Mind Control - CIA Releases Documents On Past Abuses
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_070627.htm
The CIA released 700 pages of documents that catalogued numerous Central Intelligence Agency operations that exceeded the Agency's charter. The New York Times reports that known "inside the agency as the 'family jewels,' the 702 pages of documents catalog domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists from the early years of the C.I.A."
ABC World News reported, "These documents open a window to another era, a time when the nation's top spies were running amok. But many experts say they also shed light on this era, on the questions of what the agency should and shouldn't be doing, at a time when the CIA is running secret prisons, using coercive interrogation techniques such as water boarding, and expanding its role in the war against Al Qaeda and other terrorists." The Los Angeles Times says some documents "seem remarkably relevant today, as the nation grapples anew with questions of how much latitude U.S. intelligence agencies should be given, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks." USA Today says, "As the CIA now endures criticism for its role in pre-Iraq war intelligence failures, it has exposed past flaws by complying with a 15-year-old request to disclose those activities."
The CBS Evening News said, "Number one on the list has been blanked out as still too sensitive to release. But look at number two. Johnny Roselli, the use of the Mafia in an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. That was in 1960."
The Washington Post reports in a front page story that the "hundreds of pages of decades-old documents declassified and released by the CIA yesterday revealed a 1970s-era agency in the throes of unaccustomed self-examination, caught between its traditional secrecy and demands that it come clean on a history of unsavory activities."
The CIA released 700 pages of documents that catalogued numerous Central Intelligence Agency operations that exceeded the Agency's charter. The New York Times reports that known "inside the agency as the 'family jewels,' the 702 pages of documents catalog domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists from the early years of the C.I.A."
ABC World News reported, "These documents open a window to another era, a time when the nation's top spies were running amok. But many experts say they also shed light on this era, on the questions of what the agency should and shouldn't be doing, at a time when the CIA is running secret prisons, using coercive interrogation techniques such as water boarding, and expanding its role in the war against Al Qaeda and other terrorists." The Los Angeles Times says some documents "seem remarkably relevant today, as the nation grapples anew with questions of how much latitude U.S. intelligence agencies should be given, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks." USA Today says, "As the CIA now endures criticism for its role in pre-Iraq war intelligence failures, it has exposed past flaws by complying with a 15-year-old request to disclose those activities."
The CBS Evening News said, "Number one on the list has been blanked out as still too sensitive to release. But look at number two. Johnny Roselli, the use of the Mafia in an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. That was in 1960."
The Washington Post reports in a front page story that the "hundreds of pages of decades-old documents declassified and released by the CIA yesterday revealed a 1970s-era agency in the throes of unaccustomed self-examination, caught between its traditional secrecy and demands that it come clean on a history of unsavory activities."
Pentagon Confirms It Sought To Build A 'Gay Bomb'
by Hank Plante
(CBS 5) BERKELEY A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.
Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."
Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.
As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."
The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.
"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviewing the documents.
"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soliders would become gay," explained Hammond.
The Pentagon told CBS 5 that the proposal was made by the Air Force in 1994.
"The Department of Defense is committed to identifying, researching and developing non-lethal weapons that will support our men and women in uniform," said a DOD spokesperson, who indicated that the "gay bomb" idea was quickly dismissed.
However, Hammond said the government records he obtained suggest the military gave the plan much stronger consideration than it has acknowledged.
"The truth of the matter is it would have never come to my attention if it was dismissed at the time it was proposed," he said. "In fact, the Pentagon has used it repeatedly and subsequently in an effort to promote non-lethal weapons, and in fact they submitted it to the highest scientific review body in the country for them to consider."
Military officials insisted Friday to CBS 5 that they are not currently working on any such idea and that the past plan was abandoned.
Gay community leaders in California said Friday that they found the notion of a "gay bomb" both offensive and almost laughable at the same time.
"Throughout history we have had so many brave men and women who are gay and lesbian serving the military with distinction," said Geoff Kors of Equality California. "So, it's just offensive that they think by turning people gay that the other military would be incapable of doing their job. And its absurd because there's so much medical data that shows that sexual orientation is immutable and cannot be changed."
(CBS 5) BERKELEY A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.
Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."
Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.
As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."
The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.
"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviewing the documents.
"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soliders would become gay," explained Hammond.
The Pentagon told CBS 5 that the proposal was made by the Air Force in 1994.
"The Department of Defense is committed to identifying, researching and developing non-lethal weapons that will support our men and women in uniform," said a DOD spokesperson, who indicated that the "gay bomb" idea was quickly dismissed.
However, Hammond said the government records he obtained suggest the military gave the plan much stronger consideration than it has acknowledged.
