What does Culture have to do with it!
The cancellation of my trip to Germany today this week prompts me to write this blog entry and connect a couple of insights that have been swimming in my mind. The first is how inadequately prepared we are to deal with this basic and “distant” threat. I say “distant” because our social institutions have taught us to sort of be dismissive of these things as if we were above them.
I have been very forceful and critical of these facts (in particular towards our religious institutions) in my writings. We dismiss our basic nature and instincts to our peril.
The terrifying side of our dismissive attitude as a species is that we leave behind unresolved challenges. The list is long and expansive: birth control, teen pregnancy, sex education, drug legalization, public health preparedness, financial regulation, the environment, etc…These are fundamental ecosystems that have to be addressed and reformed but have not. We move on to the next thing, drunk with our self congratulatory and ego-centered culture leaving behind exhausted institutions, real leaders and environments.
I am often asked about Innovation and Culture and the interaction of both. By culture we mean corporate cultures. Much as what is reflected above in our general culture is reflected in corporate cultures. They have huge legacy issues as well that have not been addressed. One of them is the need for revamping training and education with the objective of teaching life learning, another is to install effective collaborative platforms, another is incentives that are conducive to innovative thinking and not “keeping my job.”
Lately, I hear the incessant din from auto analysts on how wrong the leadership at GM and Chrysler has been and how simple it is really do design cars that people want to buy. Nissan has done so, FIAT has done so and even Porsche emerged from their crisis triumphant and now own Volkswagen. I agree, but it is “simple” for those with up-to-date leadership skills composed of: vision and perspective, passion for creating and the ability to thrive in rapidly changing environments.
The first step in the process of transforming from an “also ran” corporate culture to an innovative culture is to first acknowledge the existing culture and its limitations. The second step is to find ways to work with the limitations and/or fix them. The follow up tasks from the second step is to start asking the hard questions: Is the corporate culture that I am trying to change engineering driven or sales driven? Is the culture heretical, dismissive, or hierarchal? Is it closed or distributed? Is the culture risk averse? Is the culture operations driven, process driven, etc…?
I have been very forceful and critical of these facts (in particular towards our religious institutions) in my writings. We dismiss our basic nature and instincts to our peril.
The terrifying side of our dismissive attitude as a species is that we leave behind unresolved challenges. The list is long and expansive: birth control, teen pregnancy, sex education, drug legalization, public health preparedness, financial regulation, the environment, etc…These are fundamental ecosystems that have to be addressed and reformed but have not. We move on to the next thing, drunk with our self congratulatory and ego-centered culture leaving behind exhausted institutions, real leaders and environments.
I am often asked about Innovation and Culture and the interaction of both. By culture we mean corporate cultures. Much as what is reflected above in our general culture is reflected in corporate cultures. They have huge legacy issues as well that have not been addressed. One of them is the need for revamping training and education with the objective of teaching life learning, another is to install effective collaborative platforms, another is incentives that are conducive to innovative thinking and not “keeping my job.”
Lately, I hear the incessant din from auto analysts on how wrong the leadership at GM and Chrysler has been and how simple it is really do design cars that people want to buy. Nissan has done so, FIAT has done so and even Porsche emerged from their crisis triumphant and now own Volkswagen. I agree, but it is “simple” for those with up-to-date leadership skills composed of: vision and perspective, passion for creating and the ability to thrive in rapidly changing environments.
The first step in the process of transforming from an “also ran” corporate culture to an innovative culture is to first acknowledge the existing culture and its limitations. The second step is to find ways to work with the limitations and/or fix them. The follow up tasks from the second step is to start asking the hard questions: Is the corporate culture that I am trying to change engineering driven or sales driven? Is the culture heretical, dismissive, or hierarchal? Is it closed or distributed? Is the culture risk averse? Is the culture operations driven, process driven, etc…?
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