Organization Culture Quotes & Sayings

A singular confusion exists about the notions of 'culture' and 'civilization'.
Culture began with the 'prologue in heaven.' With its religion, art, ethics, and philosophy, it will always be dealing with man's relation to that heaven from whence he came. Everything within culture means a confirmation or a rejection, a doubt or a reminiscence of the heavenly origin of man. Culture is characterized by this enigma and goes on through all time with the steady striving to solve it.
On the other hand, civilization is a continuation of the zoological, one-dimensional life, the material exchange between man and nature. This aspect of life differs from other animals' lives, but only in its degree, level, and organization. Here, one does not find man embarrassed by evangelical, Hamletian, or Karamasovian problems. The anonymous member of society functions here only by adopting the goods nature and changing the world by his work according to his needs. — Alija Izetbegovic

In the early stages the sexual needs will have the upper hand, in later stages the compulsive moralistic inhibition. At times of political upheavals of the total social organization, the conflict between sexuality and compulsive morality becomes most acute. This will impress some people as the "collapse of morality," other people as "sexual revolution." At any rate, the idea of the "decline of culture" is the perception of the breakthrough of natural sexuality. The only reason why it is experienced subjectively as "decline" is the fact that it threatens the compulsive moralistic way of living. What happens objectively is only the downfall of the sexual dictatorship which maintains the compulsive moralistic forces in the individuals in the interest of authoritarian marriage and family. — Wilhelm Reich

Jesus never asked me to give to an organization the kind of exclusive devotion he demands from his disciples. Over and over, Jesus calls people to himself - out of the church, the culture, the economy, and the family. — Michael Spencer

What unites the women who seek to reduce their weight is the fact that they look for an answer to life's problems in the control of their bodies and appetites. A woman who walks through the doors of a weight watching organization and enters the women's reduction movement has allowed her culture to persuade her that significant relief from personal and cultural dilemma is to be found in the reduction of her body, thus, her decision, although she may not be aware of it, enters the domain of the body politik and becomes symbolically a political act." p.101 — Kim Chernin

A proactive person needs no pressure to perform and an ineffective person offloads his pressure onto others to deform the positive work culture of the system. So practically, a progressive organization knows that no pressure environment plays a pivotal role to increase the productivity or proficiency of its workforce. — Anuj

That's a remarkable concept: only when individuals can trust the culture or organization will they take personal risks in order to advance that culture or organization as a whole. — Simon Sinek

When you start paying attention to diversity, you notice it (and notice its absence!). And based on the culture of your upbringing and the culture of your organization, you may or may not be primed to think consciously about innovation. — David Livermore

How do you build a successful organization or culture? It's the people. The people part, in business and basketball, is huge. — Bob Myers

People ask me what's the most important function when you're starting an organization or setting up the kind of culture and values that are going to endure. The discipline I believe so strongly in is H.R., and its the last discipline that gets funded. — Howard Schultz

The alarming lack of ideas that is recognizable in all acts of culture, politics, organization of life, and the rest is explained by this, and the weakness of the modernist constructers of functionalist cities is only a particularly visible example of it. Intelligent specialists only ever have the intelligence to play the game of specialists: hence the fearful conformity and fundamental lack of imagination that make them admit that this or that product is useful, good, necessary. In fact, the root of the reigning lack of imagination cannot be understood if one does not have access to the imagination of lack
that is to conceiving what is absent, forbidden, and hidden, and yet possible, in modern life. — Tom McDonough

Friends, if it matters to you, I think it is less important that we agree and more important that we learn to disagree with respect. Let's not expect to agree and get frustrated when it doesn't happen. Let's strive to hear each other out while bringing out the best in ourselves and others. I know it's difficult because I feel it everyday. But I also know it'll be good for us as individuals, for the organization, and the country. I invite you to strive with me and help shift our culture. — Annabel Park

Healthy companies know that they have to allow people to fail without assessing blame. They have to do that or else no one will take on anything that's not a sure bet. Healthy companies know that, but Culture of Fear companies do not. In a Culture of Fear company, failure must be rewarded with punishment. ("What would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear?") A typical punishment is that you get fired. If the people above you are insufficiently powerful, some of them may get fired as well. This creates a powerful incentive to pass responsibility for failure on by blaming someone outside the organization. — Tom DeMarco

An error in the doctrine of God will have inevitable consequences in the sphere of action, of moral behaviour, of the polity of the Church, and of basic culture and social organization. A change in the doctrine of the Trinity in either of these directions cannot help but have political consequences.

