The Core Group
Why do organizations really exist? To serve customers? To return investment to shareholders? To employ people? Or simply to survive and perpetuate themselves? Or are all these goals merely the means to some other end?
Core Group Theory suggests that in real-life practice, three fundamental concerns (or purposes) drive most decisions:
1. Fulfilling the perceived desires and needs of a Core Group of elite people.
The makeup of the Core Group varies from one organization to the next. Some are huge, including hundreds of people; others are limited to a pair of key partners. Some Core Groups are stable; others in constant flux. Some Core Groups are good for their organizations; others are highly dysfunctional. Whatever its particulars may be, the Core Group is the source of the organization's energy and drive.
2. Fulfilling a Creative Imperative
People come to organizations to "do stuff" at a scale larger than any individual could manage alone. Organizations amplify our power; most of us can't realize our creative goals without them. An organization's creative potential determines the quality of its actions and the capabilities of its people.
3. What is the Right Thing to Do?
What do the organization's employees and executives tell themselves about
the appropriate ways to operate amidst the complexities of money, the
good life, fairness, quality, performance, society, and their relationship
with the rest of the world? For instance, some organizations maintain
the prevailing belief that people are basically good and need to be nurtured
to be developed; others, no matter what they espouse, hold the prevailing
belief that most people must be tightly controlled to get anything good
out of them. Either of these views suggests a “right” way to
treat people, and the organization will attract people who concur.
No matter how craven or criminal an organization seems to outsiders, the
people inside it are driven by their own conception of honor and service.
We cannot influence any organization unless we understand how its people
perceive their own noble purpose. Different people in an organization
will hear this “calling” differently; some will be oblivious
to it. More often than not, leaders
won’t respond to it. But the organization will gradually go where
the noble purpose leads it.
Find out more in this PDF file: The Core Group Brief See brief *.
I also have a PDF file of slides from my talks about the Core Group. See slides*.
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