ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

HOW LEADERS BEGIN CULTURE CREATION 233with the idea. He made the initial assumption that he did not knowenough about the market to gamble with his own money, and hereinforced this assumption publicly by telling a story about the oneenterprise in which he had failed. He had opened a retail store in aMidwestern city to sell ocean fish because he loved it; he assumedothers felt as he did, trusted his own judgment about what the marketplacewould want, and failed. Had he tried to get many others toinvest in the enterprise, he would have learned that his own tasteswere not necessarily a good predictor of what others would want.Because Smithfield saw himself as a creative conceptualizer butnot as a manager, he not only kept his financial investment minimalbut also did not get very personally involved with his enterprises.Once he put together the package, he found people whomhe could trust to manage the new organization. These were usuallypeople like himself who were fairly open in their approach to businessand not too concerned with imposing their own assumptionsabout how things should be done.One can infer that Smithfield’s assumptions about concretegoals, the best means to achieve them, how to measure results, andhow to repair things when they were going wrong were essentiallypragmatic. Whereas Sam Steinberg had a strong need to be involvedin everything, Smithfield seemed to lose interest once the new organizationwas on its feet and functioning. His theory seemed to be tohave a clear concept of the basic mission, test it by selling it to theinvestors, bring in good people who understand what the mission is,and then leave them alone to implement and run the organization,using only financial criteria as ultimate performance measures.If Smithfield had assumptions about how an organization shouldbe run internally, he kept them to himself. The cultures that eachof his enterprises developed therefore had more to do with theassumptions of the people he brought in to manage them. As itturned out, those assumptions varied a good deal. And if one analyzedSmithfield Enterprises as a total organization, one would findlittle evidence of a corporate culture because there was no group thathad a shared history and shared learning experiences. But each of