Building Better Organizations

Introduction

Start with a Better Foundation

Every organization produces exactly the results it is designed to produce. The simplicity of that truism belies just how difficult it is to get the design right in the first place. Most organizations can’t do it.

The problem doesn’t lie with the design of the product or service that a business offers—not usually, anyway. Instead, in a study of nearly 300 startup failures, the decline most often had to do with “ people issues,” matters to do with the organization itself—often the company’s culture or how it treated its customers. Only 2 of the top 20 reasons that startups failed was due to money or lack thereof.¹ Every account of a failed attempt to turn around a decrepit business model, to capture ...