"The truth of the matter is it would have never come to my attention if it was dismissed at the time it was proposed," he said. "In fact, the Pentagon has used it repeatedly and subsequently in an effort to promote non-lethal weapons, and in fact they submitted it to the highest scientific review body in the country for them to consider."
Military officials insisted Friday to CBS 5 that they are not currently working on any such idea and that the past plan was abandoned.
Gay community leaders in California said Friday that they found the notion of a "gay bomb" both offensive and almost laughable at the same time.
"Throughout history we have had so many brave men and women who are gay and lesbian serving the military with distinction," said Geoff Kors of Equality California. "So, it's just offensive that they think by turning people gay that the other military would be incapable of doing their job. And its absurd because there's so much medical data that shows that sexual orientation is immutable and cannot be changed."
The CIA's favorite form of torture
If the Bush administration forces the CIA to drop "tough" interrogation techniques like waterboarding, the agency will probably fall back on a brutal method that leaves no physical marks.
By Mark Benjamin
Jun. 07, 2007 | According to news reports, the White House is preparing to issue an executive order that will set new ground rules for the CIA's secret program for interrogating captured al-Qaida types. Constrained by the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which contains a strict ban on abuse, it is anticipated that the order will jettison waterboarding and other brutal interrogation techniques.
But President Bush has insisted publicly that "tough" techniques work, and has signaled that the CIA's secret program can somehow continue under the rubric of the Military Commissions Act. The executive order will reportedly hand the CIA greater latitude than the military to conduct coercive interrogations. If waterboarding goes the way of the Iron Maiden, what "tough" techniques will the CIA use on its high-value detainees?
The answer is most likely a measure long favored by the CIA -- sensory deprivation. The benign-sounding form of psychological coercion has been considered effective for most of the life of the agency, and its slippery definition might allow it to squeeze through loopholes in a law that seeks to ban prisoner abuse. Interviews with former CIA officials and experts on interrogation suggest that it is an obvious choice for interrogators newly constrained by law. The technique has already been employed during the "war on terror," and, Salon has learned, was apparently used on 14 high-value detainees now held at Guantánamo Bay.
"I'd be surprised if [sensory deprivation] came out of the toolbox," said A.B. Krongard, who was the No. 3 official at the CIA until late 2004. Alfred McCoy, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has written extensively about the history of CIA interrogation, agrees with Krongard that the CIA will continue to employ sensory deprivation. "Of course they will," predicted McCoy. "It is embedded in the doctrine." For the CIA to stop using sensory deprivation, McCoy says, "The leopard would have to change his spots." And he warned that a practice that may sound innocuous to some was sharpened by the agency over the years into a horrifying torture technique.
Sensory deprivation, as CIA research and other agency interrogation materials demonstrate, is a remarkably simple concept. It can be inflicted by immobilizing individuals in small, soundproof rooms and fitting them with blacked-out goggles and earmuffs. "The first thing that happens is extraordinary hallucinations akin to mescaline," explained McCoy. "I mean extreme hallucinations" of sight and sound. It is followed, in some cases within just two days, by what McCoy called a "breakdown akin to psychosis."
It is therefore as insidious as some forms of obviously abusive coercion that are likely to be forbidden under the new CIA rules, like waterboarding, the technique of strapping a subject to a board with his feet raised and pouring water on his face to produce a sensation of imminent death. Legally, however, sensory deprivation is more nebulous than physical abuse, and that is what worries human rights advocates.
"People finally came to an understanding of what waterboarding really was, and once that happened, it was no longer sustainable," noted Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First. Just like waterboarding, Massimino said, extreme sensory deprivation techniques "push people beyond the brink of what they can bear, physically and mentally. Once you understand that, the veneer of acceptability -- the myth that 'it's not torture, it's just harsh' -- completely falls apart." But compared to the outcry over physical torture, she described a "deafening silence" about techniques like sensory deprivation.
The issue, said Massimino, is that sensory deprivation is relative -- she compared it to a "rheostat." Former CIA executive director Krongard made the same point about sensory deprivation's variability, saying that the techniques exist on a spectrum. The term could refer to anything from being left alone in a room to being subjected to complex get-ups combining goggles, earmuffs, mittens and darkened cells that quickly drive subjects into psychotic states.
On the low end, said Krongard, sensory deprivation techniques would pass muster with most observers. But he admitted that taken to extremes, some methods "would not pass anybody's muster." Sensory deprivation techniques taken to extremes would clearly violate the Geneva Conventions, according to international law experts, and would appear to be illegal under the Military Commissions Act, which bans "severe or serious mental pain and suffering." McCoy stated that based on his experience tracking down and interviewing subjects from the CIA's early research, some subjects never fully recover.
