“I would regard it as a sentence to hell if they gave me some company with a million employees to change the culture.”
That’s what the late Charlie Munger, long-time partner to Warren Buffet, said when asked about culture change.
Munger was being asked to respond to promises by newly appointed CEOs to transform the cultures of their struggling organizations. He went on:
“I think it’s hard to change the culture in a restaurant. A place that’s already bureaucratic, how do you make it un-bureaucratic? It’s a very hard problem.”
Very hard, to be sure, but is culture change even possible?
I started to write a different piece this week, my first after taking the summer off from writing, but there was something in the way.
The story begins with dogs and kids. You see, when our daughter, Abby, was about three, we had two dogs, Marlee and Neo, both standard size labradoodles. For little Abby, they had simply always been there. I think they occurred to her more like older siblings t...
Every manager has been there. A task was assigned. The expectations seemed clear and understood. Time passes. It doesn’t get done.
Every parent has been there, too.
In fact, we've all been there with ourselves.
We tell ourselves, “I must do Task A by the end of the day on Tuesday.” Tuesday comes and goes, and we can’t help but notice that we failed to do the task.
Do this once, and the result i...
Conquering each of Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for overcoming the next.
Trust must be present for a team to engage in productive conflict, but it does not guarantee they will do so.
Conflict is essential for achieving clarity and buy-in, but it does not automatically result in commitment.
Commitment is required for team members to...
Untangled by Retexo
Work, life, and leadership in a complex world.
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