments of their fellow executives, some of whom they'd known -- or at least thought they'd known -- for years. It was clear something significant had happened. The posturing, preaching, and politicking of the past evening had been replaced by a new level of engagement and sincerity. The crisis was over, the dangerous bridge of yesterday successfully traversed. (TururuCo

Corporate HR Group, 2001d)

From the perspective of many participants this was the turning point, the time “when people began to bond”. One of the participants explains:

By now… we have been together now for almost two days, this thing I think really clicked with people. When you start talking to each other about yourselves as human beings, as people, as individuals not as members of an organization, then the barriers started coming down. I must say that is was a fantastic experience to be able to share with people your life, our life, and it was amazing how open you can get. I think it surprised all of us how people who didn’t know each other so well personally (we knew each other from work and some of them you have not interacted with), but how you could sit down with someone and describe to them the story of your life and how you didn’t mind doing that and how they didn’t mind doing it. These are very strong, very personal sensitive things. So I think that’s when people began to bond.31

31 Interviewee 38

The designers of the event did not expect the conversation on the ship to have such an impact on the individual and collective mood. In a preparatory document in which they mapped the foreseeable state of mind during the journey, they stated, “people will feel relatively fine. The atmosphere will be determined by the nature of the content topics. Now people are no longer primarily concerned about the final destination”

(TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2000, p. 3).

One of the members of the design team said in relationship to the activity on the ship:

I call that little miracle because you got to be lucky as well. You can design anything you want. I’ve tried it with waterfalls, fires, all kinds of tricks if you see what I mean. Sometimes you’re lucky and sometimes you’re not. Here we were very lucky. So it was a sublime moment of some skill and thinking in terms of what to do when. We were lucky. You can’t plan for that. They’re tired and then the boat. The next time you do it, it doesn’t work.32

At Corcovado National Park

Right after lunch the boat approached the coast where small speed boats waited to take the participants back to land. This time the

32 Interviewee 31

expedition was divided in two groups, one lead by one of the chairman, and the other by the other chairman. Each group was taken to a different location on the shore line. After a brief break on the beach they hiked through the jungle in smaller groups. The local guide showed and explained the vegetation, the sound of the animals, the work of the ants and why was it so important to preserve this place for the world. Some of the participants paid close attention to these explanations, others were just overwhelmed by the exuberance and vitality of the place, while others were still reflecting on the conversations they had on the boat. For the most part it was a silent walk, accompanied by the songs of the birds and insects of the jungle.

According to the designers this hike was expected to be “in most cases a semi-spiritual experience” in which “people would be serious, impressed and they will connect with each other” (TururuCo Corporate

HR Group, 2000). In this regard one of the participants said,

Corcovado Ranger’s Stations

After about thirty minutes through the jungle, the groups arrived to their respective camp sites. One of the chairman’s group arrived to a camp next to the beach

We actually got to a beautiful place that was on the beach…. It was just paradise. You think about a place you want to be. That’s the place.

It was a beautiful little beach with grass growing up… and there were tents there and an old hut there.34

The chairman’s group arrived at a camp far from the beach, close to a river. There, next to the rangers’ station they found thirty two-person tents set for the night.

For the reminder of the afternoon people in both camps played, rested, chatted, swam and enjoyed the place and each other’s company.

33 Interviewee 25 34 Interviewee 24

Then they had dinner and around eight o’clock both group in their respective camp had another chairman-lead conversation. The purpose of the conversation was to share with the group the reflections from the conversations in the boat and the other activities of the day in relationship to their personal “commitment to growth and personal change in the context of TururuCo” (TururuCo, 2000), or in other words connect their personal experience of the day with their professional role.

The conversation moved between accounts of personal experience and reflection on how TururuCo operates. The groups talked about how the communication patterns were not supportive of the organization, they spoke of the need for taking responsibility of personal behavior, and the lack of openness and honesty among executives. This night one could observe the tone of the conversation had changed in comparison to the previous night:

The conversation, which lasted well into the evening, was passionate and engaging. Much of the skepticism and cynicism had dissipated, and in its place was the emerging belief that it might really be possible to begin to change how they related to one another, and how

they, as a group, led the organization. (TururuCo Corporate HR Group,

2001d)

That night’s conversation was also experienced differently by participants. Interviewee 38 recalls:

That session that evening was much, much richer in terms of interactiveness, because now it was not a question of role playing. It was genuinely about what is it we need to do in order to make a difference in this organization. What are the kinds of behaviors that we should expect from each other? It was now more about us engaging emotionally, about our organization, and finding our way forward.35

It was also richer because of the type of engagement with the

Chairmen. Interviewee 24 recalls,

… that evening was remarkable because that evening we actually all sat in a big circle around The chairman. It was the first time that he spoke about himself. He started talking about his own wishes about his own future”36. For other participant it was about the empowerment to act, “…there was not a top down thing. One man saying this is the way it is going to be… but essentially [each individual] go and do what he thinks is right and go out and do it. (TururuCo corporate HR Group, 2001c, min. 25:59).

After the meeting, many went to their tents to sleep, while others went for a walk or sat on the beach alone or in pairs.

35 Interviewee 38 36 Interviewee 24

Many, many people went to bed, and I went down to the beach in darkness. There was sometime of wooden, I think it was a tree that had fallen down or something. It was a piece of wood. I sat on it and looked out onto the sea. A colleague of mine sat next to me. I know this guy for a while, and our two sons went to school together. We sat down, and we spoke about our sons for two hours. We shared worries and shared thoughts and shared insights. That was it, but it was good. I went to bed.37

By the end of that night one could see in participants behavior that things were changing. “Some went from hopeful to committed. A few who had misgivings before they came withdrew even more. And some who had been highly skeptical at the beginning now found their doubts turning to commitment” (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001d).

Fourth Day

Morning meeting

Early next morning, before sunrise, participants started to wake up and wash themselves with water from big pails in the middle of the camp, just as they did the previous night. However the mood was very different this morning, it almost seemed as if they were enjoying the

37 Interviewee 24

setting and the rough conditions. They looked more relaxed and friendly

(TururuCo corporate HR Group, 2001c, min. 24:47). After a relaxing breakfast, each group went for a short walk through the jungle.

According to the design people this morning should “feel connected on a very basic level. Deepening. The morning hike enforced this feeling.

People are very present, there is no need for words” (TururuCo, 2000).

After the morning hike the groups had another chairman-lead conversation. Participants gathered around the chairman, forming a semi circle with chairs. From the designers perspective the purpose of the meeting was to continue the conversation, initiated the previous night, about the implications of the journey experience for the work as leaders of the company. Each chairman open the conversation by asking the group: “What do you expect from me? Where should I put my emotional energy?” (TururuCo corporate HR Group, 2001d, min. 25:49). This invitation got a rich response from participants. They said they wanted the chairmen to stand back and let their executives to operate more freely, they expected the chairmen to be more engaged emotionally with the company and its people, to coach rather than direct, they also wanted the chairman to be more themselves (TururuCo corporate HR

Group, 2001d, min. 49:00). For two hours each group talked about “the individual and group changes that needed to take place for the leadership to become a functional community” (TururuCo Corporate HR

Group, 2001d). But this time, “for once, we were talking about how we feel. And I can tell you that people really feel that they can make a difference individually and collectively” (TururuCo corporate HR Group,

2001c, min. 56:48). Unlike the meetings of the first two days, one could see people really paying attention to the Chairmen and one another. They were building on each other’s comments and talking about what they could do and would do for the business.

As the meeting ended, The chairman asked the group: “I need each of you to help me in the process. Because I cannot do a single bit of it unless all along the way, each of you, is saying “How can I help? How can we help each other?”” To which the group responded with a big applause and smiles of agreement (TururuCo corporate HR Group, 2001c, min.

55:30). One participant said after the meeting that it had been a big victory for him because “…for the first time I felt the freedom to tell The chairman directly how I think his behavior can be more effective for me

and the entire organization” (TururuCo corporate HR Group, 2001c, min.

58:36).

At the Marenco Lodge

Once the meeting was over the participants put on their backpacks and hiked through the jungle, The chairman’s group to the riverbank, and One of the chairman’s group to the beach. Both groups boarded the speedboats and headed to the next unknown destination. All of a sudden, the boats of the two groups came together at high speed at sea, in front of a little island. The participants were surprised and impressed with the logistics, but most of all appreciative of the opportunity “to experience all this together”38. They cruised all together, following the shore line until they arrived to a “picturesque lodge nestled in the rain forest” overseen the ocean.

There participants “were given a free afternoon to reflect and relax”. A group played volleyball. Some people took a nap on a “real bed”,

38 Interviewee 28

or a shower in a “real bathroom”, the first one in three days. Other people sat on the beach and drunk a cold bear. And some swam in the hotel pool. “It was quite a lot of fun”, recalls interviewee 38. The mood of the group was joyful and relaxed.

Conversation with the two Chairmen

By the end of that afternoon, the Chairmen summoned participants to the main lobby of the lodge.

“The place that was the nicest of the resorts which had a beautiful view right on top of the hill out looking over the water, and the sun was coming down, palm trees…the setting that you want to have when you do your closing speech. It was well chosen.”39

Then each chairman took turns to share with the entire group their personal experience of the journey:

The chairmen shared very personally and powerfully what had happened for them in this journey. They talked about the changes that they felt within themselves; they talked about how moved they had been by the events of the week and the conversations they'd had.

39 Interviewee 24

These were not "prepared statements," but from-the-heart comments that moved the participants emotionally. (TururuCo Corporate

HR Group, 2001d)

In the middle of the meeting, one of the participants stood up and said to both chairmen: “First I must start with an apology. I was a skeptic. I am sorry. For me this has led to a recommitment. I am delighted to have participated.” (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001d)

Many participants recall this last meeting with the chairmen as a

“second turning point” on the journey. On one hand participants saw the human side of the two chairmen:

What made the difference here was the behavior of the chairmen, how open they were with each other and with us. We saw them, again not as chairmen, but as another two people who were wanted to be as much part of this whole team. I think that was great.40.

On the other hand, there was for the first time an open discussion about the difficulties of the double chairmanship:

The Chairmen spoke about themselves, spoke about them personally, spoke about their relationship which was important, because the whole bloody concern kept and

40 Interviewee 38

keeps talking about how bad of a relationship the two of them have and that they don’t talk and that they don’t understand each other. They were talking about their relationship. At the end, they embraced. That’s fine. It didn’t feel very true, but they did it so that’s fine. It didn’t look like an embrace as an embrace is meant to be. It looked more like an embrace in the sense of we’re partners in business. They didn’t embrace like friends, but like partners in business. But it was good that they openly spoke about it.41

They were never really provoked to go a long way, but they were standing together. They were being asked questions about where there ever any differences between them. Somebody did ask a question which was on everybody’s mind which was, “You say you think similarly about the same business problems. Do you have an identical view of seeing management appointment? So when there’s a very big job and there are two candidates, do you always pick the same one?” They said yes to that. There were high degrees of skepticism I remember. I only relate that, not because I reflected back and ___1:06:01___ because they couldn’t have said anything else, but it was the first time, and it was right at the end, that some of these difficult issues which were on everybody’s mind where people felt at ease and relaxed enough to come forward.42

The Party

The day was closed with a big party: music with a live band, plenty of food and drinks, accompanied by the night sound of the jungle and the sea. Compared with the welcoming party four nights earlier in San

Jose, this one had a different tone. One could see people engaged in

41 Interviewee 24 42 Interviewee 42

lively conversations, laughing and enjoying each other (TururuCo corporate HR Group, 2001e, min. 10:00). After the party participants walked together back to their cabins in the dark night.

Fifth Day

Early next morning they all walk back to the main lobby of the

Marenco Hotel. They had breakfast. And the Chairmen explained the plan of the day, as they had done the previous days: for the last meeting they would gather by business divisions, Best Food and Health and

Personal Care, and then they would start the return trip to Miami. After breakfast, they boarded the speedboats, and were transported upstream river. People were watching in silence the riverbanks on both sides of the boat and enjoyed the view of the mangle. They landed in a small town from where they were taken by bus to a banana plantation from where they would flight back to San Jose.

The Last Meeting

Each group gathered under a big mango trees, in front of the plantation workers home. The executives sat on the ground. They looked

comfortable. The leaders of each division lead a dialogue which main purpose was to address the question of “how to take this [the journey] forward into the larger organization” and how to infuse each division with the experience of the last five days.

In a dialogue which resembled the ones held by the Chairmen. The heads of each division “shared with their groups the impact the week had on them and voiced hopes going forward. Group members also shared their commitment to change and how they hoped to work together”

(TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001d). The meetings was closed by going around the circle and each person saying what they were commitment to do to bring the spirit of the journey into their own divisions, units, and companies.

Return to Miami

Then the return to Miami began. First they rode buses to the plantation airstrip, from where they flew to San Jose in twelve small planes. From San Jose they flew back to Miami. As they rode together in this vehicles “participants continued talking about the events of the past week, and the changes they hoped to make both personally and

professionally” (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001d). It was apparent now that “the level of skepticism and cynicism, if not disappearing, was far lower than it had been at the beginning of the journey. People were engaged and engaging one another in conversations that were meaningful personally and in terms of the business.” (TururuCo

Corporate HR Group, 2001d)

As he was leaving that day one of the participants made a statement that encapsulates a shared sentiment about the experience of the journey:

It was excellent. I think what you see is that the connectivity at last get address. I think is was one of the last things we still had to do.

Strategy is there, but there was something missing, the glue was missing. And I think that this trip, you will see the glue… I at least feel deeply that the glue is coming, that people built up mutual commitment to each other for the agenda, and to help each other. So I think it was very successful…

…I thought it was impressive that business people that normally behave with their masks on, their rationale, were well able to connect

with their emotional side. I think this is an essential think. I do not think you can run any kind of business without people connected with each other, then you can’t synergy, you can’t create the energy, synergy between people if they are not connected. (TururuCo corporate HR

Group, 2001e, min. 46:58)

Epilogue: the journey continued in business groups and operating companies

The spirit of Costa Rica inspired, guided and encouraged many of the leaders to implement journeys and leadership development programs in their business groups or operating companies. The journeys ranged from replicas of Costa Rica to long term journeys that included work at different levels of the organization. In this section I present some examples on how the journey was continued.

As I described above, Costa Rica affected the journey participants in different ways and degrees. This in turn defined to what extent the business leaders brought back home the lessons and experience of the journey, those that were significantly impacted, either by feeling endorsed or by being inspired, were the ones that made more explicit attempts to infuse in their own organization the Costa Rica Spirit.

Whereas those that did not feel very impacted adopted a bystander attitude and waited to see what the leaders of TururuCo would do next.

In the case of those that wanted to bring home their Costa Rica experience I have observed significant differences in the scope, level and content of the initiatives they have promoted. I have also observed that these differences are associated with the circumstances of each one of the business units, and the personal circumstances of each one of the leaders. Again, the differences can be portrayed in a continuum or spectrum defined in one extreme with emphasis on cultural transformation, and in the other extreme on individual transformation.

It is important to notice here that the work during the Costa Rica

Journey was structured around this spectrum, with deep intra-personal work at times, and whole group conversation about the culture at others.

Thus, on one hand there were initiatives that emphasized activities at the level of the entire company, with journeys, retreats or celebration of big groups of constituents and even the whole company or Business Group.

And, on the other hand these were initiatives that emphasized activities at the individual level, with feedback processes, coaching and mentorship programs. And many initiatives were in the middle of the

spectrum with a combination of approaches, but always giving more attention to one or the other extreme.

The stories that follow on how the journey has been continued at lower levels in the company are based on a small sample of examples from the four Business Groups I have studied. This sample is not comprehensive of all the initiatives that had taken place since Costa

Rica; instead I present it as a window to some of the things that leaders have taken with them from the Costa Rica Journey to their own business groups and operating companies.

A multilevel and midterm approach

In 2001, one of the executives could not attend the journey for personal reasons, but when he heard the stories about it from his colleagues, he felt that what took place in Costa Rica and the commitment of the leadership of the company were aligned with his values and aspirations for TururuCo. He felt that under these conditions he would be able to lead the business with his personal style and beliefs.

He felt there would be a space for him to do what he considered was necessary.

The FROZEN EUROPE journey started when the new president met the leadership of FROZEN EUROPE during the first Ecoublay workshop.

This encounter became the foundation of a three-year journey for this business group; a journey that from the beginning embraced the principles and behaviors in the spirit of Costa Rica. This was evident in the openness of the conversations among the leadership of this business group during the three days of the workshops.

The FROZEN EUROPE leadership defined during these event not only the must win battles for the business group, but more importantly, a way of working together and the expectations from one another and the group. Ecoublay in this sense was the first collective statement to define the direction of the business and in that regard was just a starting point.

The leadership saw it necessary to embark the group on a long term journey to win the must win battles and in doing so transform the group into a high-performing unit within TururuCo. From their perspective, the journey had to be at multiple levels if it was to be successful. The journey had to tackle strategy, structure and organizational culture, while involving all the managers of the group.

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In Ecoublay the leadership team identified the strategy the group had to follow to generate the growth of the business. But this new strategy required clear action plans.

On the strategy side the group’s managers embarked in internal

(November 2001) and external (August 2002) study tours to get in touch with the reality of the group and its presence in the market and in the life of the consumer. These is study tours were the foundations of the action plans to execute the must win battles.

In addition to the study tours, the group used the yearly chairmen’s review, the Cascades as a platform to reflect and revise their own performance and drive home key messages. These events were a way of providing a sense of continuity by making explicit to the entire group the achievements of the year and the challenges ahead, and were an opportunity to create and re-create the desired culture.

In addition to the Cascade the group also got together for three days every year on a leadership event. This event had the purpose of moving the organization from an old mentality of not being proud of the

Company and therefore low engagement, to a new mentality of pride and

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positive engagement (For details about these events ask Marianne Cool).

The first one of these events was run in 2003 in Almaria, Spain. It created a common vision and a sense of collective endeavor. One of the participants says that “after the event the group felt like a tribe”. The second and the most resents events took place early 2004 Switzerland and it brought together the 175 leaders of the group to celebrate the achievements of 2003 and close the 2001-2004 journey led by G ( who have been now appointed to ExCo as business or president of

NUTRITION). This event was a combination of networking, service to the community, and fun. The “mood was clearly of the team spirit in energizing” according to some of the participants.

Using a new language

“Since Costa Rica we are doing things that build trust and relationships in the organization.”

At the end the year 2000, TururuCo Latin America was the target of a massive reorganization, a process that had been taking place in the late nineties in other regions of the business. The change was the creation of functional areas across countries and operating companies that would replace the local functions; HR, supply chain, marketing were

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all to be done regionally. Until then each operating company had autonomy on these functional areas, and there was very little interdependence and integration across national and company boundaries. This was a very new scenario for the board of the business group, and old patterns of interaction would not help to reach the level of integration and interdependence that was now needed.

The Costa Rica journey provided the language and the common experience that helped the members of the Board to address the challenges of the new structure. The Costa Rica experience became the foundation on which the Board built their strength as leaders of the

Company.

The first step of this was one of the very first board meetings after the journey. According to another board member in that meeting

“we spoke as a board: first forget about the vision. Are we alike?

What are some of the barriers that we have in running our businesses?

What are some of the things that we do not like about the way we do business? What are some things that we like about our business? And we spoke a lot about our interactions as a board.”

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From that moment on these questions were addressed with regularity on board meetings, which progressively created a climate of trust and mutual support. It was common to hear comments like “You no that behavior is unacceptable in the spirit of Costa Rica”. The relationships among Board members where ameliorated and the effectiveness of the Board grew as grew its cohesive image throughout the business group.

Furthermore, some of the Board members introduced the use of feedback processes within their own teams. Business leaders used some of the techniques used in Costa Rica to conduct workshops and retreats with their own people.

It is interesting to note the extent to which the spirit of Costa Rica was in sync with the needs of HYGIENE Latin America in the face of the new challenges of their organization. HYGIENE Latin America needed fluidity of communication among Board members; it also needed a sense of unity and interdependence. Costa Rica provided not only the language but the know-how to create a new type of interaction

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Co-invention and personal Growth

In the year 2001 Soap and Perfume were integrated into what is now known as Soap Perfume UK. The merger presented great challenges, but also the opportunity to create a new culture, more energized and motivated to grow.

