About You. This site is for everyone who wants to learn how to grow a culture of excellence to scale a startup organization. If you lead a young venture, you want your team to get along and do good work. You want the team to have a culture that enables it deliver on time, on budget, and as promised. And you want that culture to sustain the venture as it grows into a larger organization.
On this site, we focus on two primary components of organizational culture: Basic norms and mindwork. The 7 Principles of Cultural Excellence make up the foundation of the normative component. 7 Arts of Mindwork enable the organization to do the thinking and decision making that drives it forward.
To do that job of growing an organizational culture, rely on the 7 Principles of a Culture of Excellence. Purpose, Truth, Fairness, Respect, Competence, Stewardship, and Positivity. On this site, I explain what those principles mean in practice and how you can ingrain them in your organization's culture.
I'll also explain how you can use Chat GPT and other AI tools to help.
Numerous leaders have relied on some combination of the core four (truth, fairness, respect, and competence) as the foundation for growing and reforming organizations that exceeded all expectations. I'm thinking of Herbert Taylor, who rescued Club Aluminum from the brink of bankruptcy with the 4-Way Test, Robert Wood Johnson II, who took Johnson & Johnson public with the Johnson & Johnson Credo, and Ken Iverson who led Nucor Steel out of insolvency to become a powerhouse mini-steel company. Based on the science of organizations and years of experience, I have added Purpose, Stewardship, and Positivity to the list.
If you and your team commit to the 7 Principles of Cultural Excellence in all you think, say, and do, they will serve as a semi-automatic culture builder. By that I mean that you can focus your attention on getting the product or service right, finding the customers who need it, supporting and rewarding those who do the work, and managing the money.
Fulfilling a commitment to purpose, truth, fairness, respect, competence, stewardship, and positivity is not always easy. But it is not complicated. I recommend finding ways to remind yourself and everyone involved in your venture to use these foundational principles as guides by printing the core four on the backs of business cards and posting all seven in conference rooms, break rooms, and your own office.
These 7 Principles are the foundation; but they aren't everything you need to build a culture of excellence. You and your team need to make proficiency in the 7 Arts of Mindwork standard operating procedure: Visioning, Communicating, Relationship Building, Decision Making, Measuring, Problem Solving, and Negotiating Agreements. As we move forward, I will provide resources and links to training on these skills as well.
If you ground your venture in the 7 Principles and develop proficiency in the 7 Arts, you will build the foundation of a culture that will sustain your organization as it scales.
About me. A serial entrepreneur myself, I've spent decades learning, using, and teaching the 7 Principles of Cultural Excellence and the 7 Arts of Organizational Mindwork. I have a doctorate in philosophy and social science from the Free University of Berlin and a law degree from Georgetown University. I've taught in colleges and universities in Germany and the United States, including Middlebury College and the University of Vermont's MBA program. I've written books and articles. I practiced law for 25 years. I've written software to help resolve legal disputes. And I've worked as an international consultant and trainer in legal systems, ethics, negotiation, and conflict resolution. I look forward to learning from your comments and recommendations as this site grows.