Farrell, commenting on Nazianzen's connection between Trinity and Holy Monarchy — Joseph P. Farrell

Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success - along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like ... I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value. — Lou Gerstner

Reliance is the ultimate measure of a team's or organization's culture. It's not 'Would I recommend a friend to work here?' It's 'Would this group of people put their ass on the line for me?' And 'Would I do the same for them? — Bill Jensen

I knew the biggest priority was to create a winning culture in which every member could thrive and excel. This meant we would not only have to create the right culture for the team but also for the rest of the organization. — Jon Gordon

We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly. — T. S. Eliot

Accepting employment in any organization requires the new employee to adjust their personality in order to meld in with the operable business environment and applicable social climate. An employee whom cannot parrot the ideas, standards, mores, and ethical mandates of their professional organization might endure a turbulently relationship that will expose their core ideology. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Successful companies will almost always be described in terms of a clear strategy, good organization, strong corporate culture, and customer focus. But whether these things drive company performance, or whether they're mainly attributions based on performance, is a different matter. — Phil Rosenzweig

Belonging to the Catholic Church gives your support to an organization that conceals and protects child rapists. Again, not as a few isolated incidents, but as a massive, institution-wide culture, a matter of policy even, that extends throughout the organization and reaches all the way to the top. Belonging to the Catholic Church - giving them money, letting them count you in their rolls, sending your children to their schools - gives this behavior your personal thumbs-up, and actively enables it to continue. — Greta Christina

The theory of cultural bias ... is the idea that a culture is based on a particular form of organization. It can't be transplanted except to another variant of that organization. — Mary Douglas

It's always a challenge whenever you have to nurture more than one culture inside an organization. When I say culture, you have one group that will have one set of priorities, and another with another set. It creates a different cultural environment. — Charles Giancarlo

We want to understand what works here rather than what worked at any other organization. — Laszlo Bock

Those who disrupt their industries change consumer behavior, alter economics, and transform lives. — Heather Simmons

Of all the arts, music is the one communal art. It requires for its existence extensive cooperation and organization ... Singing together the greatest choral music of all time is the surest way of developing in a community that sense of quality and reverence for beauty, which is the basis of a musical culture ... Entertainment has its place in life just as candies and cocktails have, but health is not built on such a diet alone, nor culture exclusively on amusement. — Edgard Varese

If Americans wish to preserve a country they will recognize, then the first step is to recognize the enemy. Public education is the enemy. The entertainment industry is the enemy. The corporate culture is the enemy. The advertising industry is the enemy. And most of the politicians in both parties are the enemy. An enemy is defined as anybody, or any organization, which is attacking the traditional beliefs of Americans. — Charley Reese

I knew the kind of culture we needed to create and I defined it for the team. The seven responsibilities everyone had were to: Have fun, work hard, and enjoy the journey. Show respect for every person you have contact with in the organization. Put the team first. Successful teams have teammates that are unselfish and willing to put their individual goals behind the team's goals. Do your job. It is defined, but you must always be prepared for it to change (especially if you're a player). Appropriately handle victory and defeat, adulation and humiliation. Do not get too high in victory or too low in defeat. Be the same person every day. Understand that all organizational decisions aim to make the team better, stronger, and more efficient. Have a positive attitude. Use positive language (both verbal and body language). — Jon Gordon

Trust is the glue in relationships and organizations — Stephen Covey

The work of God can only be carried on by the power of God. The key is not $, organization, cleverness or education. No matter the society or culture, the city or town, God has never lacked the power to work through available people to glorify his name. — Jim Cymbala

Centripetal organization unifying a culture in all its phases into a unique, coherent, and artistic form; the other a period of centrifugal disorganization in which creed and culture decompose in division and criticism, and end in a chaos of individualism, skepticism, and artistic aberrations. — Will Durant

Most Western managers believe that long-term success flows from a state of stability, harmony, predictability, discipline, and consensus-a state that I refer to as stable equilibrium. This belief leads them to demand general prescriptions that they can immediately convert into successful action. The most popular prescriptions are to formulate a vision of an organization's future state, to prepare long-term plans to realize that vision, to set strategic milestones and monitor achievements against those plans, to write mission statements and persuade people to share the same culture, to encourage widespread participation and consensus in decision making, and to install control systems that allow top executives to set the organization's direction and stay in command. — Ralph D. Stacey

Jon and I talked several times on the phone about the state of the Falcons' organization and it became very clear that if I was going to turn this team around, the first step would be to focus on transforming the culture. — Jon Gordon

Innovative ideas aren't generated in structured, authoritarian environments but in an adaptive culture based on the principles of self-organization and self-discipline. — Jim Highsmith

Improve performance through process improvements introduced with minimal resistance. Deliver with high quality. Deliver a predictable lead time by controlling the quantity of work-in-progress. Give team members a better life through an improved work/life balance. Provide slack in the system by balancing demand against throughput. Provide a simple prioritization mechanism that delays commitment and keeps options open. Provide a transparent scheme for seeing improvement opportunities, thereby enabling change to a more collaborative culture that encourages continuous improvement. Strive for a process that enables predictable results, business agility, good governance, and the development of what the Software Engineering Institute calls a high-maturity organization. — David J. Anderson

