Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Organizational Culture”
Over the last couple of weeks, I have had a series of discussions with organizational executives that feel very similar and that are based on some fundamental questions: When will I be able to have my employees in one place again? How do I manage culture with a hybrid workforce? How can I keep my culture going when most or …
Imagine for a moment that you are standing at the seashore. Ankle deep in water, toes digging into the wet sand, as waves crash in front of you and then gently roll past you toward the shore. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we’ve seen a few larger waves come to shore recently – in the form of nonviolent …
Over the past several months, in the context of business strategic and tactical planning, the most common question I’ve been fielding has been, “So, Gustavo, what comes next?” My simplest answer is, prepare for cycles of “suppress and lift.” “Suppress and lift” is not a term I created. It comes from a prescient opinion piece by Dr. Gabriel Leung, an …
One of the most frequent questions I’ve been getting over the past month is, “What is this all going to look like when it’s over?” The truth is that the coronavirus pandemic is a very dynamic crisis. We learn new things every week. Two weeks ago we found out about a new symptom: Covid toes. Last week, we learned about …
In the past month, the world has been turned on its head. What many saw as another problem “over there” has become a global pandemic. Every company and every industry has been affected. While companies in some fields — such as virtual meetings, social media and door-to-door delivery — have grown and expanded, most other companies and sectors have been …
It has recently been suggested to me that I speak about organizations after they have succeeded or failed based on their culture, rather than during some cultural transformation that is occurring. This is true for two reasons: Cultural examples of success or failure tend to be clearer after the fact. If culture is a vehicle to success or failure (and …
Brand new year. Brand new decade. This is the time of year when organizations, and the people in them, create strategic plans and make resolutions. Both fail more often than not. Why is that? While it is admirable and even desirable to look ahead to try to improve our organizations (and ourselves), our efforts often fail for a single reason: …
How should you handle an employee who is chronically negative about your company? It is unfortunate, but this question and others like it arise with some frequency in my work. Just last week, I was asked the above question by a participant in Culture Catalyst, an eight-week program I offer to leadership teams. There are several steps that might lead …
I was recently asked to serve as a consultant for a company wanting to build a stronger culture. When I began to learn about the company’s vision, values and mission statements, I ran into something that was uncommon. Their values included the statement, “We promote, reward and compensate based on merit, which we see as the result of ability plus …
“Why won’t my people just tell me the truth?!” I’ve heard that statement countless times in my 20+ years of consulting — usually from a truly exasperated CEO or other executive who has learned about some systemic failure. “These things aren’t supposed to happen!” is a typical follow-up statement, made with equal parts surprise, frustration and even anger. Systemic failures, …
