The Cultures Of Best Buy, Google, GE, And Semco

November 26, 2008 Leave a comment

I just ran across an interesting blog post called Four Radically Different Cultural Models: Best Buy, Google, GE, Semco. It outlines the differences in the culture and people management across these four firms. Here’s an excerpt:

  • General Electric: The Ruthless Meritocracy
    Six Sigma (with some room for bringing in new ideas). True to GE’s past, the massive company still strives for perfection through efficiency, but CEO Jeffrey Immelt is pushing innovation just as hard to make up for Six Sigma’s tendency to kill creativity.
  • Google: The Whimsical Idea Factory
    (Slightly) controlled chaos. Build fantastic facilities that eliminate employees’ everyday hassles and make them want to come to work (and stay there). Let them tinker and watch the sparks fly.
  • Best Buy: The Every-Day-Is-Saturday Model
    We’re all adults here. Work is not a place you go, it’s something you do, so there’s no reason for the company to dictate when and where employees work. Managers look solely at results produced, not hours spent at a desk or in meetings.
  • Semco: The Extreme Democracy
    Employees run the show, which means transparency in all things. Salaries are public knowledge, and complaints about managers are posted for all to see. Semco, a conglomerate that does everything from industrial engineering to environmental consulting, has no corporate strategy (really) and no predefined career paths. The idea is that workers should be the ones who identify strategic opportunities – for both the company and themselves.
My take: It’s not an accident that “Invest In Culture As A Corporate Asset” is at the top of my list of 6 new management imperatives. It’s critical for senior execs to ask themselves and their management teams: What culture do we want to create and nurture? As you ponder the answer to this question, make sure to keep in mind these laws of customer experience:
The bottom line: Pay attention to your corporate culture.

Filed under Corporate culture, Employee Engagement, Executive leadership Tagged with , , , ,

About Bruce Temkin, CCXP
I'm an experience (XM) management catalyst; helping organizations improve results by engaging the hearts and minds of their employees, customers, and partners. I enjoy researching and speaking about these topics. I lead the Qualtrics XM Institute, which is the world's best job. We're igniting a global community of XM Professionals who are inspired and empowered to radically improve the human experience. To achieve this goal, my team focuses on thought leadership, training, and community building. My work is driven by a set of fundamental beliefs: 1) Everything starts and ends with human beings, so you need to understand how people think, feel, and behave; 2) XM is a discipline that needs to be woven throughout an organization's entire operating fabric; and 3) Building the XM discipline requires a combination of culture, competency, and technology.

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