Sensory deprivation has apparently already been employed during the so-called war on terror. The prevalence of its use has been hinted at in images of alleged terror-plotter Jose Padilla and of detainees at Guantánamo shown wearing blacked-out goggles and earmuffs -- basic deprivation tools intended to soften prisoners up mentally by plunging them into a sensory void. A source familiar with the 14 high-value detainees interrogated at the CIA's so-called black sites and transferred to military custody at Guantánamo late last year, said the CIA appeared to have used some form of sensory deprivation techniques on most, if not all, of those 14 high-value detainees.
But the CIA's reliance on sensory deprivation goes all the way back to the early days of the Cold War. It is a big part of the CIA's 1963 "KUBARK" interrogation manual, obtained in 1997 by the Baltimore Sun. That agency manual describes sensory deprivation as a central tenet of coercive interrogations. For particularly rapid results, the manual endorses the use of a "cell which has no light (or weak artificial light which never varies), which is sound-proofed, in which odors are eliminated, etc." Following that plan, the manual says, "induces stress; the stress becomes unbearable for most subjects." The manual adds, "The subject has a growing need for physical and social stimuli; and some subjects progressively lose touch with reality, focus inwardly, and produce delusions, hallucinations, and other pathological effects."
As proof, the KUBARK manual refers to a raft of CIA-sponsored Cold War research on sensory deprivation, including studies at McGill University in Montreal and the National Institute of Mental Health. Subjects in that research were placed in isolated water tanks or confined to silent rooms on soft mattresses, wearing blacked-out goggles and earmuffs. In one study, subjects experienced "visual imagery somewhat resembling hallucinations" within three hours. In another study, only 6 of 17 subjects could last 36 hours on a mattress in a quiet tank that prohibited movement. The stress is described in the KUBARK manual as "unbearable."
The dark world of CIA-sponsored sensory deprivation research is plumbed in depth in the book "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation From the Cold War to the War on Terror," written by McCoy. "They've been doing this for 50 years," McCoy explained. His book discusses more CIA-sponsored research at McGill by Dr. Donald O. Hebb, who during the same era placed 22 college students in small, sound-proof cubicles, wearing translucent goggles, thick gloves and a U-shaped pillow around the head. Most subjects quit within two days and all experienced hallucinations and "deterioration in the capacity to think systematically."
The theory behind the CIA's fascination with sensory deprivation, McCoy said, is that subjects are so starved for stimulation that they will even crave interaction with their interrogator. "The idea is that they break down and then they cling to the interrogator, because you are hungry for stimulus," McCoy explained.
There is a debate about whether breaking down the subjects in this manner produces any good intelligence. Military intelligence experts raise serious doubts. Peter Bauer, a former senior interrogation resistance trainer for NATO, called sensory deprivation methods "coercive techniques that could produce false information, rather than actionable intelligence." Bauer, who was the most forward-deployed Army interrogator during Operation Desert Storm, said sensory deprivation can drive people to come up with lies "based on ending the harsh treatment. That is not an effective way to conduct intelligence collection operations."
But the White House has apparently adopted the CIA's logic, which suggests that sensory deprivation is not going to go away any time soon. When President Bush unveiled the CIA interrogation program Sept. 6, he called it "one of the most vital tools" against al-Qaida. "Part of it is that they really do believe these techniques work," explained Darius Rejali, a professor at Reed College and author of the upcoming book "Torture and Democracy," due out later this year. "It is a kind of hall-of-mirrors effect. All the information they are getting is all from coercive interrogation," he said. "Everything begins to reflect everything else. It all looks like it is making sense."
The White House has pledged to inform the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence of all future CIA interrogation methods. The upcoming executive order is supposed to be a public document and will most likely rationalize the CIA program in cryptic legalese. Congressional staffers said they expect the CIA to issue separate and secret guidelines that explicitly lay out for agents what interrogation tools are at their disposal.
If the White House is preparing a bid to legally rationalize psychologically coercive interrogations, it must do so in a new legal environment that gives administration attorneys little room to maneuver. The Supreme Court has ruled that the basic tenets of the Geneva Conventions apply to all detainees. And the Military Commissions Act contains an abuse ban designed to rein in administration attorneys who have used the most imaginative interpretations of the law to proceed with coercive interrogations. It is that law that requires the White House to issue the executive order that will govern future CIA interrogations.
But human rights groups were confounded when Bush signed the Military Commissions Act into law on Oct. 17 and announced that it would allow what he has called "tough" CIA interrogations to continue. "This program has been one of the most successful intelligence efforts in American history," Bush added proudly.
