Morale & Budgets

Brad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

Hayagreeva Rao, Robert Sutton, and Allen P. Webb, "Innovation lessons from Pixar Director Brad Bird," McKinsey Quarterly, April 2008, www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Innovation_lessons_from_Pixar_An_interview_with_Oscar-winning_director_Brad_Bird_2127.

That’s very Googley

For now, Microsoft continues to fight alone, but with more vigor than in years past, analysts said. Less than a month after Bing’s release, Microsoft beat Google and Yahoo to a hot new area in search: It became the first major search engine to index new postings from popular Twitter users almost immediately. The move helped amplify the buzz around Bing.

“I feel like they are a little more daring,” Mr. Sullivan said. “They popped this thing out in a few weeks. That’s very Googley.”

Miguel Helft, "Bing Delivers Credibility to Microsoft," NYTimes.com, 13 July 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/technology/companies/14bing.html.

Stories for change

We tend to conform to the behavior of the people around us. Which is what makes culture change particularly challenging because everyone is conforming to the current culture. Sometimes though, the problem contains the solution.

'Stories.' I said to the head of the firm.

'Excuse me?' he responded.

'You change a culture with stories. Right now your stories are about how hard you work people. Like the woman you forced to work on her wedding day. You may not be proud of it, but it's the story you tell. That story conveys your culture simply and reliably. And I'm certain you're not the only one who tells it. You can be sure the bride tells it. And all her friends. If you want to change the culture, you have to change the stories.'

Peter Bregman, "A Good Way to Change a Corporate Culture," HarvardBusiness.org, 25 June 2009, blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bregman/2009/06/the-best-way-to-change-a-corpo.html via a tweet by David Armano