TGIF –You Can’t Grow A Corporate Culture In A Petri Dish

As the week winds down, we wind down with some tidbits for your information, education, health, and enjoyment.

Quote of the Week: “The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.” Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., (former CEO IBM)

Humor Break:

After attending a presentation on “Corporate Culture”, the CEO turned to his Director of Human Resources and said “We need one of those things.”

Stat of the Week: Six Components of a Great Corporate Culture. Fish swim in water but reportedly never discuss water quality. Employees swim in culture but rarely discuss the quality of their culture (complain about specifics, yes, discuss the overall culture, no). Here are six components of culture worth discussing around the water cooler (or more likely, the Starbucks coffee line): Vision, Values, Practices, People, Place and Narrative.

Action Tip: Take 3-minutes to read the above article and then ask yourself how your organization addresses these six components … and then ask your colleagues for their views. Everything okay or are some changes needed?

Self-Development Corner: Mid November doesn’t seem to be a good time for Coursera to offer new free online university courses. Here is the only one I spotted:

Mathematical Biostatistics Boot Camp 1 (Nov 18, 7 weeks, Johns Hopkins University).

Happy learning (wherever you go)!

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.