What do you think of when someone mentions corporate culture?

What does corporate culture mean to you?

Here are some of the things that I think of when the subject of culture is discussed.

Conducive

Uplifting

Lasting

Teamwork

Us

Responsible

Enlightening

What do you think of?

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Robert Nardelli, best know for almost killing Home Depot by trashing its customers and ignoring its culture and poster boy for the platinum parachute, is back in the news.

For those of you vacationing on Mars (the only way you could have missed it) last August, Cerberus hired him to run Chrysler.

A year later, in a marriage between surreal and oxymoron, Nardelli is teaching executives how to create a a quality-based customer-centric culture.

It’s a sweeping change in MAP, but apparently he read a book and was converted.

Wow! As Kevin Meyer said over at Evolving Excellence, “I guess I better get a copy of that ice cream book. It must really be something.”

But before you get too excited, let it be noted that Nardelli hasn’t actually talked to any dealers or showroom customers—probably too mundane and not measurable enough.

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Does skin color matter to you? Your test results might surprise you.

Do family ties influence voting patterns? Not really, since Obama is an eighth cousin to Dick Cheney and an 11th cousin to G. W. Bush.

If Obama wins will he really be the first black president? No, he’ll actually be the seventh.

What’s my point?

I thought that maybe, just maybe, using high-profile, emotionally-charged information might drive home the realization that your knowledge, even your self-knowledge, doesn’t always match the facts.

Do you look for discrepancies between your knowledge and the facts?

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What does change really entail? Should the focus be doing things differently from this point forward or does it require admitting publicly that the previous approach was flawed?

I get asked this more often than you’d think. It seems as if many people feel that the mea culpa is as important, if not more so, than the new behavior.

I vehemently disagree.

It’s actually far easier to talk about a fault than to actually change it, especially when the cause is rooted in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

I wrote about this last fall at Leadership Turn. Changing manager’s minds and the comments are a good example of why I don’t believe that mea culpa matters.

As I said then, ‘When admitting the change is tantamount to saying “I was wrong” you’ll find few people jumping up and down to do it.’

Change is difficult enough without the added burden of ‘you/they are right and I’m wrong’. The admission accomplishes nothing more than opening the door to ‘I told you so’—four words that aren’t high on anyone’s motivational phrase list.

What do you think?

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Don’t you love it when experts and powers-that-be formally study and recognize what the rest of us could have told them—namely that constant interruptions ruin productivity.

Remember years ago when that guy in the next cubicle talked too loudly on the phone, constantly got up for coffee or whatever, popped his head over the cubicle wall (or stuck his head in the office) comment/question and was generally distracting?

The interruptions are still happening, only now they’re in the form of email, instant messaging, texting, twittering and other digital annoyances.

A story in the NY Times tells us that the “biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google and I.B.M., are banding together to fight information overload.”

Did you know that “A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times… on average the worker also stops at 40 Web sites over the course of the day…”

So what’s the tab for the unnecessary interruptions? Is it really high enough to warrant the founding of a non-profit group created specifically to combat it?

I guess that depends on whether $650 billion a year gets your attention.

What’s your/your company’s share of that number?

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A post on Yielding Wealth asking readers how they defined ‘wealthy’ reminded me of a post I wrote year ago about executive pay, which included having your taxes paid on various perks, and even on compensation.

But the “golden coffins” being made public due to a rule change 18 months ago really blow me away.

This isn’t about life insurance; it’s about really big bucks if they happen to die while still in office. How big?

“Eugene Isenberg, the 78-year-old chief executive of Nabors Industries Ltd… If Mr. Isenberg died tomorrow, Nabors would owe his estate a “severance” payment of at least $263.6 million, company filings show. That’s more than the first-quarter earnings at the Houston oil-service company.”

At 78 there’s a good chance he’ll collect, too.

And then there’s the death-related non-compete clause.

“The CEO of Shaw Group Inc. is in line to be paid $17 million for not competing with the engineering and construction company after he dies.”

We all know that the pay-for-performance principle often doesn’t hold true, but death benefits have to be the ultimate nose-thumbing on that subject.

Shareholders are in revolt and have forced Comcast to scrap its plan to pay the 88-year-old chairman of its executive committee his $2 million annual salary for five years after his death.

In addition to hard cash, stock options are subject to accelerated (read: immediate) vesting resulting in yet more money upon death.

Certainly sounds like a good motive for a murder mystery—unless you’re a shareholder.

Read the article and you tell me, are death benefits fair?

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We all know that legality and ethics don’t go hand in hand, but when (generally accepted) unethical actions go from legal to illegal companies can be slow to change direction.

Example: Siemens. But first, some background.

In 1998 Germany criminalized bribery of foreign officials, but prior to that it was fairly common practice, especially on large infrastructure projects where Siemens is a big player.

The investigation that started in 2006 is just now coming to trial with prosecutors planning on charging some 300 people.

Did the brass know? Seems likely since “managers carefully signed Post-it notes that had been affixed to potentially incriminating documents so that they might later peel away evidence of their imprimatur if necessary.”

