There are lots of books on culture – how to build it, how to create, what is valued within it, etc, etc.
It’s impressive, a 7 letter word carries so much weight in our society today – the thing everyone wants, the thing everyone craves, the hardest to identify and the least successful when rubber hits the road.
The books I really enjoy reading are those that focus on the author looking back at decisions they made in Company X, what could have been, what should have been, what worked, what didn’t and what the end result was.
The books I cannot simply put down are the ones where things didn’t end up all rainbows and unicorns. Those are the books that have the lessons in them, the pitfalls, the challenges, the changing conditions. They aren’t all doom and gloom but they do give you that interesting introspection that you normally wouldn’t get.
I read “Almost Perfect” a number of years ago and could not put it down, it was so interesting. I think I read it all in one sitting from the growth of the company to experiments with flattened leadership in the 80s (and being an avid WordPerfect user for years) it was such an eye-opening read on culture.
So, if you’re not doing anything on this Canada Day, take a read – Almost Perfect – and have a great one eh!