The Enterprise Culture thrust from Path to Growth provided a frame to implement cultural changes but it was experience in Costa Rica that really unleashed the leadership abilities of the president of these operating companies, it gave him permission to be himself as a leader, it reinforced his commitment to the development of high-quality relationships in the company, and to promote emotional engagement among his people.

This led to two concrete actions that have shaped the life of the company in the last three years: 1) a continuous process of involving people at all levels of the organization in the co-invention of the desired future through a series of meetings with people from the entire company, in a small and more intimate groups, conferences “with everyone in the company (not just management)”, and a “monthly team briefs to cascade communication via the leadership team.” These efforts led to the co-

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invention (Board and work level 3 managers) of a long-term strategy “to align the actions and beliefs of everyone in the company towards creating an obsession for winning and delivering”. 2) A series of workshops, led by the leaders of the company, on personal growth in the life of the company.

From my perspective, the Costa Rica journey was continued by these operating companies by their effort to involve the majority of their people to co-create the future of the companies, and by promoting personal development as the foundation for company growth. These two approaches were at the core of the Costa Rica experience.

Reclaiming time and space for the individual

The journey also continued at a more intimate level in the lives of some executives whom, as a result of their experience in the journey, decided to address some critical issues in their lives, such as family-work balance, health and leadership style. They hired personal coaches, started health programs and encouraged others in their companies to do the same.

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These leaders have continued their journey by personally working on the fundamental premise of Costa Rica and Path to Growth, namely that personal growth leads to company growth. According to their testimony, these changes have not only ameliorated their personal lives, but have also expanded their leadership capabilities and what they are able to bring into the company. Some of these leaders mention the fact that if it hadn’t been for the Journey and what they discovered there about the company and themselves they would have left the company long time ago.

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4. METHODOLOGY

Introduction43

The Following chapter describes and explains the inquiry processes that lead me to the discovery of the theory of Togethering. I have organized this chapter in a manner that honors the real sequence of events, not an idealized research protocol, and would allow the reader to follow my inquiry step by step. I want the reader to keep in mind that in this study the usual research phases of hypothesis or question formulation, research design, data collection and analysis, were not conducted in a linear way, but rather in an intermingled fashion. This means that although I had a research question and a methodological design before going in to the field, the outcome, that is the theory of Togethering, is not a direct answer to the original research question, but to a question that emerged as I was conducting interviews and gathering data in the field.

43 The dissertation of Judith Holton has been a clear guide for the development of this chapter (Holton, 2006). I am in debt with her for this.

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Furthermore, I had to modify the methodology in ways that would allow me to pursue the answer that the emerging question demanded.

I open this chapter by describing my entry point to this inquiry: the research question, the underlying assumptions, the purpose, the intended methodology, and the original interview protocol. Then I explain how and why I redesigned, in the field, the interview protocol and sampling sequence. In the next section, I describe how the research question and topic of the study underwent another level of transformation as I prepared a preliminary report for the company. After that, I explain my decision to shift my analytic approach from Thematic

Analysis to Grounded Theory, and describe the discovery process using the latter. I conclude this chapter with a reflection about the inquiry and draw some lessons for future research endeavors.

Gathering Data and Redesigning the Inquiry in the Field

As is common in this kind of endeavor, one does not always find what one is looking for. I did not hear the stories I expected, nor did I hear about the transformation of the company because of the journey. I realized early on that my assumptions and methodological choices were getting in the way of capturing the richness and complexity of those five days in Costa Rica. Thus, from the initial interviews I revised and

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modified the interview protocol and the sampling strategy for the interviews and data collection.

Modifying the Interview Protocol

My first interview I thought was a complete disaster. My questions did not resonate with the interviewee and he seemed not interested in the conversation. The second interview was no better. After these two interviews, I wrote:

[During the interview] I did feel a tension between what I wanted to hear or I was looking for and what he wanted to tell or share with me. He tended to move more into abstract statements around relationships or meaning of what took place, and moved away from the concrete narration of stories or anecdotes. I did feel disengaged with this type of conversation, and I pushed him a little to find and to share with me particular stories. And he responded with a little bit of resistance. In general, I do not feel very happy with the conversation. I did not feel it was quiet a conversation. I did feel it was more an interrogation from my part. I did feel there was no natural flow to it. I was too concern of getting the answer to my questions rather than listening to his own statements and reflections based on few of my questions. 44 ("Field Note F2404,")

From the very first interviews, it was clear that the respondents did not relate to the questions for mainly two reasons. The first one was that the participants to the journey did not work together, they did not belong to natural teams, and even if some of them where, the design purposefully put colleagues in groups or configurations where they would not find someone that they knew already or that was working with them at that

44 Field note F 2404

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point in time. The second reason was that the language I used did not resonate with the interviewees’ language, or the language of the company, and therefore they were not able to relate to my questions in an easy manner.

As I reflected on what took place during the interviews a sense of what I could do started to grow, I wrote then:

This makes me think that maybe I do not need to ask too many questions, that I could simplify the guide and allow more space for the interviewee too reflect upon the theme. So, it would be more like defining a theme for the conversation and let the person expand, explore and say what they want to say, instead of me direct them where I want them to go. Because I do feel that this is also painful for me. It is not engaging. And I have this feeling of frustration at the end of the interview. I do think I missed an opportunity with him. He is very engaged and very interested in the journeys. He does believe in them. He has strong feelings about the role of those type activities. Yet I was unable to really connect with him and what he wants to say. I do feel I interrupted the cycle of experience in many ways.45

Then I thought that it was important to open the interview beyond my own themes, and really pay attention to what was of significance for the participants about the journey. I wrote this idea in terms of the Gestalt

Cycle of Experience:

Now I am thinking about the interview in terms of a cycle of experience, or a unit of work if you want. I can see the interview at large as a way of building ground, and just wait attentively to see what the figures that pop-up out of that ground are, and just grab them. Not the figures I want or are interesting, but those that seem to have most energy for the interviewee. This implies that I trust on my introduction to frame and to

45 Field note F 2404

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be the source of their statements. And be less concern about how and if they are addressing or not my questions, each one of them. So in some interviews the very first question might be the theory around which the energy is, and that leads the rest of the interview, and then I need to facilitate the process to complete the cycle and see what is the information that I can gather from that. In other interviews, all the first series of questions my be just ground building until the last question becomes the figure for them, and then again I help them complete the cycle around that. But there might be occasions and interviews where there might be no figure or no interest. In those cases, I think that my work is to at least name, to point out, to that particular thing that is most significant during the conversation. But I do have to move away from steering the conversation too strongly, because that deprives the conversation from the life that might lead to interesting, energizing and inspiring ideas.46

These reflections led me to relax the interview. I stop reading the interview guide during the interview, only using it for reference for myself. At first, I rephrased the questions as a way of addressing to the issue of language incompatibility. Then I let go many of the questions in favor of those that elicited richer responses from the interviewees. After the fourteenth interview, it was very clear to me that “the theme of the transformation of the relationships does not appear as significant for the interviewees, they do not recall any particular incident when the relationship had changed as a result of that journey.” 47 At this point, I experienced a significant shift in my stance towards the interview process. I felt an opening of my interest to the participants’ experience of the journey, and it’s meaning beyond interpersonal relationships, which

46 Field note F 2404

47 Field note A 2304

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was my topic. This shift led to richer conversations and allowed me to learn their language. In simple terms, at first it was all about finding proofs for my point, then it shifted to learning about them and their experience of the journey.

It was then when I started to see the real meaning and value of the journey in interviewees’ minds. In April, two months after starting the interviews I wrote:

…a sense that the journey has affected in some way their awareness about relationships and quality of those relationships is a parent through the interviews. It appears more as a recollection of the overall experience, rather than the recollection of specific events or relationships touched by the journey. They refer to this experience as been able, for the first time, to speak openly to the chairmen and the other members of the leadership team. By openness, they mean the possibility of speaking their own minds in a non-strategic or political way, and in an honest and intimate way.48

My desire to explore more about the significance of the journey from the interviewees’ perspective led me to a progressive simplification of the interview protocol. I moved from very specific questions about relationship (see original protocol) to four open ended questions. By the last round of interviews, I had only four questions:

1) tell me about your career in the company,

2) tell me about your experience of the journey,

48 Field note A 2304

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3) tell me what do you think was the impact of the journey for you and the company, and

4) what do you think is to be done next at the top level of the company.

These four open-ended questions elicited a richer pool of responses, and ironically provided more stories about relationships than my initial protocol. (for an example of the final sequence of the interview see

Appendix Error! Reference source not found.)

Adapting the sampling strategy

The sampling strategy was to interview the leader and board members

of a sample of four business units. The Head of Learning and I

identified these four business units49, out of eight units inside

TururuCo, to be the starting point of the exploration of the impact of

the Costa Rica Journey. We selected these business units based on

two criteria 1) the diverse level of impact of the journey in the

business unit, and 2) diverse geographical representation of the

members of the boards of each business unit. The selected business

units were Hygiene Europe, Hygiene Latin America, Nutrition Europe,

Frozen Food.

At the time of the inquiry Tururuco was structured in Business units that reflected regional and functional divisions.49

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The plan was to spend four weeks studying each one of the four business units: interviewing its board members, gathering archival information about the business unit and journey related activities, and making ethnographic observations about the physical space and social interactions.

My intention was then to spend a week in each business units interviewing all board members, and making ethnographic observations of the business unit. This plan turned impossible to follow mainly for three reasons:

Scheduling interviews in one unit at a time was not feasible given the complicated schedules of most executives.

The quick turn over in the members of the Board meant that most of the people in the current boards were not board members in the aftermath of the journey and therefore weakened the argument for the impact of the journey in the relationships, and therefore a business unit approach in the interviews.

All but one of the business units, were virtual offices, with functional executives based in one office and operational executives based in several locations, all moving constantly. Thus, there was not many people in any office in any given moment in time.

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These factors forced me to focus on individual interviews, whenever and wherever was possible, regardless of business units, which, as I discover over time, was more appropriate than the business unit focus approach, given the high degree of executives’ mobility across business units. However, given the initial agreement and the personnel director’s authorization, I could not interview people outside of these four business units. All this meant a random sequence of interviews, to most of the board members of the business units between January and August 2004. The ethnographic observations became less relevant, although I continued writing field notes of my visits to each site.

In summary, although the sample of the four business units remain in effect, the focus shifted from the exploration of the impact on the business units to the exploration of the participants’ experience of the journey. And I set to explore this from the perspective of the participants and the perspective of non-participants as witnesses of the journey.

I also interviewed the members of the team that designed the journey and those in charge of its logistics. These interviews provided a wealth of information about the history, rationale, and theoretical underpinnings of the event.

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Until the very end of my stay in Europe, I tried to schedule interviews

with the two chairmen but never got the approval from the Personnel

Director to do so. Until now, I do not have a clear explanation as to

why that access was denied to me.

Number of interviews by Division 1

Business No Unit/Division Journeyer Journeyer Hygiene Europe 4 7 Hygiene Latin America 4 Nutrition Europe 6 6 Frozen Europe 6 6 Human Resources 2 Costa Rica Journey Design Team 5 1 Total 27 20

Other data sources

The Costa Rica Journey left a rich trail of material documenting the different phases of the event: the preliminary meetings, the initial design, the inspection journey, the journey, the follow up events. During my stay in Rotterdam, I was able to collect many of these documents, which range from minutes of preparatory meetings to video footage of the

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journey. These documents have been of great help to reconstruct the event in as much detail as possible50.

Analyzing and Redefining the inquiry on the desk

The issue of redefinition of the inquiry started early on in the process. Back in April of 2004, I was already wondering about this very issue:

The dilemma for me is to define the topic of my dissertation in terms of 1) the impact on the Costa Rica journey in the relationships among the members of this community, or 2) to explore how the members of this community get to know each other and create the type of relationships that support them and the business. The first option is bound to the journey and does not seem to have wings in the minds of the participants today. The second option seems to address a more current issue for the participants since much of the Spirit of Costa Rica, they think, has been lost and is urgently needed to respond to the current challenges that TururuCo faces. 51

50 In order to respect the anonymity of the company and its members I cannot disclosed this list of documents. They all have the name of the company and its executives.

51 Field note A 2304

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Months after coming back from Europe, and having written the report to the company, I was still unclear as to how I would make sense of all the information I had collected: interviews, documents, web sites, video, publications, personal memos, etc. I was stuck and I did not know how to proceed. One thing was certain, the topic of the dissertation could not be what I set to do in the beginning, namely the study of the transformation of interpersonal relationships and their impact on the business. Forty-seven interviews had showed me the journey to Costa

Rica was significant in the minds of the interviewees for different reasons. As I looked at all the information, I had gathered two questions lingered in my mind. First, if my original topic was not it, what was the topic of this study? Second, how would I analyze all this data in a way that would allow me to discover what was the topic? As I pondered about these questions, I wrote “Mauricio, just free the angel, unleash the life trapped within the words, the images and the documents of the Costa

Rica Journey.”52 But how?

52 Personal memo O 2904

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Clarifying the purpose of the dissertation

I started to reflect in my journal about these two questions in the context of all the information I had gathered and my recent work on the report to TururuCo. One morning in December of 2004, I woke up with a great sense of clarity about the general question that all this material posed to me, “How does one create spaces where members of an organization can “recognize” and meet each other in life-giving ways for themselves and their organizations?” 53 As I read the question I noticed that the interviews and information had left me with a sense that indeed the Costa Rica Journey had been life-giving for both the individuals and

TururuCo (Puerta Armenta, 2004), and that the journey could be seen as one way of creating life-giving spaces. If that was so, I could look at the process of the journey as a case to start an exploration into the general question of the creation of life-giving spaces in organizations. Then the purpose of the dissertation became apparent to me. If I could find the explanation to the significant shift in the group climate during the Costa

Rica Journey, I would gain some insight in to how to create such spaces.

In conversation with Eric Nielsen, my dissertation chair, we agreed that the purpose of this dissertation would be to formulate a theory that

53 Personal memo D 0204

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would explain the shift in the group climate during the Costa Rica

Journey. The significance of the shift, from an organizational perspective, was that interviewees linked it with a boost in performance of individuals, business units and the company at large. (Puerta Armenta,

2004). Yet the question of how to attend to this purpose remained unclear.

Opting for Grounded Theory

Given my conversations with participants, I was convinced that a theory lay beneath all the information I had collected. My task was just to uncover it. The methodological challenge for the analysis of the data was to develop an explanation of the shift of the group climate during the journey, while at the same time honor the participants’ experience of it.

In other words, the analysis would lead to the formulation of a theory based on participants experience and not on extant theoretical frames, nor on preconceived mental elaborations.

Therefore, I needed an inductive analytic method that would not impose extant theoretical frames to the analysis of the information, but on the contrary would support the emergence of concepts and their relationships, directly from the data I had collected. I also needed a method that I could use in the analysis of any kind of data, given the

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diversity of sources I had available. And the method should resonate with my own stance about the creation of knowledge.

Resonance

I had a hunch that Grounded Theory (GT) was the methodology I was looking for. As I was reviewing the works of Barney Glaser, the main originator, I came across the following quote:

Grounded theory gives the researcher autonomy. The researcher may pace himself with his reasoning rather than by the reasoning of others. Self pacing makes him free of the current theoretical capitalists who would prefer to guide him in his area of interest. These are the pundits who construct the grand theories in the area, the main problems and the concepts to use. A grounded theorist does not work on the theoretical capitalists' theory as they would have it. He works on his own theory and takes his own place as an autonomous theorist among other theorists, as his theory integrates with others to make up the conceptualization of a substantive field. (Glaser, 1998, p. 53)

As I read it, I started to feel that this method resonated with the way I work and would like to contribute: my irreverence for the giants, my joy in the discovery, being my own man, are all characteristics that match the spirit behind building grounded theory. Reading further into

Glaser’s work, I also recognized that the philosophical stance about the creation of knowledge was possible because GT provides a systematic and rigorous path for the development of theory from the data. It was clear then that, in terms of purpose, GT coincided with my intent,

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namely my desire to let the data speak to me and discover the theory behind it, where.

“...theory denotes a set of well developed categories (e.g. themes and concepts) that are systematically interrelated through statements of relationship to form a theoretical framework that explains some relevant social, psychological, educational, nursing, or other phenomenon. The statements of relationships explain who, what, when, where, why, how and with what consequences an event occurs.” (p. 22)

Emergence of theory from data

In its simplest definition Grounded Theory “is the discovery of theory from data” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, p. 1). Its goal is to generate

“…conceptual theory abstract of time, place and people.” (Glaser &

Holton, 2004b, p. 11) And its product “...is an integrated set of conceptual hypotheses. It is just probability statements about the relationship between concepts.” (Glaser, 1998, p. 3)

In order to stay connected to the data and allow for the emergence of concepts the analyst using GT jointly uses two fundamental procedures: the constant comparative method and theoretical sampling.

The constant comparative method is a process by which the researcher identifies concepts or categories as he codes the data. It combines two general approaches to the analysis of qualitative data: first, the one in which all data is converted into quantifiable form (codes) in order to prove a hypothesis; second, the one in which the analyst

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concerned with the generation of theory, mines the data for “new properties of his theoretical categories” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, p. 101).

Thus, the basic rule of the constant comparative method is “while coding any incident for a category, compare with the previous incidents in the same and different groups coded in the same category” (Glaser &

Strauss, 1967, 102). The goal of the constant comparative method is “to aid the analyst…in generating a theory that is integrated, consistent, plausible, close to the data —and at the same time is in a form clear enough to be readily, if only partially, operationalized for testing in quantitative research.” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, p. 103)

Theoretical sampling, as its name implies, it’s a procedure to gather data guided by the concepts and categories emerging from the constant comparative method. “The basic question in theoretical sampling is: what groups or subgroups does one turn to next in data collection? And for what theoretical purpose? In short how does the sociologist selects multiple comparison groups?”(Glaser & Strauss, 1967, p. 47) The goal of theoretical sampling is “to create a more systematic, relevant, and personal control over data collection than do the preplanned, routinized, arbitrary criteria based on existing structural limits of every day group boundaries.” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, p. 48)

Use of any kind of data, even secondary data

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As I stated earlier the purpose of grounded theory is to generate theory beyond the specifics of the data. Data is used to discover that latent patterns and formulate abstract concepts and categories, not to describe the specifics of the substantive area. Therefore, one of the fundamental tenants of grounded theory is "all is data". As Glaser points in Doing Grounded Theory,

…this is a true research perspective on all incidents that come the researcher's way. It expands constant comparison and theoretical sampling. The briefest of comment to the lengthiest interview, written words in magazines, books and newspapers, documents, observations, biases of self and others, spurious variables, or whatever else may come the researcher’s way in his substantive area of research is data for grounded theory. (Glaser, 1998, p. 8)

One of the questions I had as I was reviewing the grounded theory literature was if it was possible to use secondary data to generate a grounded theory. Since my fieldwork ended in 2004 and I do not have access anymore to the people I interviewed nor have I access to the organization, the only information I have is the one I collected through my interviews and visits to the company. In other words the only information I have available for any analysis is secondary data. I was glad to find out that the use of secondary data is encouraged if one is

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interested in generating a grounded theory. (Glaser, 1998, p. 9) The analyst uses constant comparative method and the theoretical coding in the analysis of pre-existing data.

