This essay originally published in the Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024 edition of the Fortune Archives newsletter.
In 1983, Fortune observed a new trend in corporate America: a “revolutionary concern for the soft, bewilderingly human underpinnings of business.”
This “cultural revolution,” Bro Uttal wrote, came in the wake of four blockbuster management books that “hammered home the idea that companies with a record of outstanding financial performance often have powerful corporate cultures.”
Few would argue with that premise, then or now. But the big question Uttal was exploring in 1983 remains the subject of much debate: Can you change a corporate culture? And is it even worth trying?
Uttal’s definition of a corporate culture still rings true: “a system of shared values (what is important) and beliefs (how things work) that interact with a company’s people, organizational structures, and control systems to produce behavioral norms (the way we do things around here).”
In 1983, Uttal wrote, several management consulting companies that promised to shift company cultures to better align with strategic priorities were gaining prominence. Even so, some of the biggest players in the field, including McKinsey & Co., remained skeptical of the enterprise—with good reason, Uttal asserts: “A review of the evidence suggests that anybody who tries to unearth a corporation’s culture, much less change it, is in for a rough time.”
That remains true now, as many a newly hired “turnaround CEO” can attest. The best companies are built on the firm ground of a strong culture that unites employees from top to bottom, and installing a new one is much easier said than done. Uttal rather dismissively lists the methods companies often use to try to do so, and they sound extremely familiar to anyone who works for a corporation today:
“A tactic fairly standard by now is to develop a statement of corporate purpose, an awesome list of what the company believes in, and then remind everyone of it constantly. To be consistent, tailor your formal systems, structures, and personnel policies to reflect those declarations. You should reinforce the message by giving special awards for behavior in accordance with key values-inventiveness, say, or customer service—taking care to publicly shower ‘attaboys’ on the folks with the right stuff. You can work your company’s informal structures and processes, holding picnics for the elect and spreading stories about what Joe, the star salesman, did to get the big order. Some poetic license will help.”