If the White House chooses to go the sensory deprivation route, it is unclear what, if anything, Congress could do to put a stop to it. There are limited tools available to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the committee with direct oversight of the agency, to step in. As one committee aide explained, "We don't have a veto over it."
-- By Mark Benjamin
By Mark Benjamin
Jun. 07, 2007 | According to news reports, the White House is preparing to issue an executive order that will set new ground rules for the CIA's secret program for interrogating captured al-Qaida types. Constrained by the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which contains a strict ban on abuse, it is anticipated that the order will jettison waterboarding and other brutal interrogation techniques.
But President Bush has insisted publicly that "tough" techniques work, and has signaled that the CIA's secret program can somehow continue under the rubric of the Military Commissions Act. The executive order will reportedly hand the CIA greater latitude than the military to conduct coercive interrogations. If waterboarding goes the way of the Iron Maiden, what "tough" techniques will the CIA use on its high-value detainees?
The answer is most likely a measure long favored by the CIA -- sensory deprivation. The benign-sounding form of psychological coercion has been considered effective for most of the life of the agency, and its slippery definition might allow it to squeeze through loopholes in a law that seeks to ban prisoner abuse. Interviews with former CIA officials and experts on interrogation suggest that it is an obvious choice for interrogators newly constrained by law. The technique has already been employed during the "war on terror," and, Salon has learned, was apparently used on 14 high-value detainees now held at Guantánamo Bay.
"I'd be surprised if [sensory deprivation] came out of the toolbox," said A.B. Krongard, who was the No. 3 official at the CIA until late 2004. Alfred McCoy, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has written extensively about the history of CIA interrogation, agrees with Krongard that the CIA will continue to employ sensory deprivation. "Of course they will," predicted McCoy. "It is embedded in the doctrine." For the CIA to stop using sensory deprivation, McCoy says, "The leopard would have to change his spots." And he warned that a practice that may sound innocuous to some was sharpened by the agency over the years into a horrifying torture technique.
Sensory deprivation, as CIA research and other agency interrogation materials demonstrate, is a remarkably simple concept. It can be inflicted by immobilizing individuals in small, soundproof rooms and fitting them with blacked-out goggles and earmuffs. "The first thing that happens is extraordinary hallucinations akin to mescaline," explained McCoy. "I mean extreme hallucinations" of sight and sound. It is followed, in some cases within just two days, by what McCoy called a "breakdown akin to psychosis."
It is therefore as insidious as some forms of obviously abusive coercion that are likely to be forbidden under the new CIA rules, like waterboarding, the technique of strapping a subject to a board with his feet raised and pouring water on his face to produce a sensation of imminent death. Legally, however, sensory deprivation is more nebulous than physical abuse, and that is what worries human rights advocates.
"People finally came to an understanding of what waterboarding really was, and once that happened, it was no longer sustainable," noted Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First. Just like waterboarding, Massimino said, extreme sensory deprivation techniques "push people beyond the brink of what they can bear, physically and mentally. Once you understand that, the veneer of acceptability -- the myth that 'it's not torture, it's just harsh' -- completely falls apart." But compared to the outcry over physical torture, she described a "deafening silence" about techniques like sensory deprivation.
The issue, said Massimino, is that sensory deprivation is relative -- she compared it to a "rheostat." Former CIA executive director Krongard made the same point about sensory deprivation's variability, saying that the techniques exist on a spectrum. The term could refer to anything from being left alone in a room to being subjected to complex get-ups combining goggles, earmuffs, mittens and darkened cells that quickly drive subjects into psychotic states.
On the low end, said Krongard, sensory deprivation techniques would pass muster with most observers. But he admitted that taken to extremes, some methods "would not pass anybody's muster." Sensory deprivation techniques taken to extremes would clearly violate the Geneva Conventions, according to international law experts, and would appear to be illegal under the Military Commissions Act, which bans "severe or serious mental pain and suffering." McCoy stated that based on his experience tracking down and interviewing subjects from the CIA's early research, some subjects never fully recover.
Sensory deprivation has apparently already been employed during the so-called war on terror. The prevalence of its use has been hinted at in images of alleged terror-plotter Jose Padilla and of detainees at Guantánamo shown wearing blacked-out goggles and earmuffs -- basic deprivation tools intended to soften prisoners up mentally by plunging them into a sensory void. A source familiar with the 14 high-value detainees interrogated at the CIA's so-called black sites and transferred to military custody at Guantánamo late last year, said the CIA appeared to have used some form of sensory deprivation techniques on most, if not all, of those 14 high-value detainees.