Analyzing the data: doing Grounded Theory54

Identifying the core category

The initial question of any analyst using grounded theory is what is this study about? As the researcher engages with the data, either on the field or through archival data, he or she is constantly seeking to identify what is the topic of this study. The researcher does not predetermine the topic of study. The topic it is to be discovered by the researcher as he explores the data available to him through open coding, constant comparative analysis and theoretical sampling. What emerges out of this initial questioning of the data is the core categories or variable. A core category is “that pattern of behavior which is most related to all the other categories and their properties in the theory which explain how the participants resolve their main concern.” (Glaser, 1998)

54 Note: for a detail description of the method see (Glaser, 1978, 1998; Glaser & Holton, 2004a; Glaser et al., 1973)

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Over the first four months of the analysis I conducted an open coding of two of the most significant interviews. This open coding yielded about hundred and ten categories or codes. At that point I felt lost in the details of the coding and the extensive memoing I had done. At that point

I decided to attend a troubleshooting workshop on grounded theory led by Barney Glaser55. It was in the course of that workshop that I realized that the central themes of my study had emerged during the first set of interviews. In an early field note I reflected on what seemed to be the central theme of the interviews thus far:

I started this study interested in the transformation of interpersonal relationships during the Costa Rica journey and how that transformation has affected the Company since. During my first set of interviews (14) the theme of the transformation of the relationships does not appear as significant for the interviewees. They do not recall any particular incident when the relationship had changed as a result of that journey. But a sense that the journey has affected in some way their awareness about relationships and quality of those relationships is a parent through the interviews. It appears more as a recollection of the overall experience, rather than the recollection of specific events or

55 Co-creator of Grounded Theory and defender of Classic Grounded Theory.

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relationships touched by the journey. They refer to this experience as been able, for the first time, to speak openly to the chairmen and the other members of the leadership team. By openness they mean the possibility of speaking their own minds in a non-strategic or political way, and in an honest and intimate way... For the interviewees the path toward openness with each other is defined by the opportunity to get to know each other, to understand each other. It is knowing the other that allows them to trust and to speak openly, and knowing the other takes time and particular circumstances.56

When I explained these themes to the workshop participants it was very clear to them that the concepts of openness and getting to know each other where very close to being a core category, but they were not yet clearly formulated as such. Dr. Glaser mentioned then the label of togethering to convey the process I was describing. The word togethering immediately made sense to me. I thought, “Togethering was the process by which members of a group experienced a sense of openness as a result of g e t t i n g to know each other.”57 Togethering was the name of the core category I was looking for.

56 Field note A 2304

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Selective Coding

Once the analyst identifies the core category, he then has to narrow down or “delimit his coding to only those variables that relate to the core variable in sufficiently significant ways to be used in a parsimonious way. The core variable becomes a guide to further data collection and theoretical sampling” (Glaser, 1978, p. 61) This process is called selective coding. Because of this process, the analyst produces a series of memos at higher levels of abstraction about relevant variables and their relationship.

At my return from the New York workshop, I started the selective coding process around togethering, as the core category, and “getting to know each other” and “opening up”, the two central categories that emerged during the fieldwork. After many rounds of selective coding, and writing memos on multiple variables, I started to see I was not getting any new insight. Once more I felt stuck. I did not know if I had reached saturation or I just could not see more variables. I asked advice from members of the editorial committee of the Grounded Theory Review.

They said that from what I had explained to them it seemed that I was ready to start the theoretical sorting of all my memos. They suggested that after sorting I write a conceptual paper where I laid down the theory as I have it my mind at that point in time. This they said would help me

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see gaps in the theory and would guide me in more of the selective coding.

Theoretical Sorting

As the analyst reaches saturation in coding the data58, and the writing of memos yields less insights into the phenomenon, he turns now to theoretical sorting. Theoretical sorting is the process by which the analyst stands back and looks at the entirety of his memos and categories in search of the pattern that connects them all with the core category. It is through this process that the theory emerges. The outcome of sorting is the theoretical outline that would serve for the write up of the theory. Glaser explains in Theoretical Sensitivity:

Hence, the most advantageous and complex integration of theory is forced by sorting memos. Without sorting the analyst will not know where to take his writing, nor perhaps what to write next. With sorting he knows exactly where he is knowing and what to write next. His data and ideas are theoretically ordered. Almost every ideational sentence is accounted for in its work and relevance for the theory” (Glaser, 1978, p.

116)

58 That is no more variables that are significant and their properties emerge

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In addition, theoretical sorting also helps the analyst to identify gaps in the categories or their properties and will guide a new layer of theoretical sampling, all with the intent of reaching theoretical completeness. These gaps will also point in the direction of extant theory and will guide the analyst in the theoretical sampling of articles and books.

I made copies of all the memos and field notes I had written thus far, more than three hundred pages. I set up two large tables in my studio, got ready blank paper, white cards and markers. In October of

2006 I started the sorting process. Following grounded theory procedure

I read every memo and ask three questions: 1) “how is the content of this memo related to togethering, my core concept?” 2) “how is this memo related to the preceding memos I have sorted?”, 3) “Are my answers two the two previous questions grounded in the data?” The answer to these questions determined the pile, or group of memos, where I would put the memo at hand. As I reflected on this questions I was able to see more connections and gaps, and following the grounded theory dictum of stopping and writing I would write these insights in new memos

(theoretical memo), which I then sorted with all the others. I also started to go back to the data (theoretical sampling) to fill in the gaps. Soon I noticed that this new memos were more conceptual and integrative than

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previous one, and that they were helping me in making sense of old memos or field notes.

I had piles of memos covering not just the two tables but I had to bring in a third one, and I had not finished sorting all the memos yet. I put cards labeling the piles with the concept or code I saw was more encompassing, which usually led me to write a memo describing the link between all the memos under each label. As the piles grew in front of me, the three guiding questions I used to sort the memos echoed in my mind but now in relationship to the piles: how is this pile related to togethering? How is it related to the other piles? And is my answer to these questions grounded in the data? Again, more memos emerged from this answers and more clarity about the place of each unsorted memo. At this stage in the sorting I started to feel the need to answer the question of “what do I know about togethering thus far?” From that moment on, when I felt I had gained a new insight about the nature of togethering I wrote a new memo, even if the insight was that the previous memo was flawed or not on target. I also started to draw diagrams illustrating the position of each concept in relationship to the others and togethering.

This practice yielded more clarity and references points for the sorting process. Finally, after much iteration of the different steps in the sorting process, I felt that the theory was complete, every memo had a place,

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every link was grounded in the data and the overall picture made sense. I could see a clear outline of the theory now. At that point I knew I was ready to turn to theoretical writing. It was December and I had not talked about the emerging theory with anyone.

Theoretical Writing

The writing of the theory also honors the emergent nature of the theory. The analyst weaves together the multiple memos he has written throughout the entire research process, guided by the theoretical outline that emerged from the theoretical sorting.

After finishing sorting and with the outline of the theory at hand I started the writing process by organizing all the memos according to that outline in a word document, which resulted in more than two hundred pages. Then I weaved the content of each memo into a coherent integrated text, sometimes I would use the text from the memo, other times I would re-write or paraphrase the content of it to give fluidity to the overall text. Many times I would delete redundant text or memos. On some occasions I would go back to the original data to capture some quotes to illustrate the main ideas, always noting the sources of the idea: a memo, a field note, an interview or any other document. This would help me keep track of the main ideas.

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As in the sorting phase, the writing phase helped me reach a higher level of clarity about the relationship between concepts and their integration in the theory of togethering. I felt the writing up of the theory helped me refine it. Furthermore, it was at this point that the links with extant literature started to become evident, as I found myself thinking about others’ ideas in relationship to the theory of togethering.

Use of extant literature

As the sorting progresses and a clear theory emerge, the analyst is ready to open up to the work of others and start connecting his work to extant theories in the substantive field. The dictum “all is data” apply here as well. The concepts and properties developed by others find their way into the theory as they are relevant to the core category. They expand the categories and their relationships without forcing the emergent theory, but enriching it.

The different components of the emergent theory directed me to four distinct theoretical domains, and within them to specific relevant theories. I choose the specific theories through literature review and dialogue with the members of the dissertation committee:

The conditions of structural interdependence and its relationship with the journey pointed me to the study of the relationship between

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strategy and affect, where I found the seminal work of Hambrick on behavioral integration of top management groups.

The sequence of group affective states present in the model had an evident echo in theories of group development. Hence, the choice for

Tuckman’s influential sequential model of small group development. In addition, the dramatic impact of getting to know each other in the progression of the developmental sequence, right at the midpoint of the journey, pointed to Gersick’s work on punctuated equilibrium.

The significant shift in affect during and after getting to know each o t h e r signaled to the role of interpersonal interaction in the transformation of affect. The work of Fosha on the therapeutic relationship, based on the development of secure attachment, had significant points in common with the emerging theory.

Finally, the different techniques used during the journey and its outcome in terms of openness, trust and togetherness, what I’ve called communion, had a significant resemblance with collective rituals. To explore this dimension further I reviewed the seminal work of Turner on the process of ritual.

I studied and summarized the core propositions of each one of the selected theories. Where pertinent, I searched for supporting empirical or theoretical works. Then I compared the extant theory with my own

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theory and identified points of convergence and contributions. The analysis of extant theory became a process of refining the emergent model, in particular in terms of the understanding of the underlying forces of the togethering process.

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5. RESULTS: A GROUNDED THEORY OF TOGETHERING

Introduction

This chapter presents the results of the study of the five-day trip of the top management team of TururuCo to Costa Rica. The result is a grounded theory of the process of creation of emotional connections as a response to strategic demands in a multinational top management team.

The chapter begins with an overview of the theory as a social technology process through which the leadership of a multinational company connected and created a sense of collective endeavor in order to facilitate the top management team’s response to a crisis in financial performance.

The chapter continues with a description of the four conditions that triggered the need for togethering. Then, the chapter describes each one of the stages of togethering: the disruption of the political pattern of engagement, getting to know each other, and communion. The chapter concludes with a description of the reverberations of the process at different levels in the company.

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In accordance with classic grounded theory, each concept has emerged through the processes of constant comparison and the interchangeability of empirically grounded indicators from data collected through fieldwork

(Glaser,1978, pp.61-65;1998, pp.139-146). For a sample of the type of data leading to the emergence of core concepts see Appendix A Given the limitations of space within the thesis format, it is not possible to provide the same level of detail for all emergent concepts. As such, in this chapter each concept is illustrated with one conceptual indicator in the form of a direct quotation from interviews or field notes (Glaser, 1998, pp.198199). The conceptual indicators selected are representative of the several interchangeable indicators coded within the data to establish a concept’s properties and dimensions through theoretical saturation.

Footnotes are used to reference field notes and conceptual memos as evidence of further conceptual indicators and the conceptual development process through which the theory has emerged.

Theoretical Overview

This study’s theory of togethering explains how the leadership resolved its concern for the need for high quality connections among its members in order to execute a global strategy.

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The participants began to feel that there was no purpose to their meeting and that their leaders were behaving in an unexpectedly informal way.

Now that the leadership was confused, the construction of a new collective experience of the top management group began with getting to know each other. Through getting to know each other the group members bonded to one another in a reinforcing loop between introspection into their life-history, sharing the findings of that introspection and witnessing their colleagues’ introspection. This bonding experience constituted the catalytic event that transformed the confusion generated by the disruption into a sense of clarity about the purpose and meaning of the event. The leadership recognized that the key issue was to connect with one another and as a collective. Not having information about the next steps in the process became irrelevant, the

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new environment was perceived as conducive to connect, the lack of symbols of status allowed for a personal encounter which was reinforced by the overexposure to one another, and the personal style of leadership was now seen as model of how to engage with each other. Rather than chaos, all these features of the process provided the right conditions for the development of connections. In this last stage the leadership began to feel open towards each other, they were honest and trusted the other members of their group, which led to the experience of a growing sense of communion, that they were indeed together in this journey.

As the members of the leadership resumed their daily activities togethering reverberated in the life of the company by providing a language to reframe the patterns of engagement and foster connections, by providing a model to create connections across the company, by inspiring its executives to lead with their personal style and beliefs, and by legitimating personal growth and interpersonal work as part of the life of the company.

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Conditions Precipitating Togethering Reverberations Togethering

•Market pressure •Disruption of Political Patterns of •Empowered Leadership •Structural interdependence Engagment •Enabling Connections •Awareness of behavior •Getting to Know Each Other •Need for engagement and •Communion connections

Figure 3 Togethering in context

Conditions Precipitating Togethering

Togethering emerged as a response to the demands for openness, trust and unity among the top management team, imposed by structural and strategic organizational needs, which were accentuated by a crisis in financial performance.

The togethering process was the way by which the leadership group of

TururuCo resolves the relational needs accentuated by structural and strategic changes implemented in response to market pressure. The

Costa Rica journey is the vehicle for the realization of Togethering.

The following is a description of each one of the five conditions precipitating togethering, as depicted in figure 1

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Need for new ways of Awareness of Creating space for Structural working together Performance Crisis Behavior as Barrier to engagement and Interdependence Growth (openess, trust, connection engagement)

Figure 4 Conditions Precipitating Togethering

Crisis in Market Performance

The sharp fall in the share price in late 1999 and early 2000 seriously affected our Total Shareholder Return (TSR) ranking. In our peer group of

21 international businesses we dropped to 13th place, measured over three years. Successful execution of the Path to Growth will generate substantial and sustained value for shareholders. We are committed to achieving a sustained top third TSR ranking.59

The negative response of the stock market to the financial performance of the company propelled its leadership to re-think and redesign the organization through the implementation of a global strategy, the first of its kind in the history of the company.

During the later part of the 1970s and most of the decade of the 1980s the company went through a significant process of divestment with the

59 TururuCo Annual Review 2000 and Summary Financial Statement, p. 4.

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intent of refocusing its operations on their key products. During the decade of the 90s, despite the efforts, the company hardly ever achieved the expected growth of 4%. However, the financial performance of the company had not yet had a negative response from the stock market. It was not until the end of that decade that the company felt the impact of its performance (see Error! Reference source not found., p. Error!

Bookmark not defined.). Moreover, it was not until that moment that the leadership took the radical decision to change both the structure and strategy of the entire company by integrating geographical regions, product lines and functions on a global scale. 60

The assessment of the failure to grow pointed to the fact that the company was running overly fragmented operations and that it still was not sufficiently focused on specific products and brands. The new structure set by the Path to Growth program aimed for integration across products and functions.61

60 Interview 44

61 Interview 44

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Structural interdependence

Changes in the structure of the organization altered the conditions of dependence between components of the organization, which in turn required changes in the management function.

“In order to get the business growing, we had to depend both on networks of internal talent and on connecting more with the external world in order to build our success.”62

At TururuCo a change from a structure based on quasi-independent national operations reporting to global headquarters to a structure based on regional and product-line operations coordinated from global headquarters created a level of interdependence, across operating companies, functions and headquarters, never experienced before in the life of the company. The management function changed from delivering results at the level of national operating companies to the coordination of activities across operating companies and business functions in each geographic region.

TururuCo was founded in the entrepreneurial spirit of “very bold pioneers who went into certain geography, built the business, very much

62 Interview 44

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according to their own insights”63. Headquarters would allow these pioneers “to take big initiatives as long as very few parameters were fulfilled”64. Over its 75 five years of history the company would control the multiple and dispersed operating companies by appointing the senior leaders, approving annual or five year company plans, and reviewing capital proposals.65 Other than three mechanisms everything else was left to the discretion of the senior leadership of each operating company.

All this meant that for practical purposes these companies operated as independent businesses in respect to strategy, product development, personnel, supply, and all other functional matters. In these contexts great business leaders in TururuCo were those who turned around businesses on their own against all odds, without assistance from headquarters or other operating companies66.

During the early nineties, with the competition of other companies, the leadership of TururuCo had to face the fact that national and independent operations could not take advantage of the economies of

63 Interview 44

64 Interview 44

65 Interview 44

66 Field Note

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scale that their competitors were already using.67 It was during these years that the company embarked on a series of experiments to take advantage of TururuCo’s potential economies of scale by integrating some business functions, which lead to the implementation of a new structure for the entire company in August 2000.

The new structure integrated the multiple and dispersed country operating companies under two global product divisions: food and personal care. Each global division was comprised of several regional business units that coordinated all the country operations in each region

(Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, and Asia). On top of this product and geographic integration there was also the integration of business functions (finance, human resources, supply chain, marketing, brand development and consumer development) at the global and regional scale.68

This new structure required higher degrees of interaction between managers, since the spatial and functional lines of accountability now intersected. One senior manager coordinated and reported to at least two heads, the head of the region and the head of a function. This

67 Interview 44

68 www.TururuCo.com/company/TururuCotoday/companystructure (9/17/2003)

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matrix created increased points of contact between managers, which were sources of opportunities and conflict. The demand on the relational skills of the organization and its members were now higher. The matrix mode of organizing the structure also created higher interdependence across regions and functions for the implementation of global strategies and operations.

Awareness of behavior as an internal barrier to growth

Structural interdependence heightened awareness of how the traditional behavior among leaders was limiting the capacity of this group to achieve its full potential.

“We saw as an essential part of getting ourselves into a stronger growth mode was one of adopting new ways of working together.” 69

In an organization were the predominant pattern of engagement was political, members’ behavior was constantly responding to the question

"what should I say or do to get what I want, and to not get what I do not want?"70 . Under the political pattern of engagement individual’s agendas reign over collective organizational goals; this lead to a constant guarded state in members of the organization, especially those at the top. People

69 Interview 44

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were very careful to say and do only the things that would advance their agendas and hide or keep private thoughts and actions they perceived might threaten that agenda.71 Under the political pattern of engagement, it was difficult to understand people's motivations and intentions, and it was even more difficult to create a sense of collective endeavor or mission.72

Managers in the new structure described above could not act as the

“bold pioneers”, now that they had less positional power and needed more coordination and collaboration to achieve their objectives. They had to negotiate and coordinate with colleagues on a regular basis that put significant pressure on managing interpersonal relationships, for it was now through interpersonal relationships that organizational leaders, now with less positional power, were able to achieve their objectives. 73 It was in this new context that the inadequacy of the traditional ways of engaging each other became relevant and was recognized by the leaders of the organization as a significant impediment to the execution of the global strategy.

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Needing new ways of working together

[…] What was needed was a greater acknowledgement of the importance of working in teams and … a greater acknowledgement of the importance of interdependence.74

The execution of the new strategy required a sense of openness, trust, teamwork, and unity. But the relationships among the members of the top management team had been characterized by distrust, non- transparency and individualistic behavior. There was a high level of competition over individual performance and recognition, because these had been the traditional benchmarks for promotion and access to resources in the company.

The awareness that political behavior was getting in the way lead to the realization that to make this new strategy work the leadership had to attend to the individual and organizational needs for high-quality relationships, relationships that could be conducive to getting the work done and do not get in the way, relationships that could reach a cross spatial and functional lines. If the “matrixed” organization did not have or did not support high-quality relationships among its leadership group it would be handicapped by the inefficiencies generated by low quality

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interpersonal relationships, which could interfere with the implementation of global-scale changes and operations. 75

Attending to the need: creating a space for engagement and connection

“This is about where this team, this new team, goes as it goes forward, how it goes forward, what has to do not in the business sense but in the behavioral sense. Because the many behaviors which we all know about ourselves, there is no need to spell them out, have got in the way of this fantastic business and this great group of people achieving what it knows it can achieve.”76

As the leaders of the company recognized or became aware of the need to connect with the top management team they made the commitment to create a space where those connections could be developed. It was the decision of the two leaders of this company to do something about what was “getting in the way of the business” that triggered the series of events that lead to the design and execution of the journey to Costa Rica. The program was intended to be a space where the “Chairmen and group [would be] connecting with each other” and where “the group [could be] at ease with each other as a team should be”.77

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76 Chairmen’s opening statement of the Costa Rica Journey, from video of the event.

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The Process of Togethering

Getting to Know • Exacerbation of Each Other • Openess normal affect • Bonding • T r u s t • Crisis • N e w a f f e c t

Disruption of Political Patterns Communion of Engagement

Figure 5 Model of the Togethering process

Disruption of Political Pattern of Engagement

“But the more important part of this was not the physical effort. The journey on its own was the important part of it because it took the floor of the group. It changed the floor, and by changing the floor, it changed the environment and created discomfort […].” 78

The disruption of the political patterns of engagement refers to the process of altering the social and material dimensions that sustained modes of interaction whose primary objective was to advance individuals' agendas within the organization.79

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The setting and design of the journey disturbed the traditional practices of engagement among senior executives, which triggered fundamental questions such as Who are we? Where are we going? And what are we doing? This created both anxiety and excitement, and with it resistance.80

Dimensions of the Disruption of the political pattern of engagement

The disruption of the political pattern of engagement was triggered by the modification of conditions in the five dimensions depicted in Figure 6.

