Beyond work, career path and even money corporate culture is the reason people join companies—and the reason they leave. They join because they fit and leave when the culture changes because they no longer do.

In an interesting WSJ column today, Carol Hymowitz compares the cultural attitude and style of two CEOs, Bob Nardelli, ex-CEO of Home Depot and new CEO at Chrysler, and Ron Sargent, promoted to CEO at Staples five years ago.

Nardelli is a favorite example of what not to do culturally, whereas in 2002, Sargent said, “On my first day as CEO, I put on the black pants, black shoes, and red shirt that our associates wear and headed to our Brighton store. We opened the very first Staples store in Brighton, Massachusetts in 1986, and by going there, I tried to rally the Staples troops around a concept that I call “Back to Brighton.” It’s a symbolic message to the members of our organization that we’re going to improve service and refocus on our core customer base: the small-business customer.”

Great cultures spring from CEOs who understand their true roles, i.e., to provide broad guidelines and enable their people to develop more targeted ideas that shape and reshape the culture as the company grows, but keep it from straying too far from its roots.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Business info, Culture, Leadership, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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