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You alluded to one danger of ignoring culture: that your company will develop a culture that you don't like. However, there's a bigger concern when you ignore
by quanticle 16y ago
You alluded to one danger of ignoring culture: that your company will develop a culture that you don't like. However, there's a bigger concern when you ignore culture - the possibility that your corporation develops multiple cultures, which conflict with one another.
You're already starting to define responsibilities and divide the work accordingly. That's good. However, you need to make sure that there's still a lot of communication between the groups, and not just between the group leaders either. Otherwise what happens is that people get isolated in their own group and begin to think of other groups in the company as the "other". Things only go downhill from there, as these divisions slowly drive the groups into working at cross purposes.
The real job of company culture is to remind employees that they're all in business together; that its not their group against the other groups at the company. If your culture manages that, then it almost doesn't matter what sort of culture it is.
- aberman 16y agoThis is gold. It really struck a cord. Thank you.
- forensic 16y agoAt the same time, organizational psychologists seem to recognize that subcultures actually play a vital part of corporations and that they should, generally, not be killed off. They are the watchdogs that keep the dominant culture reality-checked, and they are generally a source of important, but unexpected, new ideas. A cultish hive-mind where everyone is a clone of the founder is no good either. It's not an easy balance to strike.