I am putting together a long list of goals for the team for 2015, based on everyone giving me…a long list. 2015 should be fun, same as it ever was.

My own goals are heavily skewed to the personal – and I don’t mean about me. I mean the personal – about people. It is a hangover from recent investigations into the person-to-person economy. Bringing strategy and culture into a tight, close-up lens: seeing the whole in the intimate, personal moments.

Everything I want to read and watch and listen to – all of my cultural inputs – are intimate. They are an existential search for meaning in the hubbub of modern life. Intimacy drives breakthrough, the personal brings us closer to our shared longing. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, opined Peter Drucker.

Yet how do we define our culture?

• The Founder’s legacy (20 years after death)?
• The executive’s creed (dispersed around the globe, remote from my work)?
• The product quality (never seen in a store)?

I think the culture is the approach of the people to their work. It is the stitching together of people’s narratives to show where they meet. It is intimate, and personal, and peculiar and difficult to grasp. It is the work at hand.

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