The Corporate Culture Survival Guide: Sense and Nonsense About Culture Change by Edgar Schein Jossey-Bass, 1999 Clients often come to me knowing that something needs to change in order to achieve better performance, but they just aren’t sure what. The specific answer will vary for each client, but more often than not, the area for [...]
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Maddie and I had a great conversation last night with Craig Honick, of Sector Intelligence, about the topic of culture. As a researcher, Craig has expertise on identifying and telling the story of culture in organizations and markets, and Maddie and I talk a lot about organizational culture in Humanize. For each of the four [...]
Continue ReadingI love to think and write about organizational culture, but every time I dig really deeply into it, I am reminded that the primary source for understanding organizational culture has to be Edgar Schein, His book, the Corporate Culture Survival Guide, should simply be ready by anyone who cares about organizations. It has most of [...]
Continue ReadingI had a great time on Wednesday speaking to the Virginia Association of Realtors Leadership conference on the topic of building trust between members and the board. One of the first papers I ever had published was on trust (back in 1995), and being from the conflict resolution field, it's always been a part of [...]
Continue ReadingPeter Senge wrote the Fifth Discipline twenty years ago, but it's a book with amazing staying power. If you haven't read it, you should. The big lesson in the book, for which Senge is still known, is systems thinking (system thinking is the fifth discipline). It's hard to sum up the concept, but here goes. [...]
Continue ReadingThis was an insight that I was able to articulate at my recent generational diversity training. As I was going over the four generations in the workplace, I found myself almost feeling a bit guilty about talking too much about the Silent Generation (the oldest in the workforce). The YOUNGEST Silents are in their late [...]
Continue ReadingI am usually pretty patient with airlines. I'm patient with delays and waiting for crews to come in from a different flight, etc. Heck, I'd even be patient if they waited a few minutes to let connecting passengers get on my flight (because in many other instances, I'm one of those passengers). But USAirways sent [...]
Continue ReadingAssociations have a soft spot for wanting to make people happy. One of the mistakes we frequently make, since we all have diverse membership bases, is trying to please everyone. Trying to be everything to everyone. This is typically hard to sustain strategically. You spread yourself too thin trying to please everyone. But in nearly [...]
Continue ReadingAt dinner the other night a colleague implied that money is rarely the reason people leave jobs–if they were happier at their current job, they wouldn't be looking around, or at least they would feel more satisfied with their current salary. I agree that money is rarely the primary issue. And frankly it's always complicated [...]
Continue ReadingDisclosure: I have never really worked in the corporate world. My current position–where I consult to and manage nonprofit organizations–is actually the first time in my life I've worked for a for-profit corporation (that wasn't my own company). Basically, I've been in the nonprofit world my whole career. But I must have missed some of [...]
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Jamie is a Vice President at MSP where he leads the consulting division. 
