Organizational Development and Culture

This topic of “transition” came home to me (literally and figuratively) over the Thanksgiving holiday. With our adult kids returning, my husband and I decided it was time to have them go through their “bins” and throw out, donate, or take back with them, their childhood.

For those of you following closely (thank you!), you may recall that in an earlier e-conversation — 21st Century Commercialization — More than a Point in Time! — we defined commercialization as neither a function nor a process.

At your next company lunch and learn, try this experiment: Ask ten people from different functions to take a blank piece of flip chart paper (assuming you still have flip charts!). Then ask them to draw a picture of how key decisions are made in your organization.

Back in the early 2000s, I was head of commercial strategy at Millennium Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I remember saying to then CEO, Mark Levin, that we had an opportunity to define how the company vision, “Transcend the Limits of Medicine,” could be translated at the customer level.