Under the Hood

March 1, 2015
Consultant Slap reports, You Can't Sell It Outside if You Can't Sell It Inside. Managers must first convince the employee culture of new initiatives. An employee culture is a simple operating system that gathers information to ensure its own survival; it exists to protect itself. Managers are outside of the culture, yet they are the key influencers of the culture's survival and emotional prosperity. The author's Seven Deadly Sins of Cultural Commitment, leading to employees rejecting or limiting their support, include the most importantfailure to respect the employee culture, which can make or break any management goal, and the manager. Other sins are strategic efforts that require rapid cultural change won't succeed; real leadership is needed; and employee culture has a long memory (it remembers everything). Slap also considers the vulnerability of a company to the will of employees when business is going up and when it is falling behind. This thought-provoking book, written in an easy manner, contains important insights for managers and aspiring managers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)