What follows is an explanation of the modification in each one of these dimensions.

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Not Knowing • insecurity and anxiety

Leaders Journeying Overexposure • confusing • too close to each behavior other • motivate and DISRUPTION inspire OF POLITICAL PATTERN OF ENGAGEMENT

Affecting Conveying Spaces Artifacts • "out of their • striped of status natural environment"

Figure 6 Disruption of Political patterns of Engagement

Not Knowing

“I think it started off with the insecurity of what was going to happen. I mean we got an invitation to go somewhere, and it was absolutely unclear what the hell was going to happen.”81

To know as much as possible is one of the pillars of the authority and control in senior management positions. To know about every aspect of any management gathering is essential for navigating the gathering and advancing of specific agendas and personal goals. If one knows about the rules of engagement, the purpose of the gathering and expected behavior,

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then one can act accordingly to position oneself in the best possible way to obtain and achieve personal gains that would advance one’s position in the organization. By knowing about the gathering, one is able to engage with the other executives in ways that would be conducive to obtaining one’s own objectives.

Not knowing disrupted the political pattern of engagement for it prevented executives from using information to navigate the engagement in a way that advanced their own personal agendas. Without information about the gathering, its purpose and rules, the executives were unable to engage strategically with each other. This state in a way is antithetical to the executive position in the organization. Deprived of information about the purpose of the gathering or event, about the location and the rules of engagement the executives are confused, fearful, insecure, lost and anxious.

Affecting Spaces

“…the board room of TururuCo in TururuCo House or if you even sat in a board meeting, the atmosphere in those meetings is not exactly conducive to collegiality, you know. It’s a big room with high things. There are pictures on the wall, and they’re frowning down at you. The central chair is bigger than the other chairs. It’s all set up to

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be:` we’re it folks. You’re down there. So the chairmen of TururuCo had been historically rather distant figures.”82

The pattern of engagement among executives is also influenced or dictated by the physical space where the engagement takes place. In highly hierarchical organizations, encounters among senior executives tend to occur in the spaces that define the status of the parties involved: elegant meeting rooms with leather chairs, high-class conference centers

(where the hierarchy of each party is clearly visible). This space or scenery dictates a mode of engagement based on hierarchical position and strategic purpose, the scenery affects the mood and emotions of individuals and the group. Traditional scenery in hierarchical organizations tends to reinforce engagement from professional or transactional stand points where everybody knows their place as it relates to the other members of the organization.

Meeting other executives in a physical space that does not provide a reference point to navigate the encounter contributes to the disruption of the traditional patterns of engagement among executives. A public beach, a dirty road, a tent, a camp, are all spaces devoid of the reference point that executives traditionally used to engage with each other, thus

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there is a sense of been "out of their natural environment". To choose

Costa Rica as the setting for the journey was a clear signal that this was a new and different moment.83

Conveying Artifacts

“This company was a company that would meet in five star hotels, and suddenly we’re standing on the beach. We were stripped of our personal belongings, from the chairmen to whoever else was there. We were put on an equal footing. An equal footing was not just the clothing. It was the stuff that we had with us, the stuff that we had to take with us.”84

Another dimension of d i s r u p t i o n was that of conveying artifacts, those artifacts that convey elements of the culture of any given human group.

In the case of these men, the two most significant artifacts were their clothes and their vehicles. During the disruption, they were stripped of their traditional artifacts, and were given others that did not reflect the traditions of this group. They were asked to leave their clothes, suits, coats, suitcases behind and were dressed in hiking gear. All their belongings were stored and they were given a backpack instead of a briefcase. Then, instead of elegant buses or limousines, they were carried in uncomfortable school buses. They had been stripped of the

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normal artifacts that so closely define their professional identity and their status.

Artifacts, those objects through which a group performs its activities, carry significant weight when it comes to the definition of the patterns of engagement. To a large degree they define the tone and the mode of the engagement. What people wear and what people drive carry a meaning that influences the way they interact with one another; a suit, a briefcase, a pair of shoes, defines the character and what is possible with that character.

Executives responded to this stripping in various ways. Some were excited about the change, others felt it was ridiculous, others were angry and felt disrespected. Stripping had disrupted the normal flow of the engagement among these executives because they all looked alike and at the same level. The stripping was an equalizer mechanism.

Overexposure to one another

The disruption of the traditional mode of engagement in this group came also through overexposure to one another. Unlike their traditional meetings, this time executives were overexposed to each other. In a normal setting these executives would be exposed to each other for just the necessary time to deal with the business issues. Their conversation

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would be circumscribed to the business and occasionally, if they knew each other, some personal information. In some instances they would share a ride to the airport, or a flight together, all still in the business setting, therefore the exposure was minimal.

In the togethering process executives were overexposed to each other.

They were pushed to talk about themselves: their thoughts and their feelings. They were also obliged to be in close physical proximity for long hours, inside a car or a tent. Moreover, they were pushed to see and be seen in unfamiliar ways like waking up, washing hair, or changing clothes. Overexposing therefore alters the neat and clean engagement that these men were used to having with one another. Overexposing brought them close to experiencing the full humanness of each other and therefore disrupted the narrow field of the business engagement.

The members of the leadership group were overexposed to each other by inside-out conversations, being in physical proximity and being in dayliness. The following are descriptions of each one of these three converging modes of overexposure:

Orchestrated inside out conversations.

The executives were required, through a series of activities, to say what they thoughti, what they felt and what was important to them. The

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exercises were constantly asking them to speak from their interior rather than talking about an exterior object. This mode of conversation was in sharp contrast to the business talk they had with one another in regular meetings. In those meetings most of the references were about results, performance, business solutions, et cetera. The references to self were bounded to the business topic.

Physical proximity:

“I think there was certainly my shock. You get to a stage in life where it’s a very unusual thing to do other than sharing a room with your wife. You might sometimes on holiday have a family hotel room where your kids are in there, but to be sharing a room with two or three colleagues all of whom you kind of knew but didn’t know well . . . one would be working in Turkey, another in Singapore or whatever it might be. You’ve known them in the business. You’ve known them in the business context, and you don’t share a bathroom.”85

Physical proximity refers to another mode of exposure for these executives. They rode the plane or bus for hours next to each other, they walked and sweat next to one another, and they slept in the same tent and hotel room. This was an experience unlike any other in the business setting. The personal distance of the meeting room or the office, not sharing spaces of any kind kept physical contact to a minimum.

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Togethering brought the physical dimension to the forefront of the experience of each other and the entire group.

Dailyness

Dailyness refers to the sharing of daily and mundane activities that are usually limited to a personal private space, such as sleeping, cleaning, showering, changing clothes, or activities that do not have business purpose or relevance. In togethering, executives experience each other in their dailyness. They were obliged to witness each other doing the most mundane things and this was new and different for them. In the office, they did not see that mundane dimension of each other. Now it was almost all there was since there was no business activity. They were all in dailyness and their pattern of engagement had been disrupted by it.

Leaders Journeying

“So the chairmen of TururuCo had been historically rather distant figures. They certainly had chats with you, but they worked from the room, so it’s ‘Hello. How are you?’ three or four sentences of light exchange, and they move on to work the room and so forth. You either meet them that way or the senior people or you meet them in a formal presentation where you’re quickly told to keep it brief, keep it sharp, move on. Here were the chairmen expressing personal things to everybody else. You just looked at that and you say, ‘I’ve known six TururuCo chairmen, and I can’t imagine the six previous ones ever doing that.’ So the notion that the top leadership of the business should be reaching out to personalize themselves was not only interesting; it was extraordinary. For somebody who had been in the business for thirty-one years, it was simply extraordinary. I had sat on the chairman’s emergency executive. Those

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meetings were all arranged in format, all fixed. You speak when spoken to, get it through, say your piece, move on. It was all absolutely no personal interfacing.” 86

The last of the dimensions of the d i s r u p t i o n lies in how the leaders behaved in the togethering process. Leaders acted in ways in sharp contrast to their traditional mode of engagement with their executives.

They were more personal, approachable, talking about their own thoughts and feelings and very little interested in discussing business issues. They were even open about the process itself. They, with their new behavior, were providing information to the group that was needed to sort out the chaos generated by the d i s r u p t i o n . With their new behavior the leaders were both contributing to the disruption and to a way out of it.

Dissonance and Contrasting: the core mechanism of the Disruption.

Dissonance involves disruption in normal behavior, but goes beyond it, to include setting, clothes, medium of transportation, type of exercises, topics of conversation. This was very much part of the design, and is also a known technique in adventure education programs, and going further, to rituals of passage. 87

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A shift towards openness cannot exist without the notion or experience of being closed. The event's significance lay to a large degree in its impact on shifting perceptions about leadership, company, colleagues, self. This required an initial state that this event transformed.88The perception of the shift required a point of comparison or c o n t r a s t , a pre-and post state of mind of being together. According to many interviewees the normal approach to their initiatives such as the journey, the TururuCo way, was with cynicism and "not with the heart". Members approached these kinds of initiatives in a political or strategic way. This approach or behavior was expected at the collective level, and it was what happened at Miami Beach and during the first two days.89

In succinct terms, the disruption was produced by altering the customary conditions in which these leaders interacted with one another, to such an extent that the political patterns of engagement were no longer viable or desirable.90

The outcome of the disruption was a collective confusion and frustration with the new conditions, which in turn generated resistance against the

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leaders of the process, the two chairmen. Under these new conditions, the leadership team did not know the purpose or mechanisms of the event, leading to an increase distrust and fear about the process.91

Responses to the disruption

It was a tense dialogue. People postured, challenged, pushed back, made terse, often awkward speeches that were at times followed by equally awkward silences. Participants and Chairmen alike looked uncomfortable as they verbally circled the issues, occasionally striking at the heart of the matter, and then just as quickly retreating. As difficult as the discussions were, however, they began to surface important feelings and perceptions. After an hour and a half or so, the groups broke up. People huddled in smaller groups for a while and then slowly drifted to their tents. For many it was an uncomfortable night -- physically and emotionally. (TururuCo Corporate HR Group, 2001)

The confluence of so many alterations in the dimensions that gave this group its identity and purpose, from being taken out of their natural environment to leaders journeying, created a state of chaos and confusion in the participants, and the group reached a moment of crisis when rebellion was imminent and the possibility of failure was experienced as very real. In this moment, divisions occurred within the group and there were calls for rebellion, while at the same time there were voices of hope.

The disruption had reached its high point and the process itself seemed at stake. Rather than being together the group was in a state of

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fragmentation, and even the leaders doubted the chances of success.

Communication had been stifled and the traditional forms of engagement, adversarial and competitive, reemerged as different subgroups felt insulted, disrespected and left a side by the leadership, while others felt that something good could come out of all this. There were even some calls for sabotage of the process. The disruption highlighted the core behavioral issues “getting in the way” of this group.

Getting to know each other

… thus far it was about ‘we are going to do another comfort exercise. But the whole process of us having traveled together, I think we were now getting to know each other, then this thing came which is the lifelines. This was about more personal stuff. That’s when I think this thing moved from roles to relationships. So we stopped role-playing, and we got into relationships. I think that to my mind was the turning point. Now it was not about what do we do, what role are we playing, we are doing exercises. No, we’re not talking about us. What are the highs and lows of my life: corporate life, personal life? There are joys of life, tragedies of death, relationships that have been fantastic, relationships that haven’t’ worked, careers in which you earn high points and very low points when you wanted to probably not work for this organization. It’s all that that’s going on now that’s bringing us close together in a larger sense. I think that was very great.92

With the leadership group was in a sense lost, the construction of a new experience of themselves as a group began with getting to know each o t h e r . Through getting to know each other the leadership members bonded to one another in a reinforcing loop between introspecting on

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one’s own life, s h a r i n g the findings of that reflection, and witnessing ones colleagues’ introspection (see Figure 7). This bonding experience constituted the catalytic event that transformed the confusion generated by the disruption into a sense of clarity about the purpose and meaning of the event. The leadership recognized that the key issue was to connect with one another and as a collective.

Overexposure Inspiring Setting

No escape

Figure 7 Getting to Know Each Other

Following a description of each one of the four components of the process of getting to know e ach other: introspecting, s h a r i n g , witnessing, bonding, and conditions.

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Introspecting

Introspecting was the process of reflecting about one’s own life and assessing/gauging where it is going. Introspecting was an inward look at one’s own life and an assessment of the direction it is taking. It required a candid look at one’s own past, present and desired future. It was a halt in the road, or looking from the top of the mountain: “this is where I have been, this is where I am, this is where I am likely to go. Do I like what I see? Do I want what is coming? What do I want from my life from now on in my private life and in my professional life?” Introspecting confronted executives with the choices they had made in their private and professional lives. Thus, it could lead to satisfaction of being on the right course, or lead to discouragement, because it showed the consequences of their mistakes in painful ways: a divorce, faraway children, health problems. As such, Introspecting could be risky for the organization, for it could push managers to leave, but it could also strengthen their ties to the organization. Introspecting is an emotional look inwards. It is about getting in touch with the emotions associated with events in one’s life and using them as information to think about the future one wants to create for oneself, both in one’s private and professional life.

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Introspecting was not a common process at this level in the organization.

In order to make it happen a structure needed to be in place in terms of instructions, time and space. The instructions guided the participants through this unusual process, step-by-step. Time got rid of any other tasks in participants’ agendas and bounded the adherence to the instructions. The space facilitated looking in by stimulating participants in ways that their traditional setting did not allow.

As executives se l f -r e f l e c t ed, the tension between one’s private life and professional life became apparent. Family and health issues emerged as significant for executives, and with these issues in mind they began to question their legacy, their purpose, what was important to them.

Introspecting was not an easy process for them, and the level of engagement with the process varied among members of the group, some took it seriously, others just went through the motions.

Sharing

“There were people in that journey that were very discomforted. […] because they really didn’t like to show what they were, their objectives, their personal feelings. They were not prepared although they had to do it. Of course some people have put their hearts on that.”93

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Sharing was the activity of describing, explaining or telling others, in this case a small group, some of the insights gained from introspecting , some of the stories and events of one’s own life. Given the personal nature of introspecting, s h a r i n g focuses to a great extent on the accounts about one’s private life, especially emotionally significant events related to spouses, children and health, most of them very sensitive and rarely discussed in business settings or business interactions within the company. Thus, sharing did not come easy for many, it generated great resistance, but the intimacy and comfort of the small group facilitated the joining in of other group members. Sharing was both a rational account of one’s own life and an emotional display of one's experience.

Witnessing

As each member of the small group shared their insights from introspecting, the other members of the group witnessed (listened, watched and felt) the person sharing. Witnessing helped the executives to discover new things about each other, especially about their private

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life and lead to the realization that “we all have our little pack to carry”94 and “after all, we are also human beings”95.

As people witnessed the personal struggle in each other’s lives, a valuable dimension was added to the professional relationship.

Differences were also emphasized, especially different perspectives about life's struggle. What stood out for the executives was how similar they were in terms of neglecting their families, overemphasizing work, and having painful events in life. Witnessing others’ stories was also witnessing one’s own story, one’s own struggle and joy. As one shared one’s story, others saw their own life reflected in that story, it could be a reflection about one’s past, present or future. Thus, witnessing also allowed for the discovery of oneself and choices one had ahead.

Witnessing also compelled reluctant members to join in the group at sh a r i n g , as the group displayed respect for each other as s h a r i n g and a sense of mutual understanding began to develop.

Bonding

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These three modes of engagement were all occurring simultaneously in every group. One person s h a r e d while others were witnessing, and in the witnessing as embedded introspecting as well. Thus, it was a dynamic interplay between these three modes, which in turn generated a growing sense of closeness and intimacy. Connections started to develop between the members of the group. It was in essence a reinforcing loop, for the more one did it, the stronger the bond, and therefore, the more one would share.

As a result of the interplay between introspecting , s h a r i n g and witnessing, group members started to let their guard down which allowed for the development of a sense of mutual understanding. This experience suggests that the encounter between executives had moved away from the pre-established roles, and personal relationships were now forming.

The group members felt close to each other, and the initial tension generated by the disruption disappeared. The group was now bonding.

The Conditions: No Escape, Inspiring Setting, overexposed

Three conditions supported the process of getting to know each other in the boat:

1) There was no escape, participants were all confined to the boat, and there was no place to hide or avoid the conversation;

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2) the physical setting, the waves, the wind, the dolphins swimming next to the boat, and the sight of the beaches and forest, were inspiring and provided a sense of safety; and

3) the physical proximity, forced by the size of the boat, kept participants in touch with each other and the group.

A Turning Point

One of the executives said in reference to the experience of getting to know each other in the boat, “You could feel the spirit of a group of hundred people”96 There was in the boat a feeling of the group as a whole. Executives had a distinct experience of the collective on the boat, fueled by the transcendental nature of getting to know each o t h e r , the close physical proximity of the hundred executives, and the rocking of the boat.

Getting to know each other was at the core the transformation of the experience of the journey, some called it the turning point. After bonding by getting to know each other, everything made sense, the intent of the process became clear: "it was about us as individuals, our relationships,

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and us as a group". The tension disappeared, relationships became smoother, and participants were more open to each other and the experience. From that moment on, getting to know each other

(introspecting , sharing and witnessing) continued as a new pattern of engagement among the hundred executives.

Communion: a new group emotion

…you can imagine the one hundred people leading the business, and to spend quality time and to have a real sense of joint, collective determination was a very profound feeling and something that stays with me today.97

Getting to know each other shifted the underlying group emotion, from confusion, anger and frustration to openness and trust. This shift allowed the group to perceive the conditions of the journey not as threatening but as conducive to engagement and to connecting as a whole. Not knowing, affecting spaces, conveying artifacts, overexposure and leaders journeying, were no longer sources of disruption but a coherent set of conditions that participants saw contributed to the development of communion in the group ( see Figure 8)

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Not Knowing • "it is about connecting"

Leaders Journeying Overexposure • "walk the talk" • to develop • motivate and connections inspire Communion

Conveying Affecting Artifacts Spaces • symbols of • "relaxing and connection inspiring"

Figure 8 Communion

The shift after getting to know each other was not of behavior but of perception, the perception in all different dimensions (leaders, time, and exposure). There was a shift on every dimension, the more they experienced it, the more they moved towards openness, and the more they felt connected with the process and each other.

Shift in the experience by dimension

In the following pages I describe 1) the shift in the experience in each one of the dimensions, and 2) the resulting state of openness.

Shift on perception of not knowing:

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As getting to know each other reached its end, the executives realized that the purpose of this event was “about us as individuals, our relationships, and us as a group”, and although they still did not know what would happen next, the anxiety and frustration of the previous day was dissipated. Under this new understanding of what they were doing together, knowing the specifics did not matter, whatever they were asked to do, the work was to connect with others and oneself.

Shift on perception of overexposure:

“I shared a room with this guy. That was nice room sharing, because it was room sharing with time, so you got there, you had a shower, you had time to sit on the terrace and have a chat. The thing I remember is that I’ll never forget that he is a great poetry fan which is totally irrelevant stuff, but had I not been with him in there, I wouldn’t know today. I got to know that his daughter went into the same grade as my son at the American School, which I didn’t know. Again, it comes back to my point. He’s not a friend. I don’t have a big relationship, but at least you start building some relationship.”98

Being overexposed through dayliness, physical proximity, unstructured t i m e and engagement, rather than a nuisance, became in the minds of executives a reasonable set of conditions to foster the development of connections. The absence of a professional setting, frame, regulating the interactions through time structure, established agendas, limited physical contact and business content, were now experienced as an

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opportunity to get to know one another without those constraints.

People could therefore be free to engage one another on a more personal level and in a more playful manner. Overexposure provided more flexible and personal parameters to engage one another, which provided new and richer opportunities for connecting.

Shift on perception of affecting spaces:

You can’t go in there and not feel absolutely moved. It is a place you can go where it has a profound emotional impact on you, because it is so rich and green with perfumes and the sound of particularly bird life but other animals and so on. It is beautiful. We spent some time on a boat. It was a very positive, uplifting. I do feel if you sit in a building like this looking out on the road, it’s not a very natural inspiring thing.99

Overexposure was enhanced by a new experience of the physical setting, which was now perceived as inspiring and relaxing. The discomfort of the previous two days and the perceived irrelevance of the landscape for business purposes, gave way during getting to know each other to a sense of wonder and appreciation of the beauty and exuberance of the natural environment. The forest, the ocean, the beaches, appeared now as valued and significant features that supported the connection by relaxing and inspiring.