Whatever the country, whatever the culture, whatever the time, when you become a big enough organization, you start to collapse and slow down. — Masayoshi Son

... the invention of the mechanical clock in medieval Europe. This was one of the great inventions in this history of mankind -- not in a class with fire and the wheel, but comparable to movable type in its revolutionary implications for cultural values, technological change, social and political organization, and personality. — David S. Landes

In terms of organisational models and human relationship models, humankind has not evolved much over the last millennia. — Miguel Reynolds Brandao

As the leadership team, we're taking bold and decisive action to evolve our organization and culture. This includes difficult steps, but they are necessary to position Microsoft for future growth and industry leadership. — Amy Hood

The fundamental keys to the culture of any organization can only be achieved when everyone is on the same page. — Tony Dungy

A lot of knowledge in any kind of an organization is what we call task knowledge. These are things that people who have been there a long time understand are important, but they may not know how to talk about them. It's often called the culture of the organization. — Howard Gardner

One of the remarkable things about slums is that they do develop their own social organization and economy and even culture that is, on some level, functional and in some cases, remarkably resilient. This is kind of amazing. — Geoffrey West

Successful change can only come in the context of a clear understanding of what may never change, what the organization stands for. This is what Peter Drucker calls the organization's culture. Culture, as he uses the term, is that which cannot, will not, and must not change. We talk a lot about changing corporate culture, as though it were just another parameter of the organization, like an SIC code or address. But Drucker would have us look at culture entirely differently, as the bedrock upon which any constructive change will have to rest. If nothing is declared unchangeable, then the organization will resist all change. When there is no defining vision, the only way the organization can define itself is its stasis. Like the human creature that fights wildly to resist changing whatever it considers its identity, the corporate organism without vision will hold on to stasis as its only meaningful definition of self. — Tom DeMarco

In organizations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes. — Brian Chesky

Culture is the deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously and define in a basic 'taken for granted' fashion an organization's view of its self and its environment. — Edgar Schein

The return to the Organization of the United States of America, the bearers of a great and diversified democratic culture that has inspired many other peoples. — Carlo Azeglio Ciampi

Success in an enterprise can be brought about, through effective leadership, which educes open communication, which in turn would contribute towards bringing down conflict levels, thus leading to higher productivity and distinguished gains, which in turn testifies about the healthy corporate culture of an organization. — Henrietta Newton Martin

I try ... to use my own voice in a way that shows caring, respect, appreciation, and patience. Your voice, your language, help determine your culture. And part of how a corporate culture is defined is how the people who work for an organization use language. — Frances Hesselbein

MTV and the culture industry never are talking about community relevance, hood organization, they aren't talking about ethical codes, they aren't talking about forms of political organization, they don't speak about codes inside the jails. What they talk about are superficial things. — Bocafloja

Feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the very organization of nature. Many women give up in despair: if that's how deep it goes they don't want to know. — Shulamith Firestone

Superior execution is vital to sustaining the success initiated by an innovative service concept. An innovator's service quality is usually more difficult to imitate than its service concept. This is because quality service comes from inspired leadership throughout an organization, a customer-minded corporate culture, excellent service-system design, the effective use of information and technology, and other factors that develop slowly in a company, if at all. — Leonard L. Berry

When the culture of an organization mandates that it is more important to protect the reputation of a system and those in power than it is to protect the basic human dignity of individuals or communities, you can be certain that shame is systemic, money drives ethics, and accountability is dead. — Brene Brown

I never dreamed I would be a Goodwill Ambassador, and for UNESCO. Perfect organization. It is apolitical and it's about education, science and culture. I mean that is what I live. That is what UNESCO is really about; it's all about bringing human beings together with one common goal, which is to move human kind forward. — Herbie Hancock

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. — Patrick Lencioni

Your personal core values define who you are, and a company's core values ultimately define the company's character and brand. For individuals, character is destiny. For organizations, culture is destiny. — Tony Hsieh

Culture is the organization's fingerprint. — Pearl Zhu

When people in organizations feel too secure, it's because there aren't any significant outcomes as a result of what they do. Whatever you do, nothing much different happens. This also means there are no important pay-offs if you risk by innovating. As there are no rewards for taking risks, then there's no sense of push in that institution's culture. — Judith M Bardwick

If I can impact an executive and his or her team, I can help to change the culture of an organization. — Srikumar Rao

Science, unguided by a higher abstract principle, freely hands over its secrets to a vastly developed and commercially inspired technology, and the latter, even less restrained by a supreme culture saving principle, with the means of science creates all the instruments of power demanded from it by the organization of Might. — Johan Huizinga

One of the formulas to build a successful business is to nurture an "adaptability trait" in an organization's culture. — Pearl Zhu

