Organizational Culture Quotes

Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.

There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.

Since the earliest days of Eventbrite, we've made our people core to our mission. Our culture is an ever-evolving manifestation of those on our team. As people join, we believe in earning their trust by demonstrating we'll embrace them and help them grow.

In my day, MI6 - which I called the Circus in the books - stank of wartime nostalgia. People were defined by secret cachet: one man did something absolutely extraordinary in Norway; another was the darling of the French Resistance. We didn't even show passes to go in and out of the building.

I don't think value to the customer is achieved at the expense of employees' welfare.

There is almost nothing more painful for a leader than seeing good people leave a growing organization, whether it's a priest watching a Sunday school teacher walk out the door or a CEO saying goodbye to a co-founder.

I think management is about just that - managing people via man-to-man skills.

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.[Pournelle's law of Bureaucracy]

Personal ambition is 'I want to be CEO.' Greater vision ambition is, 'I want to lead this company so that people want to work here.'

My problem with unions is they breed mediocrity.

Something as simple as transparency is really scalable because it quickly impacts the culture. And the culture is something everyone feels. If upper management is really transparent with everyone, that has this amplifying effect. Then you tend to attract players who operate that way, on the same wavelength, and coaches and fans.

Change the leader, change the organization.

You know, I think when people are in important positions in big organizations, they often get tied up with the minutia of managing money, managing things. They often forget that people deserve to be led.

Since most startups operate at a break-neck pace, with a concept to prove or a product to launch within a rapidly shortening runway of financing, company culture often gets shoved aside. This is a big, big mistake: Nobody serious about their business should put culture in the corner.

When superiors are fond of showing their humanity, inferiors try to outstrip one another in their practice of it.

A company's employees are its greatest asset and your people are your product

A positive, high-performance culture can quickly turn negative if the CEO is not rigorous in constantly articulating values and holding people accountable for both results and values.

None of us are naïve enough to believe that moving around boxes on organization charts will change behavior. You have to change culture.

Steve Jobs has a saying that A players hire A players; B players hire C players; and C players hire D players. It doesn't take long to get to Z players. This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies.

What’s the best way to build a brand for the long term? In a word: culture.

I have built my organization upon fear.

One of the most intriguing things in management and in business is the role of storytelling - people need the anecdotes to do the work that they do.

The great thing about David Poile and Nashville is they believe in the people that they hire and they stick with the people that they hire.

A policy of knowing your replacement is one of the best ways to drive a growth culture. It anticipates and eliminates the most harmful politics in leadership for an expanding company and instantly sets the right tone for a high-talent, growth-mindset executive team.

Any great organization can go through sectarian phases.