As magazine publishers face increasing pressure to reinvent themselves for the digital age, they are challenged to secure the skill sets they need to compete against digital natives that aren’t held back by old school thinking. Corporate culture can be a powerful tool for attracting and delivering more agile and motivated employees, especially Millennials. A corporate culture has to work for the company as well as its customers. With a strong culture, you can hire for fit, train for skills, and let culture fill in the gaps when the unexpected occurs.
The need for a codified corporate culture becomes clear when you consider how the internet and, more importantly, social media amplify employee and brand mistakes. Misunderstanding a hashtag reference or picking a questionable image might not be eliminated, but culture can inform employee choices and set expectations for promoting the brand and serving customers.
This is nothing new
In 1951 post-World War II Japan, Dr. W. Edwards Deming was honoured with the Deming prize, aptly named for him as the first recipient. Working on reconstruction with the US Army, Deming was instrumental in helping the Japanese rebuild their economy. His 14-point philosophy on continuous process improvement starts with ‘creating constancy of purpose’, and ‘adopting the philosophy’. He urged management to ‘take on leadership for change’. These principles, in conjunction with his expertise in statistics, helped companies like Toyota and Sony achieve international success in product development.
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