Cultures--Bad and Good

“Curmudge, I believe that you’ve felt that one of the best aspects of the Lean culture was its respect for people.”

“Right, Jaded Julie. Although I always enjoyed my work, I now realize that I often worked in a poor cultural environment. I guess I was just stoic and didn’t know any better. Fortunately, there were other places where the culture was extraordinary.”

“We can learn from experiences that were bad as well as from those that were good. Let’s start with the bad ones. Can you give some examples?”

“The company’s culture was great until the founders retired. The new CEO was from Chicago, so he moved corporate headquarters there (at great expense). As I recall, the building had five stories; the top floor was for the exclusive use of the top executives and their administrative assistants. Whenever I met with my boss, her assistant would escort me from the third floor; the elevator door wouldn’t open at the fifth floor for mere peasants. When one stepped out of the elevator, you faced a life-size stylized horse which likely cost much more than a real one. If the horse could have talked, it would have announced, ‘You are now in executive country.’ The art work on my boss’s office walls was exquisite. It had to be because it was inspected periodically by the ‘picture police.’”

“To say the least, the corporate culture doesn’t sound very egalitarian. You once told me that it wasn’t so much the executive floor that bothered you; it was the political stratification that seemed to be palpable throughout the whole building.”

“That’s for sure, Julie. Corporate royalty had an executive dining room on the top floor and a garage beneath the building for their company-owned cars. Fortunately, some of the perquisites trickled down to the lower floors. Managers had offices with a window, and directors had corner offices. Others, like me, had cubicles in the middle of a big room. I was grateful that because my regular location was here in the Fox Valley, I only visited corporate headquarters occasionally for meetings.”

“Although the whole situation sounds pretty dismal, were there other aspects of the culture that really got your goat?”

“There sure were. Another location of the company had layoffs that occurred in waves. During one of these periods, when the P.A. system summoned a person to report to Human Resources, it usually meant that his job had been eliminated. In addition, when I read the company’s annual report, I learned that they paid more for the executives’ golf club memberships than they paid me in salary. I remain perplexed at the top-level executives’ apparent disinterest in how the company’s venomous culture impacted the rest of their employees.”

“Wow, Curmudge! Your experience with medieval management must have been a real downer.”

“There are more examples, but perhaps not quite as egregious. Many years ago in a different organization, a new president was hired from a university in the South. Despite the organization’s extraordinary culture, he made no attempt to understand it or to build upon it. It was his way or the highway, and most staff members—including me—chose the highway.”

“I hope, Curmudge, that these truly bad experiences were matched by some that were truly good.”

“We’ll talk about those soon in Kaizen Curmudgeon, Julie.”