Golden Oldies: Ducks in a Row: Bosses Different as Night and Day
by Miki Saxon
Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
CEOs screwing up their company culture isn’t new. And, one way or another, CEO ego is usually the cause; what differs is what they do now vs. then. Before, it was rotten decisions based on dinosaurian mindsets coupled with a god complex. Now the screw-ups tend to be grounded in rotten decisions based on hard-to-believe immaturity coupled with a god complex.
Read other Golden Oldies here.
Edicts by Steve Ballmer and tweets by David Sacks do not a culture change.
Changing culture doesn’t happen overnight and takes a lot of damn hard work.
But it can be done.
And for CEOs willing to take the time and do the work, the payoff is ginormous to the 10th power and goes well beyond money — for the company, the employees, stakeholders and last, but certainly not least, for themselves.
Just ask Satya Nadella or Lou Gerstner, who turned around IBM and said it best.
“I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”
On a funny, or should I say ironic, side note.
As I looked through past posts and articles I realized how similar in name Nadella is to his complete cultural and managerial opposite, [Robert] Nardelli.
Separated by two letters and a mental chasm that dwarfs the Grand Canyon.
Flickr image credit: jphilipg