Shift on perception of conveying artifacts:

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At this point the tents, the speedboats, the backpacks, the shorts, the hats, became for participants the symbols of the new connecting process and clear indicators of the journey. The a r t i f a c t s were not awkward anymore; they reinforced the notion of "being in this together", "all equal", "going back to basics". As one watched, it seemed they now carried and used the artifacts with pride and excitement, as when they rode at high-speed, side-by-side, on speedboats.100

Shift in perception of leaders journeying:

The experience of getting to know each other also allowed executives to see their leaders’ behavior as a confirmation and legitimization of their own experience. Where there was confusion there was now clarity because the leaders were now seen as “walking the talk”, they were showing with their actions what this process was about: engaging from your interior. The participants’ perception of the leadership shifted from one of awkwardness to one of recognizing that the behavior was not erratic or senseless, but consistent with the relevance of connecting at the top. The shift in perception of the leaders occurred in the following four dimensions: 1) leaders sharing their interior by talking about their inner thoughts and emotions; 2) leaders being available and willing to

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engage with their executives at a personal level; 3) chairmen engaging each other in ways that give their executives hope about the outcome of this event; and 4) leaders listening instead of advocating. The executives perceived all these changes as modeling, which motivated and inspired them to engage in a manner congruent with the chairmen’s’ new behavior.101

State of Openness

“I think people became more prepared to share and to start to talk to each other, trying to understand what we were about, why we were there, why each of us had joined in, what we were in TururuCo, what we wanted from TururuCo, what we wanted TururuCo to be.” 102

The state of openness was the experience of having the chance, to speak openly to the Chairmen and the other members of the leadership team.

That is, it was the possibility of speaking one’s own minds in a non- strategic or political way, or in an honest and intimate103 way.104

Executives experienced the openness ensuing from getting to know each o t h e r through105: 1) passionate and engaging conversations among each

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103 Intimate means in this case being able to share both thoughts and feelings.

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other, 2) the dissipation at the group level of "...much of the skepticism and cynicism”; 3) the emerging belief that change was possible in their relationships, 4) the emerging belief that change was possible in collective leadership, and 5) the shift from "from pointing fingers to taking responsibility".

Openness, in unison with getting to know each other lead in turn to a collective experience of being connected. As one executive put it “the trip has added the glue that was missing among us”, and another referred as

“we are all in the same boat”.106

Reverberations of Togethering

So with hindsight, I think it was a very strong program; it was the right timing; it was the right moment because of the other moves. It took TururuCo I think for two or three years on the same platform of the total leadership in order to make sure that we could deal with the issues we needed to deal with… so I think we even had common vocabulary or common experience which has facilitated all the changes as well as led to a smooth integration of the new acquired company.107

The leadership group of TururuCo found in togethering the collective affect or platform necessary for the implementation of the global strategy.

Togethering opened a window of what might be possible among the organization's leaders. It created awareness of the relevance of being

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open to the business and themselves, and most importantly defined a template or a model of what connectedness looked like and how it could be created. That is, togethering created an image and an experience in the minds and bodies of the participants of the positive influence of getting to know each other, opening and connecting, for business and institutional purposes.108

What follows is an overview of the impact of togethering at different organizational levels.

1. Whole Company

A symbol of change. The journey became a symbol, an icon, for what was needed and expected from the leaders, at all levels, in the context of Path to Growth.

A collective platform. The journey created a collective platform for the desired change and for a spectrum of critical activities, from ranking procedures to implementation of leadership programs.

Opening up the system. “Costa Rica was very significant in destroying the walls around the companies and opening up the system.”

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2. Executive Boards

A new language. Costa Rica provided the top leadership with a new language to address each other about behavioral and attitudinal issues that were blocking business success.

A blueprint. The journey became a blueprint, used by leaders to engage their people and to design and implement their strategies.

Supporting mergers. Costa Rica supported the merger of TururuCo and a new acquisition by allowing members of both companies to get to know each other and provided an opportunity for the newcomers to get acquainted with the culture.

3. Working Partners

Transformation of Working Relationships. The journey impacted positively the relationships of working partners, thus improving the quality of the work they do together.

The Chairmen. The transparency of the chairmen about their relationships brought to the table a taboo theme, and provided hope to the leadership of the company.

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4. Interpersonal Relationships

Getting to know each other. The journey allowed participants to connect with one another:

“if we do not do that we will not be able to face the current challenges of the company.” Through getting to know each other participants discover the possibilities of building relationship for business purposes, and the possibilities than nonstrategic engagement opens up for business operations. 109

It is important to pay attention to relationships. Executives recognized the importance of paying attention to their working relationships and ensuring they be as open and honest as possible.

I then did take an action on the basis of getting to know that guy. I then had quite an influential lunch with him and another guy where I drew heavily upon their advice on how to be an effective leader of this company, because it was a company that they both knew. Through the relationships that I have formed with both of them to a degree in Costa Rica, I was able to be very open about having an informal contact with the chairmen. That was neat how it worked.110

5. Individual Leaders

Empowerment. The journey gave a green light to some leaders to: 1) bring more of their own persona to their leadership, 2) and to develop initiatives on leadership development that were more congruent with their own beliefs and the new culture that the journey was promoting.

109 Memo January 2306 (70-71), “Pura Vida” corporate magazine.

110 Interview 41

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Sense of connection. Some participants recognized that the journey helped them to feel more connected to the company, their peers and the chairmen.

Chairmen re-connecting. The journey helped the chairmen to connect with people within the company- contact that had largely been lost in their ascension to the top of the organization.

They are human beings like me.

“One of the most important individual insights I had during the journey was the realization that the most senior leaders of the company were human beings like me, with personal struggles, weakness, concerns, etc. This was an empowering realization”111

Personal introspection. The journey was an opportunity for some of the participants to be confronted with their own personal and professional choices and how these affected their lives.

111 Interviewee 45

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6. DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

Introduction

In a grounded theory study the literature review comes as a final step to link the emergent theory with extant theories. The concepts of the emergent theory point to specific areas of knowledge, and dictate the field of relevance for the findings. Furthermore, according to principle of modifiability, the emergent theory can be enriched and modified by relevant extant theories and concepts. (Glaser, 1998)

In this chapter I explore relevant extant theories in three areas of knowledge: strategic management, group dynamics, and psychotherapy.

Each one of these areas corresponds to three interrelated premises emerging from the model: 1) strategy drives structure and affect, 2) the vehicle of affective shift is a group development phenomenon, and 3) at the base of the affective shift is the experience of emotionally significant interpersonal exchanges.

The chapter is divided into four main sections. In the first section I explore the concept of behavioral integration in top management groups

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(Donald C. Hambrick, 1994) as it relates to the relationship between affective change, and on the other hand, strategic and operational demands, on the other. In the second section, I explore the parallels between my model and a linear model of group development (Tuckman,

1965), and a model of group development by punctuated equilibrium

(Gersick, 1988). In the third section I explore the principles and processes of accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (Fosha,

2000; Fosha & Yeung, 2006) as it relates to the significance of interpersonal experiences in effective psychological functioning. And in the last and fourth section I explore the process of ritual as it relates to the creation of a liminal space (Turner, 1969). In each one of these sections I present my findings, the extant theory, the links between my findings and the theory, and some implications. I conclude this chapter with a modification of the model from the previous chapter as a way of integrating the relevant aspects of the extant theories presented in this chapter.

Summary of the emergent theory

This study’s theory of togethering explains how an organization’s leadership resolved its concern for the need for high quality connections among its members in order to execute a global strategy.

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The togethering process began with bringing together the entire leadership of the organization (106 executives) and disrupting its traditional patterns of engagement. The leadership was deprived of information, taken out of its natural environment, stripped of symbols of s t a t u s , its members were overexposed to one another, the lines of accountability were blurred, there seemed to be no purpose, and the chairmen became from many participants viewpoint, too personal. There was a growing sense of confusion, frustration and anger among the top leadership group; they were deprived of all the reference points sustaining their traditional political and strategic patterns of engagement. Once the leadership was in a sense lost, the construction of a new experience of themselves began with getting to know each o t h e r .

Through getting to know each other the leadership members bonded to one another in a reinforcing loop between s e l f -reflecting, s h a r i n g the findings of that reflection and w i t n e s s i n g ones colleagues’ reflection.

This bonding experience constituted the catalytic event that transformed the confusion generated by the disruption into a sense of clarity about the purpose and meaning of the process. The leadership recognized that the key issue was to connect with one another and as a collective. Not having information about the next steps in the process became irrelevant, the new environment was perceived as conducive to

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connecting, the lack of symbols of status allowed for a personal encounter which was reinforced by the overexposure to one another, and the leadership style of the two chairmen was now seen as a model of how to engage with each other. Rather than chaos, all these features of the process now provided the conditions for the development of connections.

In this last stage, which I have called communion the leadership began to feel open towards each other, they were honest and trusted one another, and they started to experience a growing sense of unity, and that they were indeed together in this.

As the members of the leadership resumed their daily activities togethering reverberated through the life of the company by providing a language to reframe the patterns of engagement and foster connections, by providing a model to create connections across the company, by inspiring its executives to lead with their personal style and beliefs, and by legitimating personal growth and interpersonal work as part of the life of the company.

Togethering and Behavioral Integration of Top Management Groups.

There is in the field of managerial sciences a growing recognition that leadership of a large organization is a collective function rather than an individual one. The management of an organization is done by the group

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at the top. Thus there is the need to understand how the configuration and dynamics within that group affect organizational performance. It is through a thorough understanding of the top group as a unit of analysis that scientists can get better predictors and leverage for organizational interventions.

My findings

Togethering emerged as a response to the demands for openness, trust and unity among the top management team in the company I studied. It was imposed by structural and strategic organizational needs, which were accentuated by a crisis in financial performance.112

Structural and strategic needs defined the character of the relationships among the top executives that were needed to successfully execute and operate under such strategic conditions. The emergent model offered in the preceding chapter shows how, given the opportunity, the top management team now involved in a global effort to integrate operations, shifted its pattern of interaction.

112 For additional details on this hypothesis see 5-97

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The theory shows that togethering emerge as an institutional response to specific strategic needs for structural interdependence113 across the organization. Structural interdependence requires new ways of working together114 characterized by openness, trust, teamwork and unity among the many top management teams in the organization, as opposed to distrust, non-transparency and individualistic behavior, all characteristics of the organization with low levels of structural interdependence.

In the case of TururuCo this implied that if the new “matrixed” organization did not have, or did not support high-quality relationships among its leadership group, it would be handicapped by the inefficiencies generated by low quality interpersonal relationships, which could interfere with the implementation of global-scale changes and operations.

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Behavioral integration of top management groups

Operating at the organizational apex, the top group confronts information overload and ambiguity. Stimuli are many, often vague, and competing. In fact, this condition is why the study of top groups is so important. Stimuli are so open to perceptual bias,

113 For details see p. 5-99

114 For details see p. 5-103

115 D 2006-4

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interpretation, and political manipulation that the specific form and functioning of the top group will greatly shape what happens to the stimuli and, in turn; to the organization. (Donald C. Hambrick, 1994)

Donald Hambrick, professor of strategic management at Columbia

University, developed the construct of Behavioral Integration to describe the pattern of engagement required of top management groups to deal effectively with the complex task that they have to perform. In

Hambrick’s own terms:

“Behavioral integration is the degree to which the group engages in mutual and collective interaction. In the context of top management groups, behavioral integration has three major elements: (1) quantity and quality (richness, timeliness, accuracy) of information exchange, (2) collaborative behavior, and (3) joint decision making.” (Eisenhardt & Schoonhoven, 1990; Donald C. Hambrick, 1994)

Hambrick states that an organization that has a TMG with low levels of behavioral integration, no matter how well it suits a particular strategy, will eventually face limitations in its capacity to respond effectively to environmental challenges. Top management groups whose members do not participate in collaborative actions and do not exchange information and practices, will have great difficulty in implementing organization- wide changes on a timely basis. TMGs with low behavioral integration struggle to develop a “shared awareness and corroboration of new environmental imperatives”, thus struggle at “formulating concerted responses… to those imperatives” (Donald C. Hambrick, 1994).

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This construct emerged from Hambrick’s seminal work, The Upper

Echelon Theory (Donald C Hambrick & Mason, 1984) which recognized the strategic significance of the composition, values and beliefs of the group of people in charge of an organization. Hambrick, prompted by an analysis of a large sample of TMGs (Michel & Hambrick, 1992), realized that the quality, frequency and depth of the communication between team members was at least as significant as the group composition, in the effect of the TMG on the organization’s performance.

Hambrick conceptualized a top management group as the group that has most power and influence in an organization. It can be small or large, but it always includes the leader or CEO and those that share with him the authority to shape the structure, strategy and policies of the organization. It is characterized by:

Having a task highly complex with high levels of ambiguity and changing conditions The TMG has to both orchestrate responses to the environment and manage the day to day operations of the organization.

The top group operates at the boundary of the organization and its environment

The work of most top management groups has no bounded time frame.

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The behavior and characteristics of the top group “carry great symbolic significance”.

The members of the TMG themselves head up their own sub organizations.

The individual members of top management groups are for the most part high achievers that expect autonomy and discretion over their own affairs, thus they have a very low tolerance to engage in lateral collaboration.

According to Hambrick’s work the life of a top management group is the result of the dynamic interplay of five core elements or forces (see Figure

9): composition, structure, incentives, processes, and the group leader.

Composition refers to the “collective characteristics of its members” such as tenure, age, functional specialty, etc. Structure “refers to the roles of members and the relationships among those roles”; in particular to the level of interdependence between them. Incentives refers to how members of the group are rewarded for performance, it includes financial as well as promotional rewards. Processes “consist of the communication flows, sociopolitical dynamics, and behaviors within the group” (Donald

C. Hambrick, 1994, p. 178). At the center of these four elements sits the leader of the group who as such has a great level of influence over all the elements.

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Figure 9. The elements of a top management groups (Donald C. Hambrick, 1994)

The TMG group does not exist in a vacuum, it is shaped by three contextual forces: 1) the external environment, 2) the organization’s strategy and form, and 3) organization’s performance. (Donald C.

Hambrick, 1994, pp. 181-183) The level of behavioral integration achieved by a particular group will depend on the configuration of these elements and on the actions of the leader. Michael and Hambrick

(Michel & Hambrick, 1992) found in the analysis of a large sample of

TMGs that “the degree of social cohesion and type of knowledge base within a firm's top management team were related to the degree of interdependence that the firm's diversification posture demanded” ( p. 9).

Hambrick's theorized that the development of behavioral integration in top management groups could be developed by the leader by creating tasks and structures that put the members on the top management group in contact with one another. He hypothesized that it is through

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this engagement that the members of the group develop trust and openness, which supports each one of the elements of behavioral integration.

Hambrick and his colleagues demonstrated the significance of the construct in predicting the performance of the organization. Simsek et al

(Simsek, Veiga, Lubatkin, & Dino, ; Simsek et al., 2005) found in a study of survey data from 420 companies solid evidence that supports empirically the conceptual construct of behavioral integration. In an empirical study testing the impact of behavioral integration on organizational decline Carmeli and Schaubroeck (2006) found that “more behaviorally integrated TMTs (top management teams) were perceived to reach better quality strategic decisions than less behaviorally integrated

TMTs.”, thus being more able to prevent organizational decline.

Link between my findings and extant theory

My findings complement Hambrick’s in pointing to the relationship between organizational needs and the purposive transformation of patterns of interpersonal engagement that leadership group may need to go through to fit them. Hambrick’s work points to the determinant role of the characteristics and behavior of the top management group in dealing effectively with its environment and sustaining organizational

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performance More specifically, Hambrick postulates that Behavioral

Integration is the key for strategic performance success in highly interdependent structures and a challenging external environment.

However, while identifying the factors involved, Hambrick did not articulate how changes in behavioral integration in response to shifts in strategic needs are accomplished. My findings provide one rich example of how these changes took place in a large organization.

My findings could be paraphrased using Hambrick’s framework as follows: the external environment (market competition) pushed for modifications in the organization’s strategy and form (high strategic interdependence), which in turn required congruent processes (trust, openness and communication). In light of these conditions, the leaders of the organization created an intervention to foster a level of behavioral integration that was specifically attuned to the new strategic needs.

There are several points of convergence between Hambrick’s work and my findings that can best be shown comparing the two models diagrammatically. The key aspect of this comparison is the link between organizational needs and required shift in the pattern of engagement of the top management group.

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Figure 10 The Top management Group in Context (from (Donald C. Hambrick, 1994)

The model of the conditions for Togethering (see p. 142) shows the direct link between the initiative of the group leaders and the contextual forces identified by Hambrick. The loss of market share is an element of the external environment in Hambrick’s model, the implementation of a global strategy and restructuring are manifestations of the organization and strategy form in his model, and the drop of the stock value are elements of performance . The initiative of the group leaders, the two chairmen, was clearly connected with the strategic imperative.

Furthermore, the search for connection through TururuCo, was congruent with the demands of highly interdependent strategy, congruent with Michel and Hambrick (1992) found that

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“… the greater the strategic interdependence of the company's businesses -- as in vertically integrated or highly related diversified firms—the greater the demographic indications of social integration116 and company-wide perspective among top group members.” (cited in Donald C. Hambrick, 1994, p. 183)

Given the conditions from which the model emerged one might argue that strategies that require high interdependence among the members of the top management group, are likely to induce ways of developing high levels of behavioral integration. Or in other words, the success in the implementation of corporate strategies that require high interdependence requires in turn a high level of behavioral integration within the top management group. Although this is not a stated proposition by

Hambrick it is congruent with the role of the environment in shaping the demands to the TMG, as postulated in his model (Donald C. Hambrick,

1994, p. 183).

Contributions of the grounded theory to the concept of behavioral integration in top management groups

The core contribution of this grounded theory to Hambrick’s work is the proposition of Togethering as a process for developing behavioral integration in top management groups, in congruence with felt needs for high strategic interdependence among a firm’s units.

116 Hambrick had not yet developed the construct of Behavioral Integration. Social integration was one of the concepts preceding the construct of behavioral integration, it refers to the attraction, satisfaction and social interaction of group members (O’Reilly et al 1989).

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In his conceptualization of the top management group, and later in his empirical work, Hambrick showed the significant value of behavioral integration of the top management team for organizational performance, and even though he made some suggestions on how to develop behavioral integration, he did not elaborate on the subject. This grounded theory fills that gap by suggesting that affective connections, attachment, bonding, etc., attained in togethering are foundational to behavioral integration and a fluid and efficient communication among group members. Positive collective affect seems to provide the ground for effective interaction and professional relations.

Implications

A great many management development workshops that have been designed to help executives achieve behavioral integration at a very high level, have not sustained themselves in part because that level of integration was not necessary or congruent with the strategic needs of the organization. Just imagine what the output of this workshop might have been like had the company not changed its strategy to one requiring more interdependence among the members of the top management group. One can imagine that the top leadership still might have found some personal learning in getting to know each other better, and as a result, might have been able to develop stronger bonds to the very top

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leaders. But such high behavioral integration might have been antithetical to a highly entrepreneurial and distributed strategy and might have hampered the pursuit of that strategy rather help it.

Togethering and Group Development Theory

The process of togethering (disruption-getting to know each other - communion), emerging from this study has clear echoes in the field of group development. What is interesting about togethering is that it emerged from the experience of a corporate group dealing with the life of a large organization and yet this group experienced T-group like developmental phenomena.

The togethering model shows how the shift in patterns of engagement of the top management group was grounded in that group’s development over time. As such the model supports the linear model tradition. At the same time, it also suggests a development close to the notion of punctuated equilibrium. In the following section I present the link between my findings and a well known linear model (Tuckman 1965) and also the model of punctuated equilibrium (Gersick 1988). I also explain how the model contributes to those approaches.

