“Ethics”, says one of the speakers, “are the resistance of values under pressure”. “Tourists don’t vote” says another in relation to changing the power of short term shareholders’. A panel of world leaders debate whether we are learning from what has been happening.
Archive for the ‘Resources’ Category
How Google fosters innovation
If you want to build a culture of innovation, watch how the best do it. Douglas Merrill, CIO of Google describes some of the behaviors, symbols and systems of his company. Watch his passion and his curiosity, features of innovative cultures. See how clear he is about the beliefs and principles that underpin his company. How could you help people like Douglas thrive in your organization?
Customer-centric: Volcano led to new communication channels
The recent disruption of air travel caused by the Icelandic volcano created opportunities for airlines to communicate with customers in new ways using social media. Traditional avenues such as call centres and websites could not meet demand nor get up-to-the-minute details out to customers quickly. Find out which airlines led the way in keeping their customers informed as events occurred.
Greater-Good: Can burgers save the planet?
Burgerville, an American fast food chain, use locally produced ingredients, source energy using renewable alternatives, recycle their waste and have recently begun providing nutritional information on customer receipts. These are just some of the initiatives they have implemented to realise their sustainability values.
Jack Graves, Chief Cultural Officer, discusses here how they differentiate themselves from their large competitors and bring their mission to “serve with love” to life for their employees and customers.
Customer-centric: Starbuck’s social media strategy
Starbuck’s brand positioning and focus on the importance of the customer come through in this article about their social media strategy. It covers the ten ideas they use to govern their use of social media to engage customers and promote brand loyalty, while staying true to their coffeehouse culture.
Greater-Good: Waste Management extracting value from waste
Waste Management is aiming to transform their business from disposing waste via landfill sites to “extracting value from waste” to help the environment. Reflecting the characteristics of a Greater-Good culture, CEO David P. Steiner believes that he can help the environment and produce profit for shareholders, rather than believing that a choice needs to be made between the two. An example of one of their environmental initiatives is the configuration of a landfill site into a biofuel gas plant which they use to power over half of their fleet, (click here for more information).
Steiner states in this article that the most important aspect of his job is to change the culture. The article captures some of his personal learnings about the messages he sends as a leader. Interestingly, engaging 45,000 employees was not an issue, and neither was marketing their offer to customers, as Steiner notes that both groups were already on board.
Customer-Centric: DaVita's values-based transformation
DaVita’s CEO, Kent Thiry, took on the leadership role when the company was being sued by shareholders, staff turnover was high and financially they were heading for bankruptcy. A turnaround was desperately needed and Thiry saw culture as key in achieving this. Find out how he went about it in this interview.
Danone and Intel support ‘social business’ approach
The Grameen Bank founder and Nobel prize winner Muhammed Yunus is campaigning for a new type of business he calls “social business”. He argues that social businesses will not only help address global human concerns but also give consumers more choice. A social business measures success by the impact it has on people (for example, access to safe drinking water) and the environment (such as renewable energy) rather than the profit it makes.
Click here to read the Yunus Foundation’s seven principles of social business
For real-world application of this style of doing business, you can take a look at those case studies for Danone and Intel.
Toyota: Cultural breakdown
Here’s an article from Time magazine outlining Toyota’s quality control and product recall problems which has been reported as a breakdown of its organizational culture. Toyota’s famous principles of “kaizen” and “jidoka” helped to propel them to great success.
What happened and what can we learn?
Google's organizational culture philosophy
Google’s organizational culture is often thought of as having the right ingredients. So, just what are some of the behaviours, systems and symbols in this famous cultural formula?
The following articles provide some tangible examples of their approach.
- Google’s “Ten Things” philosophy
- The Googleplex
(Google + complex) headquarters and office layout aim to provide an environment of ideas and collaboration - How are Google meetings conducted?