GO2: What is corporate culture?
by Miki Saxon
When you’ve written a blog for 12 years (plus a second one simultaneously for two of years) you’ve said a lot of what you want to say. Beyond that, you’ve often said it better that first time than when you are posting on the same subject years later, which is why I started Golden Oldies.
Yesterday’s GO led me to two others and between them they say pretty much everything I was thinking about for follow-up.
I “preached” culture long before it was legitimized; back in those days it was often considered consultant’s smoke and mirrors.
My thoughts on corporate culture haven’t changed much, although the world certainly has.
Definitions of corporate culture come, go and are constantly being refined, but I think my decade old take is still valid.
There are as many definitions and explanations of corporate culture as there are academics, consultants, coaches and every person who works now, has worked in the past or plans to work in the future.
But what about the ‘corporate’ in corporate culture?
What is it other than a piece of paper showing that the government recognizes its existence and it owes taxes?
Is it the office buildings that house it? The manuals that explain it? The stock that represents its value?
Actually, a corporation isn’t an entity at all. It’s a group of people, with shared values, all moving in the same direction, united in a shared vision and their efforts to reach a common goal.
That means that the ‘culture’ in corporate culture is about those people and their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).
Image credit: Gavriella Fabbri