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My findings: the Process of Togethering

The togethering process begins with bringing together the entire leadership of the organization and disrupting its traditional patterns of engagement. The leadership is deprived of information, taken out of its n a t u r al environment, stripped of symbols of status, its members are overexposed to one another, the lines of accountability are blurred, there seems to be no purpose, and the chairmen have become highly personal.

There is a growing sense of confusion, frustration and anger among the leadership; they are deprived of all the reference points sustaining their traditional political and strategic patterns of engagement.

Now that the leadership is in a sense lost, the construction of a new experience of themselves as a group begins with getting to know each o t h e r . Through getting to know each other the leadership members bond to one another in a reinforcing loop between s e l f -reflecting, s h a r i n g the findings of that reflection and witnessing ones colleagues’ reflection. This bonding experience constitutes the catalytic event that transforms the confusion generated by the disruption into a sense of clarity about the purpose and meaning of the process. The leadership recognizes that the key issue is to connect with one another and as a collective. Not having information about the next steps in the process becomes irrelevant, the new environment is perceived as conducive to connecting, the lack of

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symbols of status allows for a personal encounter which is reinforced by the overexposure to one another, and the personal style of leadership is now seen as model of how to engage with each other.

Rather than chaos all these features of the process now provide the conditions for the development of connections. In this last stage, members of the leadership team begin to feel open towards each other, they are honest and trust each other, and they start to experience a growing sense of communion, and the conviction that they are indeed together in this.

Getting to Know • Exacerbation of Each Other • Openess normal affect • Bonding • T r u s t • Crisis • N e w a f f e c t

Disruption of Political Patterns Communion of Engagement

Figure 3 Model of Togethering

Togethering shows the redirection of the group’s emotional inertia from cynicisms and isolation towards a group affect of connectedness.

This work points to the significance of the transition phase, getting to

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know each other, in directing the affect of the group towards the desired organizational objective.

Two theories on group development

The process of togethering echoes to two distinct approaches to explaining and understanding the life of a group. On the one hand, getting to know each other, as a turning point in the life of the leadership group, resonates with the work of Gersick (1988) on punctuated equilibrium. On the other hand, the reorganization of affect that takes place during togethering has striking similarities with the linear/stage based theories of group development, in particular with the classical work of Tuckman(1965). In the following paragraphs I present the main features of these two approaches, explain the relationship between them and the model, and explore the contribution of my model to them

Group development by Punctuated Equilibrium

A line of inquiry initiated by Gersick(1988) posits that group development, in the case of small natural task groups, does not follow a universal sequence of stages as posited by other researchers (e.g.,

Tuckman, 1965), rather it unfolds in a constant pattern of inertia- transition-inertia until the conclusion of the time allotted for the task.

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Gersick named this pattern punctuated equilibrium, after the evolutionary biology term that explains evolution as a series of abrupt changes followed by moments of stability, rather than slow linear sequence of small incremental changes (Gersick, 1988).

Gersick’s model emerged from a grounded theory study of eight natural groups. The groups varied in composition (age, background, years of experience), size (8 to 15 members), and time allotted for the completion of the task. What she found was that all the groups, regardless of these differences, went through three distinct phases during the time they existed. During Phase 1 the groups settled on a pattern of interaction

(norms and behaviors) that remained unchanged regardless of its effectiveness. Then, right in the middle of their allotted time, the groups underwent a phase of Transition. They questioned their initial pattern, reached out to external resources, and defined a new pattern for task completion. During Phase 2, the remaining half of their time, the groups entered a new state of inertia based on the new pattern and did not change this until they disbanded (See Error! Reference source not found.). Gersick found that groups performing a task locked into a particular way of dealing with the task very early in the life of the group, even during the first minutes of their first meeting, and that this pattern remained unchanged until the concern for the completion of the task

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became salient half way through the life of the group and forced the group to revisit their strategy and procedure, after which the group was locked again into a new pattern, leaving very little room for modification.

Some groups were successful in the completion of the task, while others were not, but this was irrelevant to occurrence of a middle transition point. Gersick concluded that it is the quality of the work done by a group during the transition phase that determines its success in accomplishing a task.

P h a s e 1 Transition P h a s e 2

•First meeting •Revision of •Framework from framework framework transition •Little progress •Re-engament with •Inertia •Inertia environment •Completion •New work patterns •Facing consequences •Opportunity to alter of past choices group life

Figure 11 Punctuated equilibrium model of group development (adapted from(Gersick, 1989))

Link between my findings and extant theory

It is remarkable how well my substantive model fits with Gersick’s more general model despite the significant differences in size and setting of the groups from which the two models emerged. The group I studied was not a natural group, it had one hundred members and two leaders, there was not a clear product or result to be delivered, and its members were not

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allowed to make decisions about their process, since the process was highly structured and pre-determined by the consultants in consultation with the top leadership. The only similar characteristic was that it had a known time frame.

Getting to know each other, the process that took place in the third day of the workshop, was a catalytic event in the life of the group of executives I studied. All the interviews recognized it as a turning point in the dynamics of the group and in the level of engagement of individual members. Before this event there was a sense of being closed, while afterward, there was a sense of openness and trust. The pattern of engagement significantly shifted from strategic jousting to intimate dialogue among group members. In this regard I consider the exercise and its associate dynamics (what I have called, getting to know each o t h e r ) as the process by which the group transitioned from Phase 1 to

Phase 2 when viewed in terms of in Gersick’s model.

The group dynamic during the disruption of political patterns of engagement in my model reflects the state of inertia that characterizes

Gersick’s phase 1, for the group remained with the same pattern of engagement as was customary each time they got together: skepticism, cynicism, complaining, going through the motions and strategic jousting.

This in turn led to frustration and anxiety, because this usual pattern of

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engagement did not help participants to orient themselves to the new context they now found themselves in. Phase 1 ended with the critical meetings with the chairmen at the end of the evening of the second day.

The transition phase took place during the time the leadership group spent together in the boat on the morning of the third day. I see it as the transition phase because it was is at this point that participants tapped into a different experience of being together and a new pattern of engagement emerged, a pattern that remained unchallenged during the remaining two days.

Gersick’s Phase 2 in my model corresponds to the communion state, during the last two days of the journey. Engagements between individuals and as a group were now experienced as open and trusting, where everybody could speak their mind and there was a sense of being

“in the same boat”. This was consistent with the pattern of engagement first generated during the transition phase.

Contributions of my findings to group development by punctuated equilibrium

The core contribution of this grounded theory to Gersick’s work is the finding that large groups, without a task or autonomy, can develop by punctuated equilibrium as well. This expands the realm of applicability of Gersick’s propositions, where originally she indicated that her

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propositions were generated from the analysis of autonomous small groups performing a time bounded task. Thus, her findings “should apply only to groups that have some leeway to modify their work processes and must orient themselves to a time limit.” (Gersick, 1988).

The group I studied was not a task team, it had one hundred members and two leaders, there was not a clear product or result to be delivered, and its members were not allowed to make decisions about their process, since the process was highly structured and pre-determined by the consultants in consultation with the top leadership. The only similar characteristic was that it had a known time frame.

In addition, this grounded theory also expands on Gersick’s work by suggesting that development by punctuated equilibrium also occurs in groups working on emotional issues, and not only in task teams. In my case study the group’s work was emotional, and even though they did not have consciousness about it, the readjustment of the transition phase was in the emotional dimension. Gersick does not speak to this phenomenon. She focuses on the task the group is performing. But my grounded theory seems to indicate that the readjustment would be, consciously or not, congruent with the work at hand, be it a task with a deliverable or the work of emotional alignment. I would suggest that midway through its life span a group will do whatever is needed to

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rearrange according to the task or work to be performed. Thus, one might argue that even groups that do not have a task and do not have much autonomy they will realign their affect and interpersonal relations with each other at the midpoint so that it is in congruence with whatever the group purpose is.

This grounded theory also adds to Gersick’s model a mechanism that explains the movement to transition: group frustration with the task. The process of disruption, in my model, suggests that behind the inertia characteristic of phase 1, there is a movement from orientation to frustration in the experience of the group members and that it is precisely this frustration that combined with the knowledge that the life of the group is at its midpoint, that fuels the movement to the transition phase, which creates the energy to do something about whatever is happening.

Furthermore, this grounded theory suggests that the organizational context does play a significant role in defining what will constitute the character of the transitional point. The contribution from this perspective is the how of the transition point and coincides with

Gersick's concern about how the nature of the transition defines the quality and nature of the second phase and ultimately the outcome. The character of the transition point or event, does matter in defining the

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character of the phase 2 of the life of the group. In the case of togethering, it was the collective affect as a function of the organizational context, which triggered the transition point and defined the character of the second half of the life of the group.117

Tuckman’s sequence of development of small group

In addition to the significance of getting to know each other as the turning point in the development of the leadership group, my model shows the re-organization of affect in a linear sequence through three states. This sequence reflects many of the stage-models of group development. To explore this link I now turn to Tuckman’s model. Tuckman’s article

“Developmental Sequence in Small Groups” (1965) was an analysis of the extant literature on the developmental sequence of four kinds of small groups: 1) therapeutic groups, whose objective was to attend to the intra- psychic work of individuals; 2) T-groups, focused on the interpersonal dimensions of group life; 3) natural groups, whose objectives were the accomplishment of a task or project; and 4) experimental groups, intended for study and analysis of group processes. His model describes

117 This finding is also an answer to the question of how does the transition point is reached, one of Gersick’s concerns.

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changes over time in group structure (patterns of interpersonal relationships), and task activity (content of interaction). Its underlying theme is a four-stage (see Error! Reference source not found.) process118 emphasizing the development of group task performance through the resolution of interpersonal issues.

Forming Storming Norming Performing

• Orientation to the • Resistance to • Interpersonal task through: group influence • Resistance is structure becomes • Testing of and task overcome the tool of task boundaries of requirements • Group feeling and activities. interpersonal and through: cohesiveness • Roles become task behaviors. • Conflict and develop, flexible and • Establishement of polarization • New standards functional. dependency around evolve • Group energy is interpersonal relationships with • New roles are channeled into the issues leaders, other adopted. task. group members, or • Emotional • In the task realm, • Structural issues preexisting responding in the intimate, personal have been standards task sphere. opinions are resolved expressed.

Figure 12 Tuckman's Developmental sequence of small groups (based on Tuckman 1965 p. 296)

Link between my findings and extant theory

Although Tuckman’s model emerged from studies of small groups of between 8 and 15 people, it is evident that the stages he identified coincide to a large extent with those of my model. At TururuCo, the group members’ experience of loss and their search for information

118 This finding is also an answer to the question of how does the transition point is reached, one of Gersick’s concerns.

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during the disruption intervention coincides with the testing and orienting behaviors that characterize Tuckman’s forming stage. The crisis reached at the peak of the disruption process in my model is a vivid example of storming, where in-group divisions, conflict, and resistance to the task take place. The sense of bonding and being one among group members, which started with getting to know each other in my model, reflects some of the properties of the norming stage where group members develop a sense of cohesion and feel free to voice their perceptions. Towards the end of the communion process in my model, the group begins to explore and define the implications of their group experience for concrete action. This would be the equivalent in

Tuckman’s model to the performing stage.

In addition, Tuckman implies that in order to reach the performing stage, that is, to put the roles in service of the task, cooperative inter-subjective relationships between members need to be developed. And this is precisely what happened after the togethering process. Members and subgroups of the leadership group were able to perform and respond to institutional demands in new and more effective ways.

My model is a depiction of participants experience whereas Tuckman’s model is derived from a meta-analysis of publications on group development. My model describes the group’s life from the perspective of

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the significant moments for the participants, and not from the perspective of the observer.

Contribution to Tuckman’s sequence of development of small groups

The core contribution of my grounded theory to Tuckman’s model is that from the participants' stand point there is only a three stage sequence: 1) a “before”, 2) an “after”, and an emotionally significant (and memorable) event in between. Although the Tuckman’s sequence of group development, or many other sequences, can be identified in the togethering process, this grounded theory highlights the forces or mechanisms that trigger shifts in the group’s development from the viewpoint of the participants. In this sense this grounded theory focuses on the sequence of turning points rather than the stages of development.

It is the disruption of the traditional patterns of engagement that produces the anxiety and the resistance to both the task and the demands for new patterns of engagement, and ultimately pushes the group to rebellion or a crisis. It is the getting to know each other process that allows the members of the group and the group as a whole to experience a sense of openness and cohesion. And it is this sense of openness and cohesion which leads to a sense of communion and common endeavor.

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In addition, this grounded theory follows Chang et al (2003) in suggesting that linear and punctuated models are complementary in explaining the life of large groups . The punctuated equilibrium model shows the life of the group as lived by its members, where members have a clear sense of a before and after the catalytic or transitional event. On the other hand,

Tuckman’s model presents an image of the affective life of the group from the perspective of an external observer.

Togethering and the principles of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy.

My findings

Underlying the transformation of the group affect into an overall sense of connectedness is the intra-psychic phenomenon of individual group members’ accessing their core affect through getting to know each other, an interpersonal phenomenon.

Through getting to know each other the leadership members bonded to one another in a reinforcing loop moving between self-reflecting on one’s own life, sharing the findings of that reflection, and witnessing ones colleagues’ introspection (see Figure 5). This bonding experience constituted the catalytic event that transformed the confusion generated

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by the disruption into a sense of clarity about the purpose and meaning of the event. The leadership recognized that the key issue was to connect with one another and as a collective. A sense of openness and trust grew out of getting to know each other in this way.

Openness, trust and honesty comprised the outcome of getting to know each other. Participants recognized that a significant shift had taken place. After the experience in the boat, a period during which executives experienced a sense of openness and trust among the members of the leadership group ensued, which I have called the Communion state in the model. The question is then what about the process of getting to know each other made that shift possible. To answer this question I turn now to explore the foundations and principles of accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP) developed by Diana Fosha (2001), who postulated that at the core of the psychological healing process there is a need for a “deep authentic affective experience…between patient and therapist” (227)

Foundations and principles of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy

Following the work of Bowlby (1969), Schore (1994), Tronick and

Weinberg (1997) on the role of the relationship between mother an infant,

Fosha's therapeutic model is based on the notion that as secure

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attachment grows between the child and the caregiver, so grows the child's ability to “explore and make the most of opportunities for learning and growth... the more secure the child, the greater her/his capacity to tolerate, and thus benefit from, a variety of affective experiences -- positive and negative, mild and intense.” (Fosha and Yeung, 2006)

Fosha understood that the root of psychopathology is “aloneness in the face of overwhelming emotions”, and that a relationship with a trusted other “has the capacity to shift the motivational vector from moving away

(fear activating shrinking and constriction) to moving toward (curiosity activating openness and expansiveness)” (Fosha, 2006).

Informed by the work on attachment theory by John Bowlby and others,

Fosha recognized the origin of dysfunctional engagement with the environment (psychopathology) in the individual’s experiences of insecure attachment with a significant other. In this kind of relationship the individual has learned to suppress or deny his or her emotions for fear of losing the significant other, thus generating an automatic response of withdrawal in the face of overwhelming emotional experiences. This is what Fosha calls a red signal. When red signals are activated the individual shuts down to the stimulus from the environment and loses her capacity to engage with it in a creative and generative way.

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Healthy functioning of the individual emerges, on the other hand, from secure attachment with a significant other. Secure relationships are those were the expression of intense emotions does not threaten the bond with the significant other. In the context of a secure attachment the individual is able to fully experience his emotions and recognize them as healthy, which leads to the development of an adaptive repertoire. Secure attachments develop positive or green signals. In the face of an overwhelming emotional experience green signals are activated and the individual leans toward the experience with curiosity, openness, hope and interest, thus generating a healthy engagement with the environment. Because positive relational affect has been established as positive marker in the relationship, the dyad is motivated to restore coordination when disrupted, and is capable of transforming negative affect into positive affect (Fosha, 2001).

In securely attached dyads, disruption motivates repair and negative emotions are metabolized rapidly while maintaining relational connection. By contrast, in pathogenic dyads, disruptions do not motivate dyadic repair efforts but instead lead to disconnection, withdrawal and aloneness, with a reliance on self-rather than dyadic regulatory strategies to cope with the stress of deregulated emotion

(Tronick &Weinberg, 1997).

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There is an echo above in the description of pathogenic dyads of the traditional patterns of engagement in TururuCo, those that were manifested during the first 2 days of the journey. These patterns exclude emotions and by doing so the relationships between members of the leadership group become restricted and distorted as certain emotions, along with relational information they contain, become excluded from experience" (Fosha 2001)

In other words, an insecure attachment with a significant other creates an environment that is emotionally thwarting and it becomes the foundation of the “self at worst”. Incapable of being in touch with basic emotions, the self at worst has a very limited adaptive repertoire, it has difficulty engaging in a healthy manner with others around it. On the other hand, a secure attachment with a significant other creates an environment that is emotionally facilitating and becomes the foundation of the “self at best”. Comfortable with basic emotions, the self at best has an adaptive resilient functioning and is able to engage with others in a healthy way, even in the midst of overwhelming emotional experiences.

The significance of the self at best is that it can stay engaged with another person and regulate his/her emotions through the interaction, and thus sustain the relationship over time. Fosha and Yeung

(2006)explained:

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In the optimal dyadic regulation of emotion, each partner is open and communicates to the other, who responds openly in turn. The partners remain engaged and oriented toward one another even when things get difficult. Mutual coordination does not mean perfect empathy and flawless mutual attunement. It means being motivated to maintain connection and communication even in the face of discord and difficulty without withdrawing into oneself and closing up or putting up a wall.

(Fosha & Yeung, 2006)

The transformation process in AEDP

From an AEDP perspective the transformational work occurs in a five- state process, from defensive attitudes against emotional experiences to an experience of being one self and whole and open to relating (see

Figure 13).

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Figure 13 The 3 states and 2 state transformations of processing emotional experience to completion in AEDP (Fosha, 2006)

In the Defense state (state 1) the person withdraws from the situation in order to avoid the possibility of overwhelming emotions such as shame and fear, which in turn makes the person unavailable to real emotional experience and the engagement with another person (Fosha, 2006). As the therapist recognizes the once appropriate defensive mechanisms the patient is using, he “aims at building the experience of safety, establishing relatedness, bypassing defenses, alleviating fear and shame, and enlarging the glimmers of emotional experience that occasionally

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peek through” (Fosha, 2006). The therapist in so doing is undoing the patient’s aloneness.

This is an experience of a secure attachment with another, and in the light of overwhelming emotions, it generates a cognitive dissonance for the patient leading to an intra-psychic crisis that signals the 1st state transformation. During this state the patient announces the possibility of openness to be in touch with raw emotions or core affect, or to engage in the relationship.

In the Core Affect State (state 2) secure attachment creates the emotional environment that facilitates the patient making contact with categorical or primal emotions (such as grief, disgust, and rage), and being open to relating in the here and now (Fosha, 2001). The therapist engages in

“moment-to-moment attunement and mutual coordination” with the patient, thus allowing the former to experience “what previously felt bad—relating with openness and having intense emotions—now to feel good” (Fosha, 2006).

As a result of the full experiencing of core affect the patient feels

“stronger and more resilient” (Fosha, 2006). “There is a definite shift in the somatic sensory experience, frequently felt as sensations in the area of the ‘heart’ or as a sense of warmth or energy emerging from the ‘gut level’”(Fosha & Yeung, 2006). It is precisely here, in the 2nd state

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transformation ushered in by the visceral experience of core affect, and reflected in the resultant core state, that change happens. (Fosha, 2001)

The Core State (state 3) emerges from the new experience of self- in- relationship that the secure attachment with the therapist facilitated.

Fosha and Yeung (2006) provide a rich description of this state:

Characterized by a heightened sense of authenticity – ‘I feel at home with myself’, ‘I feel like myself’ --its affective marker is the truth sense, the sense the patient has of being in direct touch with the subjective truth of personal experience. Anxiety-free, core state is experienced somatically as openness, vitality, relaxation, ease, and flow. Rather than being rocked by any emotion, there is a prevailing sense of calm. Authentic core relational experiences of love, closeness, intimacy, and compassion predominate (p. 166).

