The Culture Club

As Roseanne Roseannadana used to say, " What's all this fuss about corporate culture?"

It's been nearly 25 years since Terry Deal and Allan Kennedy published the first book on corporate culture,aptly called Corporate Culture. It was reissued in 2000. According to the editorial review on Amazon

"Despite the dramatic evolution of the business landscape over the last twenty years, the basic principles of the book remain as fresh and relevant as they did when it was first published: that organizations, by their very nature, are social enterprises, with tribal habits, well-defined cultural roles for individuals, and various strategies for determining inclusion, reinforcing identity, and adapting to change.

In the late 90's I spent a 18 months working for a marketing communications agency that grew rather quickly from 100 to almost 200 employees. 

We had hip offices, stationery that had rounded edges-- it was so cool. Our corporate typeface was Palatino 10 pt and woe be the client who requested their material in a larger font style.

We served giant cookies at every client meeting  that no one ate and we handed out writing pads that had our name at the top.

When the "girls" requested putting a table in the ladies room so we could have a place to put our handbags while we used the facilities, the keeper of our office refused the addition, saying it would detract from "our identity".

What was more pathetic  then some guy telling the gals what we could or couldn't have in our restroom was that the company president agreed, He denied our table.

Corporate culture wars have started over less than a bathroom table.

As it happened, our company president, the one that denied our bathroom table for corporate identity reasons had launched a year long initiative called "Living Our Culture."

It was his number one initiative for the year. Actually, it was his only initiative. This was a man who didn't believe in letting work interfere with his golf game. He was the ultimate hands -off manager  unless it came to making senior level decisions like whether or not to put a table in a bathroom.

Living Our Culture had been the theme of every single company meeting for at least six months. First, the president announced he was assigning a task force to study our culture. To emphasize the importance of the issue , the president said he would quit his job if he couldn't create a culture where people wanted to work. yeah right.

The next meeting was an update that the culture club was indeed meeting and they would have a report at the next meeting.

Our grand finale was a two -hour meeting where the club unveiled our corporate culture. After months of thinking about it, analyzing it and agonizing over what was wrong with the agency, the brilliant breakthrough solution was to launch a corporate culture promotions campaign. Complete with posters, coffee mugs and colored note pads.

The culture club handed out three different post- it note pads. One in blue, green, pink with the words: teamwork, integrity, respect. The big  idea was when a coworker displayed one of these characteristics we were supposed to send them a note acknowledging their corporate cultureness.

We didn't hand out a lot of notepads. The president didn't quit his job ( until a few years later) and the girls never got the bathroom table.