Book: The Corporate Culture Survival Guide

Posted by: Max Dunn on January 10, 2011 17:30:04

We don't normally think too much about the culture of a business, but it turns out that culture is integral to all businesses and understanding its culture is crucial to success. The Corporate Culture Survival Guide is an interesting book that discusses what business culture is, how it evolves and changes in startup and mature companies and how to merge two different company cultures. Some of the areas it discusses are:

Culture is:

* Deep
* Broad
* Stable

When new leaders take over existing organizations they can:

1. Destroy the existing culture
2. Fight the existing culture
3. Give-in to the existing culture
4. Evolve the culture

Merger options:

1. Separation
2. Domination
3. Blending

Another point this book makes is that you can't learn the culture by sending out surveys, the only reliable method is to conduct a group discussion. And the discussion needs to be focused on a problem that needs to be solved, not just a general exploration. This leads to another assertion that it is not practical to try to analyze the cultural fit of two organizations before a merger, but it is essential to do an assessment afterwards.

Revised on January 18, 2011 09:21:30 by Max Dunn (69.226.239.94)