ABSTRACT
A company’s culture starts forming the instant the founders begin conceiving their enterprise. From the very moment of conception, the company’s culture begins to feed on various characters, events, products, strategies, and competitive environments. Since so many new companies grow up in the fast lane, where change is always accelerating at a dizzying pace, it’s easy for their executives to forget that the emerging strategy-culture foundation requires constant attention. Pursuing a strategy that does not take maximum advantage of the people would squander a valuable resource and mark the beginning of a strong culture’s demise. When insight and sensitivity work together from the moment of a company’s conception, they forge a strategy-culture alloy that will carry the company successfully through the predictable stages of development: growth, crisis, and evolution. The start-up phase, more than any other, lends itself to culture neglect and the willy-nilly shifting of strategy, two dangers that account for the high mortality rate among new enterprises.
