It's hard to remember, but in the year 2000, Dell was a company in trouble. Senior VP Kevin Rollins, today the company's CEO, saw clearly what the problem was, and it had little to do with supply chain breakdowns or motherboard components. Dell employees had become stock watchers, more interested in their own financial performance than in the company's success.
After two rounds of layoffs, Rollins began to think about the company's culture and values, what it needed to make Dell a lasting company. He concluded that Dell had to succeed in new business measures such as speed, integrity, adaptability, and resilience.
"How Rollins, together with company founder Michael Dell and other leaders, put Dell back on track makes a powerful case for the role corporate culture plays in enduring business performance," writes author Lawrence M. Fisher. "Their story also strongly suggests that over the long run, the healthiest and wealthiest companies are those that define their strategies and management systems with a purpose beyond merely increasing returns to shareholders."
This is an instructive read for any executive thinking about their corporate culture, how it can go wrong, how it can be fixed, and the benefits of getting it right. One lesson: Culture has the most impact not on company veterans, but rather on new hires who are quickly indoctrinated into what matters most to the company. This story appeared in Strategy + Business, a quarterly magazine published by Booz Allen Hamilton and reprinted here by CNET.—Sean Silverthorne