Extended Profilers
Many of the standard models and frameworks used in business management
owe their origin to research conducted with a US American or Anglo-Saxon
signature. We do not wish to overly criticize well established models
like Myers-Briggs MBTI personality profiling, Belbin's Team Analysis or
Kirton's KAI Adaptation Inventory. Out interest is to see if we can extend
these models so that they might be more appropriate when seeking to transfer
them to other cultures or multi-cultural situations.
For instance, we know from our own cross-cultural profiling instruments
that US and UK managers tend to be more individualistic and Japanese managers
more team-oriented. So, as long as American managers remain in the US
managing Americans and the Japanese stay in Japan, then presumably there
is no problem. But in today’s multi-cultural world, an American
leader could be running a team overseas with Korean, Japanese and French
members.
Our concern is that, too often, these frameworks to categorize people
according to mutual exclusivity. Why, if you are a “judging”
person, can you not also be a “perceiving person”? Why, if
you are an “individualist”, can you not also be a “team
player” (collectivist)? The problem derives from the notion that
you can only be one type or the other. For example, Lenore Thomson defines
each dimension with the use of “either” and “or”:
We can either analyze impersonally (T) or evaluate personally (F).
But why are these questionnaires designed on mutually exclusive values? It is because our Western thinking is based on Cartesian logic and forces us to describe something as either one thing or the other, rather than entertaining several possibilities at once or seeing how one thing can lead to another.
Classic MBTI
Download
full article on MBTI published in People Management » ..
In the same way, we have extended the framework developed by Belbin
to explore how team members can work with others with different cultural
orientations and situations.
Download full article on Reconciling Team opposites » ..
Kirton's KAI in its original form assesses the preferred orientation to either adaptation or innovation (invention). Our integrated version IAI explores how well an individual (or organization) combines invention with adaptation ~ especially when cultural differences are included.
Whilst the above are tools aimed at the individual and teams, we have similarly extended the Kaplan and Norton 'Balanced Scorecard'. The term 'balanced' implies that if one goes up, the other comes down. We have therefore conceived the 'Integrated Scorecard' which enables organizations to diagnose and then monitor progress towards realization of the business benefits of combining value differences.
We have extended the classic models to account for cultural differences
and multi-cultural situations:
- ITI ~ the Integrated Type Indicator (based on the Meyers Briggs classic MBTI)
- Reconciling Team role opposites (based on Belbin's Team Role model)
- Innovation Scan ~ Innovation from reconciling Invention with Adaptation.
An extension of Kirton's classic KAI - ERS - The Integrated Scorecard
An extension of the classic Kaplan and Norton Balanced Scorecard
When we begin to incorporate non-Western types of logic, such as Yin-Yang or Taoism, we soon realize that we all have been restrictive in basing the profiling on bi-modal dimensions.
We recognized the limitations of our own earlier cross-cultural instruments that positioned people on bi-polar scales of mutually exclusive extremes of seven dimensions, and therefore extended our tools to assesses “through-through thinking” which measures how people combine opposites by reconciling cultural differences.
In this way we have extended the classic Meyers Briggs MBTI to produce what we refer to as our Integrated Type Indicator.
