Small Organizations Do Not Have Culture Problems
Below about fifty people, what looks like culture is one person's temperament operating with no counterweight. That is not a criticism; it is a description of…
Read →Idaho leadership
Leadership Lessons
Practical leadership lessons from experienced Idahoans across the state's industries, institutions, and communities — guidance you can apply in your own work.
What Leaders Model Without Noticing
Your ordinary conduct is the ceiling. Not the deliberate example you intend to set, but the unconsidered behaviours you would not list if asked what you…
Read →The Exception That Becomes the Rule
Every exception is reasonable in isolation and the aggregate is a standard that applies unless there is a reason. There is always a reason, and the…
Read →Culture Is What You Tolerate
The standard is the worst behaviour permitted to pass, not the best behaviour praised. Everything above that line is aspiration, and the organization located the line…
Read →Stories and Who Gets to Tell Them
Organizations carry a small set of remembered episodes that function as case law. They are selected by whoever is repeating them, and leadership rarely knows which…
Read →Promotions Are the Only Culture Statement Anybody Believes
Every other signal is discounted. A promotion is costly, irreversible, and made under real constraint, which is precisely why the organization treats it as the truth…
Read →The First Month
A new person learns how the place actually works within about three weeks, almost entirely by observation, and the reading they form then is the one…
Read →Subcultures
Organizations do not have one culture. They have a set of them, one per supervisor, and the variance between units is usually larger than the variance…
Read →Culture Is Not Climate
How people feel about working somewhere and how the place behaves under pressure are different objects. They can move in opposite directions, and organizations reliably measure…
Read →The Stated Culture and the Operative One
The gap between the two is not hypocrisy and is rarely noticed by the people who created it. It opens because stating a value is free…
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