Culture is pushed from the top. If you're changing the culture at the top then bringing new people in lower down might speed up the change and solidify it but in of itself it won't change anything if nothing is changing at the top.
There certainly is. I'm not sure where in my post you're detecting that sense of absolutism you're reading into it. But culture, like everything else in a company, is also shaped by its people. Which means culture can change as well. Any change will be a slow process due to inertia, but it can and will happen if enough people in the company want it to happen.
I am just curious, what must happen to change pathological culture to a better one. New leader on top will fight against entrenched middle level managers backed by buddies of these in upper layers. Anybody bellow will be put in uncomfortable position and leave sooner or later. I would say, pathological culture is here to stay and eventually can be changed only by replacing large chunk of organization.
A company culture is a reflection of the company's leadership.
The culture of Microsoft has gone through radical changes between gates, balmer and nadella.
But a culture isn't _only_ a reflection of the leadership, it's all the interconnections of people and organizations within the whole company.
A leader can come in and make changes, and often these changes first have to break everything that's there already; without care what replaces the broken structures is just chaos; by default that chaos is the governing culture without more inputs and work from leadership.
These changes are most pronounced when 2 large organizations become one because both cultures have inertia (whole foods / amazon, slack / salesforce, etc). But yes, of course when CEOs change there's change to the corporate culture, but because there's only the force from the CEO's changes not entire cultures bashing into entire other cultures, the changes tend to be more gradual.
I am not an MBA or sociologist or really anyone with a worthwhile opinion, I've just been around the block and have the stories to tell or retell...
You must subscribe to the idea that the employees can change the culture of a company from bottom up. I strongly disagree. Company culture is dictated from top down, and only rarely does the bottom get to make substantive changes. However, I'm willing to have my mind change with examples of companies changing their culture based on employees changing the minds of the execs.
Yikes. Culture starts from the person at the top and flows down.
Curious to see how and if the cultural narrative within Silicon Valley companies will change one year from now after all that's happened. Will there actually be meaningful change? I don't know, but I'm hoping so.
what you say is probably true, but setting the tone of a company starts at the top. If a certain culture has filtered its way through the company then of course that will not change overnight with a new boss, but that's where it would start.
Culture takes time to change and we don’t know how hard they’re trying. A new CEO matters long-term but lower level management matters more in the short-term.
The Corporate Leadership shapes culture through their actions, and the tolerance of others actions.
If you have no walls on your office before taking money, and move to a corner office with a close door after, you change the culture.
If you work flex hours and let the staff do so, then change, the culture changes.
If you hire guys who wear cut-offs and have unkempt beards, but later switch to only those who are straight laced you change the culture.
Amazon everyone used to have a Door with saw horse legs for a desk. That changed along the way. And the culture changed.
You can't keep the Garage culture, when you move to a skyscraper, but you can keep hints of it if the executive team works hard to make sure it happens.
Once a culture exists, it is very, very difficult to change, even (especially) if you get a new CEO or an acquisition, etc.
It is true that if you are going to _attempt_ to change a culture, it must be motivated from top-down. However, placing that responsibility on the CEO alone is misunderstanding of how culture works.
It's a little akin to saying that culture is the President's responsibility. No, it's everyone's responsibility, and if you want to change it, the influential people in your org (country) must lead and reinforce that change.
The best you can say is that the founder(s) laid the groundwork for the culture. As with anything, changing the foundation later is extremely difficult.
That's what the research says, anyhow. I studied this briefly during my undergrad.
Except when they let go a few key personnel and mandate culture change from above. It's not as enduring, unfortunately, even if most of us would like it so.
Well I'm not really sure, because it felt extremely turbulent while I was there for my brief 4 month tenue. I think the culture will change. I think the culture was a little more loose, autonomous, and with little management before. I think it will be more hierarchical and managed moving forward. However, please realize that I have extremely limited experience at reddit and may simply be wrong about that.
Culture is not magic, it is determined from top.
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