img

The theory arrays these tools along two dimensions—the extent to which members of the organization agree on what they want from their participation in the enterprise, and the extent to which they agree on what actions will produce the desired results. When there is little agreement on both axes, you have to use “power tools”—coercion (强制；强迫), threats, punishment, and so on—to secure cooperation. Many companies start in this quadrant (象限), which is why the founding executive team (创始执行团队) must play such an assertive (独断的，肯定的) role in defining what must be done and how. If employees’ ways of working together to address those tasks succeed over and over, consensus begins to form. MIT’s Edgar Schein has described this process as the mechanism by which a culture is built. Ultimately, people don’t even think about whether their way of doing things yields success. They embrace priorities and follow procedures by instinct and assumption rather than by explicit decision—which means that they’ve created a culture. Culture, in compelling (引人注目的；令人信服的) but unspoken ways, dictates (规定) the proven (被验证的), acceptable methods by which members of the group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the priority given to different types of problems. It can be a powerful management tool.

In using this model to address the question, How can I be sure that my family becomes an enduring source of happiness?, my students quickly see that the simplest tools that parents can wield to elicit cooperation from children are power tools (电动工具). But there comes a point during the teen years when power tools no longer work. At that point parents start wishing that they had begun working with their children at a very young age to build a culture at home in which children instinctively behave respectfully toward one another, obey (服从) their parents, and choose the right thing to do. Families have cultures, just as companies do. Those cultures can be built consciously or evolve (进化) inadvertently (无意地，不经意地).

If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into your family’s culture—and you have to think about this very early on (在早期). Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.

**inadvertently: ** 无意地，不经意地 (unconsciousness)

See you tomorrow