Ducks in a Row: Culture I/O
by Miki SaxonCulture is today’s focus; it is considered the reason that companies succeed or fail and whether innovation will flourish or wither.
Culture is researched, dissected, written about and discussed; is culture a set of specific rules or a moving target, amorphous and difficult to pin down?
Perhaps it’s more like a computer, with core hardware and constantly changing software.
In computing, the term I/O refers to input, whatever is received by the system, and output, that which results when the input if processed.
Programmers know that if the input if bad what comes out of the computer won’t be any better, a phenomenon known as “garbage in/garbage out.”
GI/GO applies to culture and, for that matter, everything else in life.
What comes out is a function of what you put in.
Blindly accepting everything offered by even the most brilliant source will result in garbage out at some point.
Creating and sustaining good culture requires more than studying what’s worked elsewhere and best practice benchmarks; it requires critical thinking on your part.
No one person, past, present or future, has all the answers. No company has tried every possible combination of every approach conceivable.
Plus, they are not you, while your culture is you.
That means being your own computer—gathering input from all available sources, applying it to your situation, processing it—absorbing, reworking and rejecting.
The result will be at least slightly different from what you started with, because you’ve added the flavor of your own life experiences, knowledge and MAP to the mix—and that’s good, it shouldn’t be an exact copy.
Flickr image credit: John D
