Quotes About Culture

Meetings are ineffective because they lack contextual structure. Too many organizations have only one kind of regular meeting, often called a staff meeting. Either once a week or twice a month, people get together for two or three hours of randomly focused discussion about everything from strategy to tactics, from administrivia to culture. Because there is no clarity around what topics are appropriate, there is no clear context for the various discussions that take place.

At its core, organizational health is about integrity, but not in the ethical or moral way that integrity is defined so often today. An organization has integrity—is healthy—when it is whole, consistent, and complete, that is, when its management, operations, strategy, and culture fit together and make sense.

Team Rewards By shifting rewards away from individual performance to team achievement, the team can create a culture of accountability. This occurs because a team is unlikely to stand by quietly and fail because a peer is not pulling his or her weight.

I believe that all successful organizations share two qualities: they are smart, and they are healthy. An organization demonstrates that it is smart by developing intelligent strategies, marketing plans, product features, and financial models that lead to competitive advantage over its rivals. It demonstrates that it is healthy by eliminating politics and confusion, which leads to higher morale, lower turnover, and higher productivity.

I have found that most leaders spend the majority of their time and energy making their organizations smarter, with relatively little effort directed toward making them healthier.

this point is critical—no one but the head of an organization can make it healthy.

as odd as it may seem, it is actually more important for leaders to focus on making their organizations healthy than on making them smart.

All employees who had been with Telegraph for more than a few months knew that no matter how impressive their background or skills might have been, they had made it into the firm because they were found to be humble, hungry, and smart.

Contrary to the assumptions of his rivals, Rich O'Connor had no tolerance for touchy-feely off-site meetings. In fact, his staff had come to refer to his meetings as "hug-free zones," a term they coined during Telegraph's first management retreat five years earlier.

an organization that has properly identified its values and adheres to them will naturally attract the right employees and repel the wrong ones.

KEY POINTS—EMBRACING ACCOUNTABILITY • Accountability on a strong team occurs directly among peers. • For a culture of accountability to thrive, a leader must demonstrate a willingness to confront difficult issues. • The best opportunity for holding one another accountable occurs during meetings, and the regular review of a team scoreboard provides a clear context for doing so.

God, I remember when cappuccino was a delicacy.

it has always seemed to me that books are the supreme decorations of a room

As I have said, the social contract is not the same in Catalonia as it is in France; superficially it is rougher in some ways, but beneath the surface it is often far more friendly, direct, and indeed more sensitive.

Please tell the Senhor that I have never eaten better porco in my life,' said Jack, holding up a bare white bone. Jack had a variety of little imbecilities, but none irritated Stephen more than his way of tossing in the odd word or two of a foreign language.

What are bashed neeps? Neeps hackit with balmagowry.

The Americans had been kind, polite, hospitable, and their sailors thorough seamen, but they had the strangest notion of coffee: a thin, thin brew - a man might drink himself into a dropsy before the stuff raised his spirits even half a degree.

A people that has had its ancient laws and customs taken from it, whose language and history count for nothing, and whose temples have been sacked and thrown down is apt to be morose

Horta de Sant Joan

Honesty and integrity are a "given" in most organizations, rarely tested on any but the most superficial levels.

The fashion for French philosophers in the American universities has always been a fashion for the wrong philosophers.

When I first came here it was a pure country. There was music and dancing and magic every day in the streets. Now it's finished, everything. Even the religion. In a few more years the whole country will be like all the other Moslem countries, just a huge European slum, full of poverty and hatred.

In reality the gatherings were held in order to entertain these few Moslem guests, to whom the unaccountable behavior of Europeans never ceased to be a fascinating spectacle. Most of the Europeans, of course, thought the Moslem gentlemen were invited to add local color.

After all, the English are really too much. One can't live in that constipated fashion forever.