Beyond the Way that We Do Things

Culture According to Rummler

Imagine that a CEO asked you to improve the headquarter’s overall performance. During your analysis, you discovered these trends:

• Managers dictate what workers do.
• When problems are imminent, no one alerts management.
• After an inevitable disaster occurs, teammates blame each other.
• Executives brag about their ‘open-door policy’ but managers treat workers who talk with executives as troublemakers.
• Managers use mistakes to rationalize lowering workers’ annual performance ratings.

If you conclude that these trends reflect the corporation’s culture, do you recommend fixing the culture? Do you design several interventions to change how people treat one another?

If he was still around, what would Geary Rummler think about cultural problems? According to Rummler, what’s the performance consultant’s perspective?

Rummler is one of the most recognized practitioners and scholars of organizational performance with several books and more than fifty articles. In one of his books, Serious Performance Consulting: According to Rummler, Rummler discusses culture and how it is relevant for performance consultants.