Andy Serwer on corporate culture

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

~ Peter Drucker

(as quoted by Andy Serwer, "A final dispatch from editor-in-chief Andy Serwer," Yahoo!Finance, December 31, 2022)

Doug Casey on the impact of DIE and ESG on corporate cultures

The concepts of DIE (diversity, inclusion, and equity) and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) have inundated corporate culture like a tidal wave of sewage.  They’re viewed as being good, positive, and something that everybody should observe when they should be thrown out with the garbage.  They’re purely destructive. 

One of the causes for this, other than our corrupt education system, is that corporations today are usually not run by entrepreneurs.  Entrepreneurs, the founders, generally have one way of thinking.  Later, managers take over.  The company is then run by suits, heavy with lawyers and accountants. They’re what the French call “petit fonctionnaires.”  These are people with bureaucratic mindsets, better at backslapping and backstabbing than creating value, who come to consider themselves as masters of the universe.  It’s not good.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on Why Woke Corporations Will Go Broke," International Man, June 14, 2022

Anonymous employee on Disney's woke culture

I’ve been here for 35 years, and I only have a few years left before I can retire.  I’m trying to keep my sanity, but it’s very difficult.

~ anonymous employee, "Longtime Disney Cast Member Speaks Out: ‘We Are Ashamed to Work for This Company’," The Epoch Times, April 8, 2022

Nick Saban on setting high standards

Q: Why are you so tough on people?

A: Well, I don't know if that's fair that I'm really "tough" on people.  We create a standard for how we want to do things.  And everybody has got to buy into that standard or you really can't have any team chemistry.  You know, mediocre people don't like high achievers and high achievers don't like mediocre people.

~ Nick Saban, 60 Minutes interview, "The Perfectionist," 2:00 mark, November 1, 2013

John Mackey on Covid's impact on corporate culture

A company is ultimately about relationships, about trust, and about partnership.  And the hardest thing in Covid has been the difficulty, other than virtually, to connect with people.  More people may work at home when this is over, but in reality, if you're going to maintain a culture, you have to have people connecting with each other, and there's no real substitute for doing that in person.

~ John Mackey, "BW Talks: John Mackey," Bloomberg Businessweek, October 5, 2020

Andy Grove on when a company begins to decline

There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance.  Miss that moment - and you start to decline.

~ Andy Grove

Andy Grove on corporate transformation

A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin.  Methods have to change.  Focus has to change.  Values have to change.  The sum total of those changes is transformation.

~ Andy Grove