But the CIA's reliance on sensory deprivation goes all the way back to the early days of the Cold War. It is a big part of the CIA's 1963 "KUBARK" interrogation manual, obtained in 1997 by the Baltimore Sun. That agency manual describes sensory deprivation as a central tenet of coercive interrogations. For particularly rapid results, the manual endorses the use of a "cell which has no light (or weak artificial light which never varies), which is sound-proofed, in which odors are eliminated, etc." Following that plan, the manual says, "induces stress; the stress becomes unbearable for most subjects." The manual adds, "The subject has a growing need for physical and social stimuli; and some subjects progressively lose touch with reality, focus inwardly, and produce delusions, hallucinations, and other pathological effects."
As proof, the KUBARK manual refers to a raft of CIA-sponsored Cold War research on sensory deprivation, including studies at McGill University in Montreal and the National Institute of Mental Health. Subjects in that research were placed in isolated water tanks or confined to silent rooms on soft mattresses, wearing blacked-out goggles and earmuffs. In one study, subjects experienced "visual imagery somewhat resembling hallucinations" within three hours. In another study, only 6 of 17 subjects could last 36 hours on a mattress in a quiet tank that prohibited movement. The stress is described in the KUBARK manual as "unbearable."
The dark world of CIA-sponsored sensory deprivation research is plumbed in depth in the book "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation From the Cold War to the War on Terror," written by McCoy. "They've been doing this for 50 years," McCoy explained. His book discusses more CIA-sponsored research at McGill by Dr. Donald O. Hebb, who during the same era placed 22 college students in small, sound-proof cubicles, wearing translucent goggles, thick gloves and a U-shaped pillow around the head. Most subjects quit within two days and all experienced hallucinations and "deterioration in the capacity to think systematically."
The theory behind the CIA's fascination with sensory deprivation, McCoy said, is that subjects are so starved for stimulation that they will even crave interaction with their interrogator. "The idea is that they break down and then they cling to the interrogator, because you are hungry for stimulus," McCoy explained.
There is a debate about whether breaking down the subjects in this manner produces any good intelligence. Military intelligence experts raise serious doubts. Peter Bauer, a former senior interrogation resistance trainer for NATO, called sensory deprivation methods "coercive techniques that could produce false information, rather than actionable intelligence." Bauer, who was the most forward-deployed Army interrogator during Operation Desert Storm, said sensory deprivation can drive people to come up with lies "based on ending the harsh treatment. That is not an effective way to conduct intelligence collection operations."
But the White House has apparently adopted the CIA's logic, which suggests that sensory deprivation is not going to go away any time soon. When President Bush unveiled the CIA interrogation program Sept. 6, he called it "one of the most vital tools" against al-Qaida. "Part of it is that they really do believe these techniques work," explained Darius Rejali, a professor at Reed College and author of the upcoming book "Torture and Democracy," due out later this year. "It is a kind of hall-of-mirrors effect. All the information they are getting is all from coercive interrogation," he said. "Everything begins to reflect everything else. It all looks like it is making sense."
The White House has pledged to inform the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence of all future CIA interrogation methods. The upcoming executive order is supposed to be a public document and will most likely rationalize the CIA program in cryptic legalese. Congressional staffers said they expect the CIA to issue separate and secret guidelines that explicitly lay out for agents what interrogation tools are at their disposal.
If the White House is preparing a bid to legally rationalize psychologically coercive interrogations, it must do so in a new legal environment that gives administration attorneys little room to maneuver. The Supreme Court has ruled that the basic tenets of the Geneva Conventions apply to all detainees. And the Military Commissions Act contains an abuse ban designed to rein in administration attorneys who have used the most imaginative interpretations of the law to proceed with coercive interrogations. It is that law that requires the White House to issue the executive order that will govern future CIA interrogations.
But human rights groups were confounded when Bush signed the Military Commissions Act into law on Oct. 17 and announced that it would allow what he has called "tough" CIA interrogations to continue. "This program has been one of the most successful intelligence efforts in American history," Bush added proudly.
If the White House chooses to go the sensory deprivation route, it is unclear what, if anything, Congress could do to put a stop to it. There are limited tools available to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the committee with direct oversight of the agency, to step in. As one committee aide explained, "We don't have a veto over it."
-- By Mark Benjamin
The Cultural Web - an interesting concept when applied to cults
What is the first thing that pops in your mind when you hear the term corporate culture? A great many people refer to the classic phrase coined by the McKinsey organization, that culture is “how we do things around here”. And while that may be true, there are so many elements that go into determining what you do and why, that this definition only scratches the surface.
