deepSEE Consulting

“Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.” – Peter Drucker Spot on: Drucker is spot on when he compares company cultures to those of countries. Leaders don’t often think of their organization as even having a culture, much less comparing it to country cultures, but that is exactly the case.

In a recent article, Luke Visconti (aka “The White Guy") argues that “CEO commitment is essential to diversity-management programs.” As my kids would say, “No duh,” that’s pretty obvious. But I would add another reason that Visconti didn’t mention. That is that CEOs must be committed because successful diversity initiatives are actually successful change initiatives. The organizational culture must shift to be more inclusive and adaptive to difference.

“Minnesota's lowest-performing schools are plagued by uneven teaching quality, fuzzy academic goals and minimal parent support, the Minnesota Department of Education says it has found.”

This opening paragraph from a recent Minneapolis Star Tribune article jumps right into what has almost become a national sport: trying desperately to figure out what’s wrong with the nation’s schools. All too often, however, we spend way too much time looking at the symptoms instead of the cause of the academic malaise.