| There are so many attributes that its impossible to list them all, just like there are countless attributes that can distinguish a person, with new ones being discovered everyday. You mention "personality" and that's a good analogy for a company's cultures - It's the organization's personality. Just like personalities, most are neither good or bad inherently, they're just different. Some personalities are better suited for certain endeavors (eg. extroverts are generally better at sales) and attract certain type of people more than others. So a "good" culture is one that aligns well with the business objectives and attracts the type of talent that are better aligned with those objectives. Here's an example: Apple has a design-led culture. Product designers have tremendous influence on what products get made and how they get made. One way this expresses itself is in how leaders make decisions: Through demos. Which makes perfect sense when your business is reliant on the tactile experience of a product and its look-feel. Google, OTOH, has an engineering-led culture. A lot of product decisions aren't made via demo, but with data. Leaders may see a demo of an improvement to, say the search engine, but they'll rely on usage data to determine whether it should be rolled out or not. These examples also demonstrate how one culture might not be the best for certain lines of business. Apple, relative to the other tech giants, is way behind on its implementation of AI, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's because its not data-driven at its very core. |