Whether you can define it or not, you know that culture exists within your team or your organization. It’s that ethereal something that hangs in the air and influences how work gets done, critically affects project success or failure, says who fits in and who doesn't, and determines the overall mood of the workplace.
Culture often becomes the focus of attention during periods of organizational change - when companies merge and their cultures clash, for example, or when growth and other strategic change mean that the existing culture becomes inappropriate, and hinders rather than supports progress. In more static environments, cultural issues may be responsible for low morale, absenteeism or high staff turnover, with all of the adverse effects those can have on productivity.
So, for all its elusiveness, corporate culture can have a huge impact on an organization’s work environment and output. This is why so much research has been done to pinpoint exactly what makes an effective corporate culture, and how to go about changing a culture that isn’t working.
Fortunately, while corporate culture can be elusive, approaches have been developed to help us look at it. Such approaches can play a key role in formulating strategy or planning change.
The Cultural Web, developed by Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes in 1992, provides one such approach for looking at and changing your organization’s culture. Using it, you can expose cultural assumptions and practices, and set to work aligning organizational elements with one another, and with your strategy.
Elements of the Cultural Web
The Cultural Web identifies six interrelated elements that help to make up what Johnson and Scholes call the “paradigm” – the pattern or model – of the work environment. By analyzing the factors in each, you can begin to see the bigger picture of your culture: what is working, what isn’t working, and what needs to be changed. The six elements are:
1. Stories – The past events and people talked about inside and outside the company. Who and what the company chooses to immortalize says a great deal about what it values, and perceives as great behavior.
2. Rituals and Routines – The daily behavior and actions of people that signal acceptable behavior. This determines what is expected to happen in given situations, and what is valued by management.
3. Symbols – The visual representations of the company including logos, how plush the offices are, and the formal or informal dress codes.
4. Organizational Structure – This includes both the structure defined by the organization chart, and the unwritten lines of power and influence that indicate whose contributions are most valued.
5. Control Systems – The ways that the organization is controlled. These include financial systems, quality systems, and rewards (including the way they are measured and distributed within the organization.)
6. Power Structures – The pockets of real power in the company. This may involve one or two key senior executives, a whole group of executives, or even a department. The key is that these people have the greatest amount of influence on decisions, operations, and strategic direction.
These elements are represented graphically as six semi-overlapping circles (see Figure 1 below), which together influence the cultural paradigm.
Using the Cultural Web
We use the Cultural Web firstly to look at organizational culture as it is now, secondly to look at how we want the culture to be, and thirdly to identify the differences between the two. These differences are the changes we need to make to achieve the high-performance culture that we want.
1. Analyzing Culture As It Is Now:
Start by looking at each element separately, and asking yourself questions that help you determine the dominant factors in each element. Elements and related questions are shown below, illustrated with the example of a bodywork repair company.
Stories
* What stories do people currently tell about your organization?
* What reputation is communicated amongst your customers and other stakeholders?
* What do these stories say about what your organization believes in?
* What do employees talk about when they think of the history of the company?
* What stories do they tell new people who join the company?
* What heroes, villains and mavericks appear in these stories?
Examples (car bodywork repair company):
* We are known as having high customer complaints, shoddy work.
* Staff members talk about the founder starting the company with a $1,000 loan.
* The message is that we do things the cheapest way we can.
Rituals and Routines
* What do customers expect when they walk in?
* What do employees expect?
* What would be immediately obvious if changed?
* What behavior do these routines encourage?
* When a new problem is encountered, what rules do people apply when they solve it?
* What core beliefs do these rituals reflect?
Examples:
* Customers expect a newspaper and coffee whilst they wait, or a ride to work.
* Employees expect to have their time cards examined very carefully.
* There's lots of talk about money, and especially about how to cut costs.
Symbols
* Is company-specific jargon or language used? How well known and usable by all is this?
* Are there any status symbols used?
* What image is associated with your organization, looking at this from the separate viewpoints of clients and staff?
Examples:
* Bright red shuttle vans.
* Bright red courtesy cars – compact, economy cars.
* The boss wears overalls, not a suit.
Organizational Structure
* Is the structure flat or hierarchical? Formal or informal? Organic or mechanistic?
* Where are the formal lines of authority?
* Are there informal lines?
Examples:
* Flat structure – Owner, Head Mechanic, Mechanics, Reception.
* The receptionist is the owner’s wife, so she goes straight to him with some customer complaints.
* It’s each mechanic for himself – no sharing of tools or supplies, and little teamwork.
Control Systems
* What process or procedure has the strongest controls? Weakest controls?
* Is the company generally loosely or tightly controlled?
* Do employees get rewarded for good work or penalized for poor work?
