In my previous post, I talked about the definition of culture, its ingredients and how it supports your organization’s success. I concluded that:
- culture enforces and feeds what makes you successful; and
- culture is a living system that supports and nourishes itself.
Also, back in 2007, I wrote an article that emphasized why you should care about your organization’s culture. Now, it is time to focus on how to explicitly define your culture, and document your secret sauce.
Recently I had a good discussion on whether one should even attempt to define one’s culture, given Heisenberg and the uncertainty principle. Though it is a valid argument, there are benefits to knowing thyself. If you are an acronym heavy culture, develop cheat sheets to help newbies navigating through your acronym soup. Or shift your email/IM heavy culture with voice and face-to-face communications to spur collaboration and minimize misunderstandings. Yes, change occurs, and your culture naturally evolves. Knowing what is the keystone of your success, and what cultural elements you need to evolve mindfully is the focus of this article.
Now, without further ado, let’s identify the key aspects and interactions of your culture through the following steps:
- Calibrate your compass
- Identify your key ingredients
- Let them simmer
- Distill and serve
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With the upgrade of WordPress 3.0, I also decided to switch to the new default template: Twenty Ten. I like the cleaner feel, not to mention all the new features. I suspect my kitetail style will evolve over time. In the mean time, please drop me a note if you see anything unusual, more so than usual, on this site. 
Culture is one of those overloaded terms… So much so that, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn have compiled a comprehensive 160+ definitions of culture in Culture: A critical review of concepts and definitions
. Our current take on culture originates from Sir Edward Burnett Tylor’s all-inclusive definition of culture in 1874 .
“Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”
— Sir Edward Burnett Tylor
Applying this to organizations, I see culture as how we get things done in an organization that collectively makes us successful. With that, culture: Continue reading →
Wow! It has been a LONG while since I have posted… Though, that was not my intention, sometimes life has different plans. So, lets jump in without any further delay!
What is product design? From Wikipedia: “Product design is concerned with the efficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products.” Yes, product design is a process… A process with one important objective: create a customer!
“The purpose of a business is to create a customer.”
– Drucker
However, unless we are philanthropists, we need to be profitable as well. As I mentioned before, the profitability equation is quite straightforward: if a firm’s revenue from selling its product or service is greater than the cost of offering it, then the firm is profitable. So, product design process is focused on: Continue reading →
I have been spending time looking at cloud computing and differing cloud offerings from Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Vision of computing as a utility delivered over the internet has been around for a long time. For those who remember HP’s e-services, I spent time spinning how to deliver our existing printer networking solutions as part of our e-services ecosystem…
This article is not specifically about cloud computing technology, but about the insights it has spawned… However, for anyone that is interested, my cloud computing solution comparison notes are here; I also recommend Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing.
As I studied and researched cloud computing solutions from Google, Amazon and Microsoft, I came to realize how much of corporate personality spills into our technological creations, you could say we create in our image… One could argue, this is all about branding. And, as a Buddhist principle states that all views are empty of inherent existence, I would not argue: views rather depend on who is looking, and when, and for what purpose. However, I see branding as a conscious and explicit activity, while our process of creation is unconscious representative of our true-selves.
As I was reading Ackoff’s The Art of Problem Solving: Accompanied by Ackoff’s Fables
, I had a humorous insight into the personality of Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Ackoff indicated that the philosophers of ancient Greece divided the pursuits of man into four major categories:
Continue reading →
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