Corporate culture has begotten a thriving industry that researches, dissects, writes, discusses, preaches, teaches, and studies it—all with the goal of helping people understand its effects and learn how to improve it.

It’s considered a soft science, a moving target, amorphous and difficult to pin down.

But I’ve always believed that corporate culture has much in common with a computer.

Yes, a computer, with its unyielding hardware and logical, literal software.

You see, in computing, the term I/O refers to input, whatever is received by the system, and output, that which results from the processing.

Programmers know that if you enter incorrect or bad data the results coming out of the computer won’t have much value, hence the term “garbage in/garbage out.”

And there you have it—the similarity between computers, corporate culture and most everything else in life.

What comes out is a function of what you put in.

Blindly accepting everything offered—whether from the guru du jour or religious texts—is sure to result in garbage out at some point.

Improving corporate culture requires critical thinking on your part. No one person, past, present or future, has all the answers. You need to evaluate the available information, take a bit from here and a bit from there, apply it to your situation and, like a computer, process it.

The resulting culture will differ from what you start with, because you’ve added the flavor of your own life experiences, knowledge and MAP to the mix and that’s good—different people, different culture.

A viable corporate culture is a living organism, growing and changing all the time and you’re contributing to that growth.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 12:15 am and is filed under Business info, Culture, Motivation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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