Read a post on VC in NYC saying that culture starts at the inception of a company and that CEOs should think about that since cultures can’t easily be changed.

It’s sounds accurate, but, in my mind, culture stems from the MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) of the top person(s) and that MAP existed long before the company was even thought of. Intel’s Andy Grove saw a paranoid culture as the key to building a successful company because that’s what Andy believed, unlike Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google.

As to changing the culture, change the top person, from whom culture flows, and watch the effect—from ripple to tsunami, for better or for worse, no matter how large the company—think GE and Imelt, IBM and Gerstner, HP and Fiorina, Apple and Jobs (in both directions).

The effects from changing the cultural source in smaller companies and startups is more like a major earthquake—the changes are felt even faster, so the employee exodus is faster—accounting for many of the problems in acquisitions.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 10th, 2006 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Business info, Culture, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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