The Politics of Culture
I’ve been thinking a lot about organizational culture lately, given the reorg that Yahoo! has been going through. And I’ve been thinking how important underlying cultures and leaders-by-example are to building successful organizations.
But this line of thought took me on a tangent, as I caught a piece of the news this morning about Senator Tim Johnson (to whom I send my best wishes) — and the flurry of politics his misfortune has already and inevitably set off. And I realized that our politicians, as much as they like to blame the media and game industries for exposing our children to violence, are the true role models and culture stewards from whom we take our cues about public life. They are the leaders of our organizations (in that school boards report to them, etc.) and hold — collectively, anyway — the resources and authority to do great good or harm to our world.
And they’re doing a terrible job of creating a culture that encourages thoughtful debate, sincere collaboration, accountability, and success, instead rewarding insider politics and self-serving choices. (Okay, so I’ve been watching The Wire, too!)
How can good results ever emerge from that, and how can a system that rewards cynicism and punishes idealism ever be “built to last”?
