Ooh, I'm so jealous
As of this afternoon, my new hero is Shawn Parr, Guvner and CEO of Bulldog Drummond for his article on FastCompany.com, Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch. Actually, it's more like a love/hate thing. Mind you, I've never met him but this article says so well what I've believed for a long time. I wish I had written it.
Key takeaways for me include:
1. the direct connections between culture and brand
2. the strength and power of champions within the organization to drive positive results
3. the importance of storytelling among stakeholders
It reminds me of the Clay Mathile / Iams story. Here is a man, trained as an accountant, who buys a small dog food company. In growing the company from under $10MM to over $1B, he focuses on three things - innovation, marketing, and...culture. And he carves out for himself his most important role of stewarding the company culture - from starting Iams University (before it was a popular corporate thing to do) and spending time with each employee every week of the year.
Okay, that's all. Read the article and pay attention to your culture. Engage your executive team, your marketers and human resources people to treat this as a top priority for 2012 and beyond.
Evan "not Shawn Parr" Scott