In the core state, the patient is able to experience himself at three simultaneous and distinct levels: 1) he is viscerally in touch with primary emotions; while 2) experiencing feelings of being authentic, “like myself”, alive, real or true; and 3) he is able to have a core relational experience where both members of the dyad feel “in sync,” “close,” or “connected” with one another. (Fosha, 2001, p. 229)

As a result of experiencing a core state, patients --whether the focus of the experience is on primal emotions, introspection or on a relationship--

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gain “access to new information and deep adaptive coping capacities within themselves which allow them to respond more effectively to life’s problems.” (Fosha, 2001, p. 229)

In sum, through the experience of core affect “secure attachment enhances emotional resilience and optimizes the capacity to endure intense affective experiences without resorting to defensive exclusion”

(Fosha & Yeung, 2006, p. 166).

Barbara Fredrickson’s experimental studies on the role of positive affect in human flourishing119 support Fosha’s propositions on the function of secure attachment and positive affect in mental health. Fredrickson’s

Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions (Fredrickson, 1998,

2001) states that positive emotions such as joy, interest, contentment, and love, both 1) broaden the immediate behavioral repertoire of the individual (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005) and 2) build the individual’s physical, intellectual and social resources (Burns et al., 2008; Waugh &

Fredrickson, 2006). As a result, “the often incidental effect of experiencing a positive emotion is an increment in durable personal resources that can be drawn on later in other contexts and in other

119 Human flourishing “means to live within an optimal range of human functioning, one that connotes goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience.” (Fredrickson & Losada, 2005)

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emotional states.” (Fredrickson, 1998; Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh, &

Larkin, 2003)

Link between my findings and extant theory

My model points to the catalytic function of the experience in the boat during the third day of the journey, it even describes the micro process of getting to know each other and the significance of the interpersonal engagement for the participants. What the model fails to explain is why such a process triggered the state of Communion. I have introduced in the preceding section the work of Diana Fosha, because I see that the outcomes of the Accelerated Experiential-Dynamic Psychotherapy, describe very accurately what I think the participants of the journey experienced during the Communion state, namely openness, trust and connectedness.

Following Fosha’s work, the answer to my research question of how the shift in the emotional domain occurred seems to be that getting to know each other supported the development of secure attachments between executives; which created the emotional conditions that supported both the full experience of core affect and core relationships, thus triggering the experience of core affect, and opening up the individuals to each

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other and the experience of the journey. Through getting to know each o t h e r the leadership group was able to gain access “to new information and deep adaptive coping capacities within themselves which allow them to respond more effectively to life’s problems.” (Fosha, 2001, p. 229)

Let us explore the links between Fosha’s work and the model in more detail. What I have called the traditional patterns of engagement at

TururuCo, characterized by strategic and non-intimate interaction between members of the leadership group, seem to coincide with the distinct marks of weak or insecure attachments: low or no mutual coordination of affect leading to “negative relational affects, such as stuckness, discomfort, distance, flatness, and lack of connection”(Fosha,

2001, p. 233). Here again, insecure attachment disables individuals’ and dyads’ abilities to tap into adaptive resilient functioning, which is key for effective behavior in environments with high levels of stress and overwhelming emotions, such as executive board rooms.

The Disruption process of the first two days of the journey triggered once more negative relational affects among the members of the leadership team, thus moving most of them into the Defense state in Fosha’s scheme. However, the chairmen did not respond in the usual way.

Instead of dismissing people’s emotions, they embraced and welcomed the diverse and often contentious reactions of their executives during the

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discussions of the second night, at the Matapalo camp. In Fosha's terms, they did not sever the relations but remained present and available for their people, which moved the individuals to the first state transition, where they were confused yet remained open to the experience.

Another instance of the first state of transition was the hesitancy of one of the chairmen, the morning of the third day, to continue with the event.

He was not sure he was up to the task (crisis), yet he still had some hope in the process (openness to core affect).

On the third day, as executives reflected on their lives and shared with one another their joys, pains, and fears, in the process I have called getting to know each other, many of them got in touch with raw emotions, and they were welcomed by their peers who remained present, engaged, and allowed themselves to by touched by each other’s experiences, in what seems to point to what Fosha describes as mutual coordination of affect, a prerequisite for the full experience of core affect. The cycle of introspection-sharing-witnessing led to what I called bonding and Fosha calls connectedness or being in sync. Signs that indeed individuals were in touch with their core affect were the transformational affects typical of the second state of transformation: people were moved by each other’s stories, they were tender with each other, they cried, they were vulnerable and startled by the intensity of the experience.

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After the experiences of core affect and core relationships, that is as the process of getting to know each other, came to an end, individuals reported being more relaxed, and that anxiety and defensiveness of the previous night had receded. They now felt calm, open, caring and being cared for. They were not as concerned now about what was to come in the journey, and had a desire to enjoy the beauty of the rainforest and each other’s company. All these emotional states are, according to

Fosha, manifestations that the person is experiencing a core state, that is emotionally available, which is the state of healthy and effective engagement with the environment.

The communion state in the model seems to reflect the features of a core affect state, where the individuals reported a significant shift had taken place at both the individual and collective level. Now executives were able to relate to each other and the whole group in a way that was in radical contrast to the way they related prior to getting to know each other.

Furthermore, there were now clear indications of the ability of the group and individuals to do difficult exploratory work in terms of their feelings and thoughts about the leadership of the company, without fear of alienation or rejection from their peers or the two chairmen.

Fosha points out that with a secure and open relational experience comes the capacity to trust, which is a prerequisite to deepening

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intimacy (Fosha, 2001). This notion seems to explain the significant impact of the boat experience in creating a sense of trust among group members, and also the subsequent deepening of the conversation at a collective level.

Furthermore, for some executives this experience seemed to have generated green markers that supported their engagement beyond the journey, for they were able to display new signs of secure attachment with their colleagues, that is they were able to remain available to each other in the midst of overwhelming emotions and keep working together.

For an example of see the successful shift in the group dynamics of the

Latin American Board (see page Error! Bookmark not defined.).

Contributions to Fosha’s principles of accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy

The core contribution of my grounded theory to Fosha’s principles of accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy is idea that these principles, that is the transformation process and the principle of secure attachment vs. insecure attachment, and their consequences for human interaction, are manifested at the group level (small and large) as well as within dyads.

From the previous section it becomes evident that although Fosha’s work is bounded to the dyad --therapist-patient, mother-child, caregiver-care-

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receiver--, the transformation process and the principle of secure attachment vs. insecure attachment, and their consequences for human interaction, are manifested at the small and large group level. Following my grounded theory, it is apparent that there is some level of group emotional contagion that explains how, what from Fosha’s perspective should be a process limited to the dyad, reverberates through the entire group. The experience of core state does create green markers beyond the dyad from which it originated. This explains how people that did not interact during the journey could engage in positive affective coordination and transform negative relational affect into positive relational affect, through their interaction with those who did.

What seems to emerge from the point above is that green relational markers, while originating in dyadic interactions, can become positive markers for an entire group, if a critical mass of dyads has had a similar experience. To summarize the journey using Fosha’s conceptual frame: the successful mutual coordination between a significant number of dyads of a group, led to positive relational affect for both the dyads and the group, so that the capacity to trust and engage intimately was developed for the individuals in relation to other members of the group and the group as a whole.

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Togethering as ritual

The most interesting finding in my exploration of the potentially relevant literature is the similarity between my model and that of the ritual process described by Victor Turner (1969). The parallels made me wonder about the primal nature of the journey, and the process of togethering as a ritual.

None of the other three theories explains or conceptualizes to any degree about the logic of the third state of the model (communion). Hambrick’s work explains conceptually the link I found between strategic conditions and the transformation of collective affect at the top of the organization.

The theory of group development by punctuated equilibrium helped me understand the significance of getting to know each other in the life of the top management group. While Tuckman’s developmental sequence of small groups highlights the process of reorganization of affect towards task completion. Finally, Fosha presents a model of interpersonal engagement that explains why getting to know each other opened individuals to each other and the environment.

However, none of the above helped me understand the significance of the participants’ collective experience of “being one” or “in the same boat” after three days of confusion and intimate conversations. To explore this phenomenon I turn now to the work of Scottish anthropologist Victor W.

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Turner on the process of ritual (1969). His core proposition is that any human society, in order to function adequately, needs periodically to renew itself by cutting loose from structure (rigidity imposed by institutions, norms and roles) and experiencing communitas, in a constant dialectic process between structure and anti-structure.

Communitas is a relationship between concrete, historical, idiosyncratic individuals. These individuals are not segmentalized into roles and statuses, but confront one another rather in the manner of Martin's

Buber's "I and Thou". Along with this direct, immediate, and total confrontation of human identities, one can imagine a model of society as a homogeneous, unstructured community, whose boundaries are ideally coterminous with those of the human species (p. 132). Communitas is a state in which the boundaries imposed by hierarchy, roles and functions are dissolved, and the “generic human bond” is temporarily reestablished. Thus, rituals are enacted to create “liminal areas of time and space”, where communitas can be experienced and new models of living together can be generated, “some of which may have sufficient power and plausibility to replace eventually the force-backed political and jural models that control the centers of society’s ongoing life”

(Turner, 1969). Rituals have three distinct phases (see Error! Reference source not found.).

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Separation Margin Aggregation

•Symbolic behavior •The characteristics of •The passage is signifying the the ritual subject consummated. The detachment of the (indivula or group) are ritual subject, individual individual or group ambiguous; or corporate, is in a either from an earlier •Participant passes relatively stable state fixed point in the social through a cultural once more and, by structure, from a set of realm that has few or virtue of this, has rights cultural conditions (a none of the attributes and obligations vis-a-vis "state"), or from both. of the past or coming others of a clearly state. defined and "structural" type; •Participant is expected to behave in accordance with certain customary norms and ethical standards binding on incumbents of social position in a system of such positions."

Figure 14 Phases of Rites of Passage (adapted from Turner 1969, p. 94-

95)

Togethering is similar to the three phases of rite of passage described by

Turner. And the tension between strategic and non strategic engagement is also similar to the attributions of Turner to the movement from structure to communitas.

Turner’s illuminates my model at two levels. First, it highlights the function of s e p a r a t i o n , in my model disruption, as the fundamental process that brings all members to an equal footing, divested of authority and function, as human beings, not roles. This brings members to the liminal state, and it is there that a sense of community, the primal community, based on the primal human bond, that the members of the

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community experience a sense of communion, communitas. This new phase or state leads to the creation of and experimentation with new forms of being, which may or may not affect the original structure, and which enter into the normative structure at the end of the process.

In my model it becomes apparent that the disruption has all the traits of the separation state, and that getting to know each other and communion are part of the liminal phase, which subsequently progressively moves into the aggregation phase as the conversations become more related to how a journey will affect the company’s work and the implementation of the strategy, here the “spirit of Costa Rica” is born.

The second significant contribution of Turner’s work is an explanation of how the communitas experience affects the structure beyond the spontaneous or existential experience of togetherness or communion.

The experimentation that the liminal space allows generates new ways of engagement, which if relevant, will find their way into the norms and ideology of the community/organization, on what Turner calls ideological communitas. In the journey this phenomenon was manifested in how

“the spirit of Costa Rica” became a code of conduct, an ideology of behavior, used by the members of the leadership group to manage subsequent exchanges and behavior.

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Togethering is a process that implies not-togethering prior to the sequence of events that trigger it. That is, members of the group come to the process with a common history and experience of non-togetherness.

Togethering takes the group to a different experience. Arguably the true relevance of Togethering is not in the experience in the moment, but in the transformation of experience as members of the group go back to their daily activities. Togethering becomes a ritual of transformation, its ultimate value and relevance resides not in the experience of the moment but in the experience out of the ritual. In this way it connects life before and after.

Finally, Turner's work calls my attention to the fact that this is a natural phenomenon in healthy societies. Human groups need this generative movement from structure to communitas. My model shows how the top management group of a multinational corporation was able to renew itself by having an experience of communitas.

In summary, togethering is the same fundamental human process that anthropologists have documented in the life of tribes as rites of passage.

Following Nielsen and Rao (1990), it is a rationalization of a traditional human practice that evolved over thousands of years so that it can be used in the service of modern corporate objectives.

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Conclusions and modification to the model

The preceding discussion of relevant extant theories has led me to modify the grounded theory by clarifying and expanding either concepts or relationships between them (see Error! Reference source not found.).

DISRUPTI Strategic NG GETTING Need for POLITICAL State of State of State of TO KNOW Reverbera Structural PATTERN Communi Distrust Confusion EACH tions interdepe S OF on OTHER ndence ENGAGE MENT

Figure 15 Revised model of Togethering

Distinction between affective and behavioral states and interventions

The most significant modification of the model is the distinction between affective and behavioral states and interventions to modify them.

This fundamental distinction emerged from the comparison of Tuckman’s stage-model of group development and Gersick’s model of group development by punctuated equilibrium.

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In the emerging theory, there is a well defined sequence of a f f e c t i v e and behavioral states , a combination of interpersonal dynamics, collective affect and task performance. As I have shown in the discussion section, this sequence reflects the core features of Tuckman’s sequence of phases of group development. In the emerging grounded theory there are three states: 1) the state of distrust and strategic interactions through long held political patterns of engagement (for details see 0); 2) the state of confusion, manifested by rebellious behavior and withdrawal

(for details see 0); and 3) the state of communion, a collective experience of openness, trust and togetherness (for details see 0).

In addition, there are specific moments of orchestrated actions that disrupt and reorganize the affective and behavioral states, which I call interventions. Interventions are what Gersick has identified as moments of transition in the life of a group. The interventions in the model are: 1) the disruption of the political patterns of engagement (for details see 0); and 2) getting to know each other as the process that reorganizes the collective affect in congruence with the task of the group (for details see

0). What is of interest here is that intervention 1 is the transition from the life of the group before the journey, whereas intervention 2 is the transition to the life of the group after the journey.

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Conditions and reverberations as part of the model

The other significant modification to the model is that the conditions precipitating togethering, presented originally as antecedent to togethering, are in reality part of the process as the environment where the transformation of the leadership group occured. This change is based on Hambrick’s proposition that top management groups are both manifestation and creation of organizational forces, or what he calls the strategic and organizational form. Efforts to transform the collective affect of the top management group emerge from the very specific strategic and structural needs for higher interdependence, identified by the leaders of the organization as they navigate the interface between the organization and its environment.

In the same vein, Turner’s concept of normative and ideological communitas and Hambrick’s notion of top management group in context, helped me see the Reverberations, originally in the model as distant effects of togethering, also as integral part of the model, for without them the process, the ritual, would have no relevance, nor meaning.

The disruption of the political patterns of engagement, and getting to know each other.

The theories I explored, in addition to inviting structural modifications to the model, illuminate and expand on the understanding of the forces that

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might have been at play in the interventions that generated the shift in the collective affect of the leadership group.

On the disruption of political patterns of engagement

It is apparent now that the disruption originated at three levels:

At the level of top management group, following Hambrick’s model (see

Error! Not a valid bookmark self-reference.) one can see that the political patterns of engagement became obsolete as the contextual forces affected the structure, composition and leadership of the group. The leaders understood the need for a process congruent with the characteristics of the other four elements of the model.

From a ritual perspective, it becomes apparent that the creation of new patterns of engagement required first the dissolution of the conditions that sustained the old ones. The role of the ritual phase of separation explains the strong impact of the modification of the conditions (see

Error! Reference source not found.) in the dynamics of the leadership group and the ensuing crisis. The mechanisms and the specific conditions that had to be modified to create the disruption were idiosyncratic to the group studied, as each group organizes around a different set of symbols, structures and procedures.

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At the individual level, Fosha’s notion of the importance of individuals experiencing a care giver or positive authority figure in an unsuspectingly supportive way, highlights the significance of the emerging concept of the leaders journeying, in enhancing the disruption and creating a container for the negative emotional experience generated by it, which in turn creates the foundation for both the experience of core affect and communitas.

On Getting to know each other

At the group level, the process of getting to know each other had significance beyond the outcome of bonding. Gersick’s notion of t r a n s i t i o n highlights the developmental function of getting to know each o t h e r in the life of the leadership group during these five days. And because the moment of transition is always a readjustment of process in relationship to the task, it also helps explain the significance of bonding as a response to the need for behavioral integration.

At the individual level, Fosha’s notion of the function of secure attachments as the foundation for effective and creative engagements among people, provides a suitable theoretical framework for understanding the significance of getting to know each other as a process

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of developing and experiencing secure attachments and the development of green signals.

At the collective level and from a ritual perspective, getting to know each o t h e r operates as a mechanism for the creation of the liminality necessary for a group to experiment with new patterns of engagement and the experience of communitas. Communitas at TururuCo was precisely the collective affect congruent with the strategic and structural needs of the organization.

Summary of Discussion

In this chapter I have explored relevant extant theories in order to 1) position my model in the context of the larger academic discourse, and 2) to confirm and expand the original concepts. As a result of this incursion into the literature, and in accordance with the grounded theory principle of modifiability, I have gained a better understanding of togethering, which has led to the modification of the model in several respects (see Figure 15)

The findings and ideas presented in this chapter suggest a very tight connection between the capacity to respond to strategic changes, the patterns of relationship of the top management group, and the creation of secure affective relationships among the members of the group.

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Strategic efficacy requires strong behavioral integration of the top management group. The development of behavioral integration requires disruption and redefinition of patterns of engagement which occur by punctuated equilibrium. And the redefinition of patterns of engagement starts with the development of secure attachments at the top of the organization.

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7. CONCLUSIONS

Introduction

This final chapter offers conclusions from the study findings and reviews the contributions of the study to theory, method and practice.

The chapter begins with a comment on the achievement of the study's aims, moves to an evaluation of the study findings, limitations of the study, and ends with implications for future research.

Achievement of Study Aims

The purpose of the current study was to understand and explain the shift from distrust and reservation to openness, trust and unity, among the leadership group of TururuCo during a five-day journey through Costa Rica. This shift was seen by the company’s leaders as the most significant factor in the successful implementation of Path to

Growth, an integrative global strategy, and in having a more committed and inspired leadership group.

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The first part of the study yielded a preliminary model (see Chapter

6 ) explaining the shift in the top leadership group’s collective affect as a three-step process, where the group moved from disruption of political p a t t e r n s of engagement to getting to know each other and from there to communion, in order to address the need for higher structural interdependence given a crisis in market performance.

In 6 I explored relevant extant theories in order to 1) position my model in the context of the larger academic discourse, and 2) to confirm and expand the original concepts. As a result of this exploration of the literature, and in accordance with the grounded theory principle of modifiability, I have gained a better understanding of togethering, which has led to the modification of the model in several respects (see Figure

15).

The findings and ideas presented in this study suggest a very tight connection between an organization’s capacity to respond to strategic changes and the patterns of relationships among the members of its top management group. Strategic efficacy requires strong behavioral integration within the top management group. The development of behavioral integration when it has not existed before requires disruption and redefinition of patterns of engagement, which occur by punctuated equilibrium and the critical ingredient in the redefinition of patterns of

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engagement starts with the development of secure attachments between individual members of the leadership team.

Summary of the Emergent Theory

This study’s theory of togethering explains how the leadership of a particular organization resolved its need for high quality connections among its members in order to execute a global strategy.

The togethering process began with bringing together the entire leadership of the organization and disrupting its traditional patterns of engagement. The leadership was deprived of information, taken out of its natural environment, stripped of symbols of status, its members were overexposed to one another, the lines of accountability were blurred. In the experience of the participants there seemed to be no purpose to their meeting and that the chairmen were behaving in an unexpectedly informal manner. There was a growing sense of confusion, frustration and anger among the leadership; they were deprived of all the reference points sustaining their traditional political and strategic patterns of engagement. Now that the leadership was in a sense lost, the construction of a new experience of them began with getting to know e a c h o t h e r . Through getting to know each other the leadership members bonded to one another in a reinforcing loop between s e l f -reflecting,

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s h a r i n g the findings of that reflection and w i t n e s s i n g ones colleagues’ reflection. This bonding experience constituted the catalytic event that transformed the confusion generated by the d i s r u p t i o n into a sense of clarity about the purpose and meaning of the process. The leadership recognized that the key issue was to connect with one another and as a collective. Not having information about the next steps in the process became irrelevant, the new environment was perceived as conducive to connecting, the lack of symbols of status allowed for a personal encounter which was reinforced by the overexposure to one another, and the personal style of leadership was now seen as a model of how to engage with each other. Rather than chaos all these features of the process now provided the conditions for the development of connections.