Culture is the heartbeat of the organization and our society. — Pearl Zhu

The first step in turning around your organization's performance? Think positively about the people you lead. — Cheryl A. Bachelder

Organizational culture is just like the "Operation System" of the organization, you need reboot periodically to keep it running smoothly. — Pearl Zhu

The teachers are trying to build the same culture in the classroom as we're building in the organization. — Wendy Kopp

As successful companies mature, employees gradually come to assume that the priorities they have learned to accept, and the ways of doing things and methods of making decisions that they have employed so successfully, are the right way to work. Once members of the organization begin to adopt ways of working and criteria for making decisions by assumption, rather than by conscious decision, then those processes and values come to constitute the organization's culture. 7 As companies grow from a few employees to hundreds and thousands, the challenge of getting all employees to agree on what needs to be done and how it should be done so that the right jobs are done repeatedly and consistently can be daunting for even the best managers. Culture is a powerful management tool in these situations. Culture enables employees to act autonomously and causes them to act consistently. Hence, the location of the — Clayton M Christensen

Authentic leaders inspire us to engage with each other in powerful dreams that make the impossible possible. We are called on to persevere despite failure and pursue a purpose beyond the paycheck. This is at the core of innovation. It requires aligning the dreams of each individual to the broader dream of the organization. — Henna Inam

Workplace culture is the heartbeat of an organization, and either yields energy and motivates people to pursue greatness or sucks the inspiration out of employees and slowly brings a business to a grinding halt. — Kevin E. Phillips

Truth be told, nobody thought Dell's direct business model would work, at least back in the early 90s. As Bill Sharpe, head of the advertising agency that held the Dell Canada account from 1996 to 2006, told me, "I had a business partner in California who said, we have a client, Dell. It sells computers over the phone, and ships them to you. I said, 'There's no way, who's gonna buy a computer over the phone? They're complicated. — Heather Simmons

There isn't a scientific community. It is a culture. It is a very undisciplined organization. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

If you want to change the culture, you will have to start by changing the organization. — Mary Douglas

The fastest way to change the feedback culture in an organization is for the leaders to become better receivers. — Sheila Heen

We're in the age of the idea. The organization that can develop a culture of creativity and idea generation will be the winners. — Kevin Roberts

An organization has to institutionalize its culture without bureaucratizing it. — Patrick Lencioni

Is it shocking that it's very difficult for a news organization to do news in America now? It's not shocking because we're a culture that doesn't want news. We want entertainment. We want info-tainment. That's why CNN is having problems. — Oprah Winfrey

observes the veteran international pollster Craig Charney, that while the Internet "improves the ability to connect, it is no substitute for political organizations, culture, or leadership - and spontaneous movements tend to be weakest in all of these." Many Arab Awakening efforts ultimately failed because they could not build an organization and politics that could translate their progressive ideas into a governing majority. — Thomas L. Friedman

Company culture is the backbone of any successful organization. — Gary Vaynerchuk

Once you demonstrate to your team that you put them on the same plane of priority as yourself, you will create an environment, and a culture that will make your entire organization flourish. — Kevin Allen

A service culture doesn't happen by accident. The company is always a reflection of the person at the helm. Their attitude, their values, and their commitment to service excellence will drive the actions of others in the organization. Always has ... always will. — Mac Anderson

People have come to me over the years and said to me: 'I admire the culture of Starbucks. Can you come give a speech and help us turn our culture around?' I wish it were that easy. Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it's based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions. — Howard Schultz

The achievement of excellence can only occur if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction. — Lawrence M. Miller

Truly human leadership protects an organization from the internal rivalries that can shatter a culture. When we have to protect ourselves from each other, the whole organization suffers. But when trust and cooperation thrive internally, we pull together and the organization grows stronger as a result. — Simon Sinek

Culture consists of the shared purpose, attitudes, values, goals, practices, behaviors, and habits that define a team or organization. — Jon Gordon

Such is the strange situation in which modern philosophy finds itself. No former age was ever in such a favourable position with regard to the sources of our knowledge of human nature. Psychology, ethnology, anthropology, and history have amassed an astoundingly rich and constantly increasing body of facts. Our technical instruments for observation and experimentation have been immensely improved, and our analyses have become sharper and more penetrating.
We appear, nonetheless, not yet to have found a method for the mastery and organization of this material. When compared with our own abundance the past may seem very poor. But our wealth of facts is not necessarily a wealth of thoughts. Unless we succeed in finding a clue of Ariadne to lead us out of this labyrinth, we can have no real insight into the general character of human culture; we shall remain lost in a mass of disconnected and disintegrated data which seem to lack all conceptual unity. — Ernst Cassirer

Culture, more than rule books, determines how an organization behaves. — Warren Buffett

Great leaders create great cultures regardless of the dominant culture in the organization. — Bob Anderson