Forget Creating Your Culture –Look At Structure Instead

Published in Forbes.com Oct 22, 2020

Does your culture hold up under pressure? That is, when your teams, your leaders or your products come under fire, does your culture lead you to do better, or does it simply fall apart like a paper tiger?

Funny how many companies compete for the “best company culture” award, which takes lots of time, money, focus and energy to achieve. The real test occurs when the company is not at its best or a big challenge occurs, like a pandemic.

Take a Wall Street darling, Tesla, a much-celebrated company with an iconic founder, Elon Musk. From its website, here are its stated cultural values: "doing the best, taking risks, respect, constant learning, and environmental consciousness.” 

Is the structure of the Tesla operations designed to live up to any of these values — those that supposedly create the culture?

Let’s take “environmental consciousness” for $1,000, Alex. Clearly, electric vehicles will pass that ethic with flying colors, right?

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