In this last stage the leadership began to feel open towards each other, they were honest and trusted each other, and the leadership started to experience a growing sense of communion, that they were indeed together in this.

As the members of the leadership resumed their daily activities togethering reverberated in the life of the company by providing a language to reframe patterns of interpersonal engagement and foster connections, by providing a model to create connections across the company, by inspiring executives to lead with their personal style and

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beliefs, and by legitimating personal growth and interpersonal work as part of the life of the company.

Contributions to Knowledge

Theory A: Hambrick’s behavioral integration of top management groups

The core contribution of this grounded theory to Hambrick’s work is the proposition that the process of “Togethering” as we have defined it creates the foundation for the development of behavioral integration in top management groups, in congruence with the strategic needs for high strategic interdependence.

Affective connections, attachment, bonding, etc., attained in togethering are foundational to behavioral integration and a fluid and efficient communication among group members. Positive collective affect

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seems to provide the ground for effective interaction and professional relations.

In order to have open and trusting relationships among group members, that is behavioral integration, the group leaders have to provide a space for the development of affective connections among group members, a phenomenon known also known as social integration120.

Finally, this grounded theory also sheds some light on how the actions of the grou p l e a d e r might affect the behavioral integration of the top management group. The leaders create the structure and model the desired new behaviors, but the group must go through a transformative experience to internalize the new patterns of interpersonal engagement needed to support a new organizational form and s t r a t e g y .

Theory B: Gersick’s group development by punctuated equilibrium

The core contribution of this grounded theory to Gersick’s work is the finding that large groups, without a task or autonomy, can develop by punctuated equilibrium just as the small groups with clear tasks and high autonomy that she studied did. . This Gersick concluded that her

120 Social integration is a multifaceted phenomenon that reflects “the attraction to the group, satisfaction with other members of the group, and social interaction among the group members” (Smith et al, 1994, 417-418)

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findings “should apply only to groups that have some leeway to modify their work processes and must orient themselves to a time limit.”

(Gersick, 1988). The group I studied was not a task team, it had one hundred members and two leaders, there was not a clear product or result to be delivered, and its members were not allowed to make decisions about their process, since the process was highly structured and pre-determined by the consultants in consultation with the top leadership. The only similar characteristic was that it had a known time frame. And yet, our data showed that this group did developed through a pattern of punctuated equilibrium.

Theory C: Tuckman’s sequence of development of small groups

The core contribution of this grounded theory to Tuckman’s formulation is that from the participants' stand point there is only a three stage sequence in their experience of their group’s development: 1) a “before”, 2) an “after”, and an emotionally significant (and memorable) event in between. Although Tuckman’s sequence of group development, or many other sequences, can be identified in the togethering process, this grounded theory highlights the forces or mechanisms that trigger shifts in the group’s development from the viewpoint of the participants.

In this sense this grounded theory focuses on the sequence of turning points rather than the stages of development. It is the disruption of the

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traditional patterns of engagement that produces the anxiety and the resistance to both the task and the demands for new patterns of engagement, and ultimately pushes the group to rebellion or a crisis. It is the getting to know each other process that allows the members of the group and the group as a whole to experience a sense of openness and cohesion. And it is this sense of openness and cohesion which leads to a sense of communion and common endeavor.

Theory D: Fosha’s principles of accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy

The core contribution of this grounded theory to Fosha’s principles of accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy is that these principles, (that is the transformation process and the principle of secure attachment vs. insecure attachment, and their consequences for human interaction), are manifested at the small and large group level, as well as within the two person relationships she addresses. Following this grounded theory, it is apparent that there is some level of group emotional contagion that explains how, what from Fosha’s perspective should be a process limited to the dyad, reverberates through the entire group. The experience of core state does create green markers beyond the dyad from which it originated. This explains how people that did not interact on a close relational level during the journey (and there were

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some) could nonetheless engage in positive and transform negative relational affect into positive relational affect in later work.

Theory E: Turner ‘s Rites of Passage

The core contribution of this grounded theory to Turner’s theory of liminal spaces is that at in my case study I found the same fundamental human processes that anthropologists have documented in the life of tribes as rites of passage to be rationalized and put to work in the service of corporate objectives. In that sense, the Costa Trip was a rite of passage to engagement in a new corporate strategy clothed in the social technology of modern organization development (Neilsen & Rao, 1990).

Implications for Management Practice

There has been a long battle between the proponents of management focused on normative control and the proponents of management focused on rational control. Barley and Kunda (1992) trace this tension to the origins of managerial thought at the beginning of the

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twentieth century. This grounded theory suggests that the leader of any organization needs to pay close and simultaneous attention to both rational and normative issues and in particular to the relationship between rational strategy and the collective affect of the top management group. Every strategic choice, every structural modification, in order to be successful, requires a congruent collective affect and enabling patterns of engagement between members of the top management group.

In particular this study suggests that strategic choices that move the organization in the direction of higher structural interdependence require a collective affect of unity and communion, and open and trusting patterns of engagement. A competitive collective affect and distrustful patterns of engagement will get in the way of the implementation any strategy that aims at organizational integration.

The challenge, from a managerial perspective, is to be aware of how the traditional patterns of engagement of the organization may obstruct the implementation of any strategic decision, and to have the drive to create processes and structures that will transform the collective affect and the patterns of engagement in alignment with the desired strategic direction of the organization. The leader needs to be aware that these changes will require the leader’s full participation and commitment, and will ultimately demand changes in his or her leadership style.

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Implications for Consulting Practice

My model suggests that the transformation of obsolete or dysfunctional patterns of engagement in top management groups requires a process that opens up the space for the emergence of functional patterns of engagement. The creation of such space requires the consultant or intervener to be willing to disrupt the conditions that sustain the current patterns, thus creating a crisis at the core of the management group; a crisis not to be avoided but embraced by both the intervener and the leadership of the group. As the group is able to fully experience the crisis in all its dimensions --intrapersonal, interpersonal, authority, and group—it will naturally experiment with new patterns of engagement. The role of the intervener here is to support and enhance the experimentation rather than control or direct towards a specific outcome. If the intervener is able to do this, the group will experience and identify patterns of engagement that will be more aligned with the organizational demands, thus creating a blue print that will guide the group as it moves forward in the implementation of new organizational strategies.

This approach of disruption may be antithetical to many OD practitioners, who work under the assumption that the shift in patterns of engagement in leadership groups should start with the creation of

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harmonious conditions so that people can work together while experiencing little personal and emotional discomfort. This grounded theory suggests the opposite, that disrupting the status quo of the relationships among the senior leaders of the organization might be the single most impactful intervention when paired with the creation of a safe process to hold the experience. It would be under these conditions that an organic and sustainable response will emerge.

Implications for Classic Grounded Theory Methodology

In Glaser’s description of the conceptualization process (Glaser &

Strauss, 1967) it appears that the generation of concepts and the articulation of the relationships among them, ends with the completion of the sorting process, and that from then on it is just a matter of writing up the sorted material. In my experience, the conceptualization process continued beyond the sorting process. I experienced two additional moments of significant conceptualization. One was during the write-up of the memos, the more I wrote the more the concepts gained clarity and their position in the whole model became more evident. The other was during the process of understanding the connection of the emerging model with extant theories. Here again the conceptualization continued towards higher levels of abstraction and parsimony.

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My experience in this study suggests that conceptualization is greatly enriched by the writing process and the engagement with extant theories, which seems to imply a never-ending process of refinement and expansion of the theory.

Evaluation of Study Findings

In this section, I evaluate the emergent theory according to the theory's fit, relevance, workability and constant modifiability to reflect the underlying patterns and forces at play during the five-day journey.

The purpose of a grounded theory is to produce an integrated set of conceptual hypotheses, or probability statements, about the relationships between the concepts that comprise the theory. Its purpose is not to generate an accurate description of the phenomenon under study. “The conceptual idea is its essence.” (Glaser, 1978, p.7).

Therefore, grounded theory requires just sufficient evidence to propose a theory; it does not need evidence to demonstrate the generalizability of such theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, p.394). Instead a grounded theorist is concerned with rigorous grounding in data, and in making conceptual modifications when new data emerge (Glaser & Strauss,

1967). Constant comparison and interchangeability of indicators keep

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the researcher grounded in the data, and are the foundation of concept validation and theoretical integration (Glaser, 1995, p.14)

The evaluation of a grounded theory, therefore, is not based on the verification of individual hypotheses. Instead, a grounded theory is evaluated on the basis of the theory’s fit, relevance, workability and constant modifiability to reflect the social behavior of the participants in the substantive area under study and, particularly, their behavior in resolving a major concern (Glaser, 1978, 1998; Glaser & Strauss, 1967).

Fit refers to the validity of the concepts in the theory; in other words, how well they represent the behavior that is being conceptualized.

After the very first two interviews I strived to let the people and the data speak to me, rather than imposing my own categories and conceptual frameworks on them. This effort became even more rigorous during the analysis phase, when in addition to constant comparisons and interchangeability, I persistently asked myself the question, “Is this category grounded in the data or am I imposing the category onto it?”

Thus, although I have not taken my theory back to the actors of the journey, I can claim that the concepts and their relationships have emerged from the data, ensuring their fit with the data gathered.

Wo r k a b i l i t y refers to the ability of the grounded theory to explain and interpret behavior in a substantive area and to predict future

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behavior. Since the emergence of the theory, I have had the chance to share it with managers, organizational consultants and scholars. In the majority of the cases people could immediately relate my theory and the main concern it addresses, with personal experiences and extant theories. In one instance a CEO of a local company said, “Your theory does make a lot of sense, would you come to my company and help me open up my executive team?”121

Relevance refers to the theory's focus on a core concern or process that emerges in a substantive area and to its being conceptually grounded in data that indicate the significance and relevance of this core concern or process. Although not described in terms of a need for togethering in top management groups, there is ample manifestation of this managerial and academic concern under related concepts such as management alignment, cohesive culture, need for open and trusting relationships, effective teams, etc. This evidence points to the relevance of the main concern this grounded theory addresses.

Modifiability refers to a grounded theory's ability to be continually modified as new data emerges to produce new concepts, properties or dimensions of the theory thus ensuring its continuing relevance and

121 Field note O2605

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value to the social world from which it has emerged (Glaser, 1978; Glaser

& Strauss, 1967). I have already demonstrated in the discussion chapter that the emerging theory is modifiable through the use of extant theory.

I expect the theory will continue to evolve as new theory and data earn relevance.

Limitations of the Study

The purpose of this study was to discover a plausible explanation for the shift in the collective affect of a group of top executives during a five day journey to Costa Rica. Its purpose was not to provide a full description, or broader generalization of the shift in collective affect in top management groups. The limitations of the study are threefold:

The outcome of this study, as in any grounded theory, is “…an integrated set of conceptual hypotheses. It is just probability statements about the relationship between concepts.” (Glaser, 1998, p. 3) This set of hypothesis can be generalized after testing them under multiple conditions.

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has generated a substantive theory, for it applies to a particular setting – a particular top management group--and it is derived from the study of the phenomenon in a single setting –the journey to Costa Rica. To make this grounded theory a formal one would require one to sample theoretically a similar phenomenon in other settings.

Only one researcher has conducted this study, thus it has inherent limitations imposed by resources, methodological experience and scope of the study. Yet the rigorous adherence to the procedures of grounded theory buffers the impact of these limitations.

Areas for Future Research

The richness of a substantive grounded theory lies in the multiplicity of new concepts and their relationships. From the search for generazability through empirical studies to the development of new theories based on specific concepts, a substantive grounded theory is an invitation to further exploration at many levels. From my part, I am interested in the following three areas of future research:

The current study hints at a significant relationship between strategic organizational needs and the affect of the top management group. On the one hand, the implied relationship seems to be that strategy drives affect, while on the other hand the implied relationship

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seems to be that affect mediates strategy. Both of these hypotheses have significant consequences for what has been, for the most part, a blind spot in top management groups. A future area of study would be to explore the multiple dimensions of the relationship between strategy and group affect of the top management team, and the processes that influence one another according to specific organizational needs. Of special interest to me would be the interplay of these two dimensions in the generation of transformations that lead organizations to become life- giving institutions.

As a substantive theory, this emergent theory has a very limited scope, yet the main concern it addresses, that is, the need for high quality connections among members of top management groups, seems to be far and wide in the world of organizations. Thus, there is a pressing need to develop a formal theory of how high quality connections can be generated in top management groups, in the service of strategic and structural organizational needs. A formal theory would require the examination, through theoretical sampling, of other settings and processes that generate such connections, and what in this study has been labeled as communion, behavioral integration, social integration, communitas, or togetherness.

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At a more specific level, the constant references in the data to the physical setting, in particular, to the beauty of the natural setting as a factor in the transformation of group affect, seems to indicate another area of future research. The phenomenon to understand here would be the role of natural setting in the transformation of patterns of engagement of management groups. The anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that lush, attractive, and inspiring natural surroundings expand the capacity of a group to deal with and embrace differences, as well as the capacity to develop secure attachments. If followed, this area of research might provide useful insights for the management of change in complex organizational settings.

Personal Conclusions

During the journey of this study I have come to understand that the creation of a better world for all rests in the capacity of the human species to make organizations of all kinds, engines for the welfare of the world. I have also realized that I want to contribute to this endeavor by studying, teaching and creating spaces to support organizational transformation towards more effective, humane and generative institutions for their members and the communities they touch. I a m particularly interested in studying, teaching and creating processes that

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unleash the individual and collective energy of human systems to drive and sustain generative or life giving organizations.

We get involved in organizations to maintain our families, to defeat our enemies, to help our neighbor, to satisfy our ambitions, to subjugate our fears, our terrors. But when we arrive at an organization, when we start working, we realize we are surrounded by others like us, and it is our encounters and dis-encounters that build and transform the place we live in. Any organization is the living fruit of the interaction among human beings. A school is only a school when those that live in it meet.

Without them, the school is just an empty building, a book of norms, a contract on a desk. Schools are built in the multitude of interactions between students, teachers, parents, employers. Schools emerge when these actors converge.

We often forget we create the organizations we live in through our interactions with others, and we lose the perspective of our authorship in

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what constitutes and makes organizations a reality. And as we forget we become careless about who we are and what we do to others. The other ceases to be a companion, and becomes just an instrument for the reproduction of the organization. It is then when an organization becomes inhumane, and we, who live in it, die of cancer, heart attacks, anxiety or depression. Our organizations slowly kill us, and they kill us because they are no longer life-giving. And they not only kill those who belong to them, they also kill everything they touch.

And yet, organizations also host life-giving seeds, those that if recognized and nurtured will multiply and trigger the expansion of life all around us. Our organizations can become centers of energy that reverberate in our hearts, in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our cities and our fields. It does not matter if they are private or public, or that their purpose is money or God; if we can meet through love, then life will emanate from them. Neither purpose nor vision defines the character of an organization; it is the nature of the encounter among those who live in them that does. Encounters through love will bring life.

Encounters through the absence of love will bring death.

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whole self, it does not require of us to compartmentalize nor fragment our being. Such love welcomes us and cares about us122. And, this love co-exists with the world of politics, the world of strategies, the world of hierarchies, and the world of power struggles123. And these worlds are necessary to accomplish all the things that brought us together in the first place. It is the dance between love and strategy that keeps us alive and thriving. It is the tension between these opposing forces that sustains our organizations. It would be naïve not to acknowledge this reality, for it would deny the very nature of any human effort to satisfy any collective desire. The encounter through love expands what is possible in the strategy, and transforms pure force into power124, it is then when our organizations and ourselves connect with life on Earth and in the Cosmos. Our actions and thoughts can only move then in the direction of that which gives life, of that which makes us happy.

I now think that the transformation of the relational space in organizations is important because it is necessary to create the

122 My understanding of the power of relationships in organizational life is inspired by the work of Humberto Maturana and Antonio Varela (H. R. Maturana, 1999; H. R. Maturana & Varela, 1992) and Martin Buber (Buber, 1970) 123 My recognition of the other side of the polarity in human relations is inspired by the work of Machiavelli (Machiavelli, 1975) 124 The distinction between force and power comes from the work of David Hawkins (Hawkins, 2002)

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foundations for organizational change and transformation that would take any organization to a more evolved state. A more evolved state is to me a state where there is a collective awareness, within the organization, of being part and connected to the world at large125. This awareness drives the organization to act with a high degree of interdependence within the economic, social, cultural and ecological systems. This, I believe, will bring forth life-giving organizations.

I believe that the path towards life-giving organizations, that is, organizations that expand the well being of our species and the planet at large, organizations that expand the possibilities of existence for our species and the biosphere, lies in the transformation of the emotional domain in which the members of the organization interact. If the emotional domain continues to be dominated by fear, fear of competition, of scarcity, of the other, then the decisions and structure of the organization will only generate forms of co-existence that protect, fence, isolate, alienate. On the contrary, if the emotional domain is love, then openness, integration and transformation are possible for the

125 This statement was inspired by Wilber’s comment on the waves of existence as presented by Beck and Cowan on their work , Spiral Dynamics (Wilber, 2000). The basic premise is that the lower the wave of existence the more centered life is on the immediate needs of the self and less attention to the needs of others; the higher waves of existence integrate the other more and more until there is only a sense of the oneness in the universe. In addition, higher waves of existence contain lower levels, which means that a higher wave of existence can be more generative for the whole.

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organization as a whole, for its members and for the community where it exists. I believe the future of human kind depends on the capacity of modern organizations to operate from the emotional domain of love126.

Underlying my belief is the assumption that emotions, primal feelings, are the bedrock of all human endeavors and actions, and that the transformation of the human experience on this earth requires us to pay attention to the emotional realm of our existence as individuals and collectivities. I think this is especially important when working with the most powerful engine in the construction of human existence: the organization, a group of human beings working together.

126 My understanding of the function of love in human flourishing is inspired by the work of Teilhard de Chardin (Teilhard de Chardin, 1964)

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APPENDICES

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A. Sample of data, field notes, and conceptual memos leading to the emergence

of the concept of Getting to Know Each other

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266

267

268

269

270

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B. All Free Nodes Data Table

“Why was I insecure at From ITS to WE Passports the beginning”

A five stars hotel Gathering around Perception of Leaders company Chairmen

A signal Gatherings Personal and Professional

Absolutely unclear what Grouping Personal Disclosure the hell was

At the Beginning there Grouping Procedure Personal Disclosure and was Confusion Emotional Impact

Backpack Hidden Symbols Personal

Be the Change you want Historical Context Planning Team to See

become emotionally Holding Differences Positive expectations engaged

Boat Hopes Prophecies

Breaking Habitual I remember it quite Put on an equal foot

Patterns well

Building trust as they I thought it was Put through move along remarkable

Buyers vs Waiters Initial Mindset Quality of one-on-one

conversations

Chairmen as Leaders Insecurity Rational TururuCo culture and Facilitators

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Chairmens Expectations Insecurity vs. trust Rebellion

Chairmens' Modeling Inspection Journey Response to the Journey

Chairmens Prelude INVITATION Schedule

Changing Clothes It worked out well School bus Ride

Combination of factor It’s long ago Secret Destination

Congruency with Culture Joint Project Setting

Congruency with Journey Begins Sharing of Totems organizational culture

Consultant Mediation Journey Purpose Signal good

Content of Prophecy Journey Theory of Signs

Change

Created Symbols Leader’s ability to Skepticism

Change

cynic and believer Leaders in Contact So let yourself go

with Participants

Definitions Leaders’ Commitment Speaking Personally

to Change

Design by Symbols let yourself go Speculation

Dissonance Letter of Invitation START

Dissonance Theory Matapalo Started with insecurity

disrespectful Matapalo Camp Storming the Beach

Disturbing the Protocol Mechanics of Striped

Modeling

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Domain of the Problem Miami Stripped off

Done by the two Miami Beach Suddenly we’re standing on chairmen the beach

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C. Initial Interview Protocol

275

276

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D. Sample of questions of final set of interviews

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279

280

281

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E. IRB Approval

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