* What reports are issued to keep control of operations, finance, etc...?
Examples:
* Costs are highly controlled, and customers are billed for parts down to the last screw.
* Quality is not emphasized. Getting the work done with the least amount of direct costs is the goal.
* Employees are docked pay if their quotes/estimates are more than 10% out.
Power Structures
* Who has the real power in the organization?
* What do these people believe and champion within the organization?
* Who makes or influences decisions?
* How is this power used or abused?
Example:
* The owner believes in a low cost, high profit model, and is prepared to lose repeat customers.
* The threat of docked pay keeps mechanics working with this model.
As these questions are answered, you start to build up a picture of what is influencing your corporate culture. Now you need to look at the web as a whole and make some generalized statements regarding the overall culture.
These statements about your corporate culture should:
* Describe the culture; and
* Identify the factors that are prevalent throughout the web.
In our example the common theme is tight cost control at the expense of quality, and at the expense of customer and employee satisfaction.
2. Analyzing Culture as You Want it to Be:
With the picture of your current cultural web complete, now’s the time to repeat the process, thinking about the culture that you want.
Starting from your organization's strategy, think about how you want the organization's culture to look, if everything was to be correctly aligned, and if you were to have the ideal corporate culture.
3. Mapping the Differences Between the Two:
Now compare your two Cultural Webs (current and desired), and identify the differences between the two. Considering the organization’s strategic aims and objectives:
* What cultural strengths have been highlighted by your analysis of the current culture?
* What factors are hindering your strategy or are misaligned with one another?
* What factors are detrimental to the health and productivity of your workplace?
* What factors will you encourage and reinforce?
* Which factors do you need to change?
* What new beliefs and behaviors do you need to promote?
Key points:
Used in this way, Johnson and Scholes' Cultural Web helps you analyze your current culture, and identify what needs to stay, go or be added to if you're to achieve your strategic goals.
Implementing cultural changes is not simple: it involves re-moulding values, beliefs and behavior, and it’s a major change management challenge, taking a great deal of time and hard work from everyone involved. By providing a framework for analyzing the current culture, and designing changes, Johnson and Scholes' Cultural Web provides a good foundation for the difficult business of changing organization culture. Using it, you can create a cultural environment that encourages success, supports the organization’s objectives and, all-in-all, makes for a better place to work.
Whether you can define it or not, you know that culture exists within your team or your organization. It’s that ethereal something that hangs in the air and influences how work gets done, critically affects project success or failure, says who fits in and who doesn't, and determines the overall mood of the workplace.
Culture often becomes the focus of attention during periods of organizational change - when companies merge and their cultures clash, for example, or when growth and other strategic change mean that the existing culture becomes inappropriate, and hinders rather than supports progress. In more static environments, cultural issues may be responsible for low morale, absenteeism or high staff turnover, with all of the adverse effects those can have on productivity.
So, for all its elusiveness, corporate culture can have a huge impact on an organization’s work environment and output. This is why so much research has been done to pinpoint exactly what makes an effective corporate culture, and how to go about changing a culture that isn’t working.
Fortunately, while corporate culture can be elusive, approaches have been developed to help us look at it. Such approaches can play a key role in formulating strategy or planning change.
The Cultural Web, developed by Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes in 1992, provides one such approach for looking at and changing your organization’s culture. Using it, you can expose cultural assumptions and practices, and set to work aligning organizational elements with one another, and with your strategy.
Elements of the Cultural Web
The Cultural Web identifies six interrelated elements that help to make up what Johnson and Scholes call the “paradigm” – the pattern or model – of the work environment. By analyzing the factors in each, you can begin to see the bigger picture of your culture: what is working, what isn’t working, and what needs to be changed. The six elements are:
1. Stories – The past events and people talked about inside and outside the company. Who and what the company chooses to immortalize says a great deal about what it values, and perceives as great behavior.
2. Rituals and Routines – The daily behavior and actions of people that signal acceptable behavior. This determines what is expected to happen in given situations, and what is valued by management.
3. Symbols – The visual representations of the company including logos, how plush the offices are, and the formal or informal dress codes.
4. Organizational Structure – This includes both the structure defined by the organization chart, and the unwritten lines of power and influence that indicate whose contributions are most valued.
5. Control Systems – The ways that the organization is controlled. These include financial systems, quality systems, and rewards (including the way they are measured and distributed within the organization.)
6. Power Structures – The pockets of real power in the company. This may involve one or two key senior executives, a whole group of executives, or even a department. The key is that these people have the greatest amount of influence on decisions, operations, and strategic direction.
These elements are represented graphically as six semi-overlapping circles (see Figure 1 below), which together influence the cultural paradigm.
