Culture

As I see there are three basic types of company culture: the "We can do it”, the "Not invented here" and "It's good as it was for x years". Naturally in every culture there are different groups and persons with varying attitude but after being around for a while you can feel what the stronger behavior is. If you are in company which culture fits your expectations you are lucky. But what to do if not?

• Escape:  You can always leave and find another place which is better for you. 
• Isolate: You can try to find a safe corner where things are just right, but I don't think it will work out. People who successfully do this often turn to be the problem after a while.
• Fight: If you have power you can fight the "wrong" and strengthen the good culture, e.g. by replacing, rewarding and punishing people, starting new initiatives or projects.
• Change: A good change management program defines goals and then looks for people who are willing and able to support it. If successful the company will follow.  This is not easy but apparently the only real alternative.

Maybe - but frankly I'm not sure - there is a fifth option. If a company is able to stay somehow competitive in the market - even if in a declining period - it must carry some core value. Examples show that superb leaders are able to exploit the core values of a company and make it successful. It is what happened to IBM when Luis Gerstner strengthened the mainframe and server development, used Big Blue's ability to deliver complex solutions to make a full turnaround.  The story of Apple where Sculley had same really good business ideas (e.g. the Personal Digital Assistant or to sell AppleOS to third party similarly to Windows-  which got an enormous success) but it didn't fit the culture of Apple. On the other hand Steve Jobs could really work with the culture he created. Other examples include Moleskine and Morgan Motors.

It's like a reversed Change Management program; instead to search a team for the goal we tune the goal to the team. The difficulty is to define the core value, because it's often confused with products or processes. It's rather a company spirit. In the late sixties many people may have thought that Volkswagen is identical with the Bug, however - as it turned out later - it was identical with affordable and reliable mobility. This "spirit" is what companies should realize, communicate, protect and enhance.