The prosecution’s effort is aimed well beyond Siemens, “This trial is going to create a new sensibility in Germany,” said Anton Winkler, a senior prosecutor in Munich. “Not only this trial but the entire Siemens investigation. The message has arrived in all German companies.”

In case you don’t read the whole article it’s only fair to mention that “Siemens has hired its own legal and financial investigators, who have identified 1.3 billion euros ($2.1 billion) in suspicious payments that may have been used to win contracts around the world. (Whether in euros or dollars that ain’t hay!) Siemens also hired Michael Hershman, a co-founder of the prominent watchdog group Transparency International, to fashion a system for training employees in compliance with anticorruption laws.”

OK, they’re finally getting it—a decade late, but better late than never. “To be fair, Siemens is setting a pretty good example that other companies could learn from,” said Mark Pieth, a professor of criminology at the University of Basel and the head of antibribery efforts at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris.”

Bribery has been illegal in the US far longer, yet companies still do it.

Will this make a difference? What do you think?

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Yet another management book, this one telling you that there are five major supports for great management

• motivating others,
• attracting and retaining top talent,
• planning and organizing group performance,
• driving results throughout an organization, and
• lifelong development.

Which book doesn’t really matter and I’m not arguing with the list, but you’ve been told similar things over and over. While you really work at making them happen, your results are spotty and you’re not sure why.

Even when you follow the author’s how-to’s exactly your results leave you feeling less than satisfied.

What’s going on? Is there something wrong with you—or is it them?

More importantly, how do you fix it?

To paraphrase an old song, “The answer, my friend, is blowing in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).” Right, in your MAP and not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because you are unique and books are written in a ‘one size fits all’ manner.

This doesn’t mean that you need to change your MAP (unless you decide that change would be beneficial), but it does mean that you need to find books, or parts of books, that resonate with your MAP. Doing so will supply you with tools you can really use and increase your satisfaction.

Here are three quick tests you can use when shopping for self-improvement books.

• Read the Table of Contents – how someone organizes and presents their material needs to feel right to you or absorbing it moves to the difficult-if-ever category.

• Scan some of the information and see if it makes sense to you – if you dip into the book in several places and each time find yourself scratching your head then it’s likely that the author and you are on a different wavelength. This doesn’t make either of you wrong, just different, and that kind of different makes your learning more difficult.

• Read two or three paragraphs in at least three different places – evaluate whether the writing flows for you. No matter how good the content if the writing is so poor/dull/scholarly/etc. that you don’t enjoy it you won’t read it. And if you do manage to plow through it you’re unlikely to absorb it, which defeats the whole purpose of reading it.

Finally, being considered an expert doesn’t guarantee synergy with your MAP and it’s your MAP that needs to connect—not mine and not the reviewer’s.

How do you decide in which books to invest your time?
What are you favorite improvement books?

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Don’t miss Robert Reiss’ interview with Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh.

Hsieh believes that Zappos incredible customer service is the number one driver for sales growth that skyrocketed from $1.6 million in 2000 to more than $1 billion in eight short years, while powering straight through the dot com bust.

Hsieh believes that to be successful you “need to be truly passionate about whatever you’re in the business of doing—it should not just be about making money.”

Zappos.com’s incredible customer service is embedded in its culture and Hsieh explains in depth that the culture is protected by a unique “two-step” hiring process that in its second-step concentrates on Zappos’ corporate culture and its core values. Hsieh says, “We make sure the people we hire have similar values. We won’t hire them if they are not a “culture-fit even if they are technically strong.”

The company focus is obvious—listening to its customers to hear their requests and understand their needs.

Hsieh’s says, “We place a lot of value on the interaction with customers. We want and take the time to talk to our customers.”

The man’s on to something. In an age when most customers are left with the feeling that the company is doing them a favor by taking their money for the product/service and their desire for decent (not even great) customer service is at best an annoyance listening to Hsieh is not only refreshing, but offers tangible proof that a focus on company culture and superb customer service pays.

You tell me—it great customer service common sense or rocket science?

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I read an interesting conversation engendered by a post entitled You don’t create a culture over at Signal vs. Noise.

Jason posts, “You don’t create a culture. Culture happens. It’s the by-product of consistent behavior… Real cultures are built over time. They’re the result of action, reaction, and truth… Don’t think about how to create a culture, just do the right things for you, your customers, and your team and it’ll happen.”

He says, “Artificial cultures are instant. They’re big bangs made of mission statements, declarations, and rules.”

But in the comments, Dorai Thodla points our that, “Culture emerges initially from the synergy and shared values of the founding team. We need to articulate it so that you can look for similar values in people you hire or encourage it.”

Articulating it should include writing it down, so that it can be accurately shared with current employees, new hires and candidates, but that doesn’t mean it’s carved in stone. It needs to be flexible, breathe and grow, while staying true to the original core values.

Jason likens culture to patina because it takes time to develop, but patina stays on the surface whereas culture needs to be absorbed like stain.

Like many competent people, Jason seems unaware of his own role, but no kind of culture or cultural traits “just happens.” Whatever the culture becomes, it’s based on the top person’s MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and what that person enables to happen—whether actively or through benign neglect.

Do great cultures “just happen?” What do you think?