Using the Cultural Web
We use the Cultural Web firstly to look at organizational culture as it is now, secondly to look at how we want the culture to be, and thirdly to identify the differences between the two. These differences are the changes we need to make to achieve the high-performance culture that we want.
1. Analyzing Culture As It Is Now:
Start by looking at each element separately, and asking yourself questions that help you determine the dominant factors in each element. Elements and related questions are shown below, illustrated with the example of a bodywork repair company.
Stories
* What stories do people currently tell about your organization?
* What reputation is communicated amongst your customers and other stakeholders?
* What do these stories say about what your organization believes in?
* What do employees talk about when they think of the history of the company?
* What stories do they tell new people who join the company?
* What heroes, villains and mavericks appear in these stories?
Examples (car bodywork repair company):
* We are known as having high customer complaints, shoddy work.
* Staff members talk about the founder starting the company with a $1,000 loan.
* The message is that we do things the cheapest way we can.
Rituals and Routines
* What do customers expect when they walk in?
* What do employees expect?
* What would be immediately obvious if changed?
* What behavior do these routines encourage?
* When a new problem is encountered, what rules do people apply when they solve it?
* What core beliefs do these rituals reflect?
Examples:
* Customers expect a newspaper and coffee whilst they wait, or a ride to work.
* Employees expect to have their time cards examined very carefully.
* There's lots of talk about money, and especially about how to cut costs.
Symbols
* Is company-specific jargon or language used? How well known and usable by all is this?
* Are there any status symbols used?
* What image is associated with your organization, looking at this from the separate viewpoints of clients and staff?
Examples:
* Bright red shuttle vans.
* Bright red courtesy cars – compact, economy cars.
* The boss wears overalls, not a suit.
Organizational Structure
* Is the structure flat or hierarchical? Formal or informal? Organic or mechanistic?
* Where are the formal lines of authority?
* Are there informal lines?
Examples:
* Flat structure – Owner, Head Mechanic, Mechanics, Reception.
* The receptionist is the owner’s wife, so she goes straight to him with some customer complaints.
* It’s each mechanic for himself – no sharing of tools or supplies, and little teamwork.
Control Systems
* What process or procedure has the strongest controls? Weakest controls?
* Is the company generally loosely or tightly controlled?
* Do employees get rewarded for good work or penalized for poor work?
* What reports are issued to keep control of operations, finance, etc...?
Examples:
* Costs are highly controlled, and customers are billed for parts down to the last screw.
* Quality is not emphasized. Getting the work done with the least amount of direct costs is the goal.
* Employees are docked pay if their quotes/estimates are more than 10% out.
Power Structures
* Who has the real power in the organization?
* What do these people believe and champion within the organization?
* Who makes or influences decisions?
* How is this power used or abused?
Example:
* The owner believes in a low cost, high profit model, and is prepared to lose repeat customers.
* The threat of docked pay keeps mechanics working with this model.
As these questions are answered, you start to build up a picture of what is influencing your corporate culture. Now you need to look at the web as a whole and make some generalized statements regarding the overall culture.
These statements about your corporate culture should:
* Describe the culture; and
* Identify the factors that are prevalent throughout the web.
In our example the common theme is tight cost control at the expense of quality, and at the expense of customer and employee satisfaction.
2. Analyzing Culture as You Want it to Be:
With the picture of your current cultural web complete, now’s the time to repeat the process, thinking about the culture that you want.
Starting from your organization's strategy, think about how you want the organization's culture to look, if everything was to be correctly aligned, and if you were to have the ideal corporate culture.
3. Mapping the Differences Between the Two:
Now compare your two Cultural Webs (current and desired), and identify the differences between the two. Considering the organization’s strategic aims and objectives:
* What cultural strengths have been highlighted by your analysis of the current culture?
* What factors are hindering your strategy or are misaligned with one another?
* What factors are detrimental to the health and productivity of your workplace?
* What factors will you encourage and reinforce?
* Which factors do you need to change?
* What new beliefs and behaviors do you need to promote?
Key points:
Used in this way, Johnson and Scholes' Cultural Web helps you analyze your current culture, and identify what needs to stay, go or be added to if you're to achieve your strategic goals.
Implementing cultural changes is not simple: it involves re-moulding values, beliefs and behavior, and it’s a major change management challenge, taking a great deal of time and hard work from everyone involved. By providing a framework for analyzing the current culture, and designing changes, Johnson and Scholes' Cultural Web provides a good foundation for the difficult business of changing organization culture. Using it, you can create a cultural environment that encourages success, supports the organization’s objectives and, all-in-all, makes for a better place to work.
|
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
