Tonight, NBC will tie a big bow on The Office, wrapping up the series for good after nine seasons. Dunder Mifflin fans will desperately begin the search for another show that induces both laughter and that particular, indefinable cringe-worthy element.
The impending series finale has already prompted a number of reflective articles from the web’s biggest fans—my favorites include Forbes’ management lessons from Michael Scott and Buzzfeed’s predictably perfect compilation of key Office moments.
But perhaps there’s room for one more. The Office celebrates the notion that company culture is critical; despite Michael Scott’s antics, he ran Dunder Mifflin’s best-performing branch. Over the course of nine years, the show gave us a peek into the pillars of Dunder Mifflin’s success, leaving viewers with five key lessons about maintaining a strong company culture:
- Be clear about your organization’s mission, and reinforce it. When Michael Scott held the managerial reins, there was no question about his mission: to sell paper and create an office environment where everyone felt like family. While implementing the latter was often more challenging, he never stopped trying—through (often misguided) humor, dinner parties, and unexpected field trips. After seven seasons, when Michael finally parted from Dunder Mifflin, it was clear that he left a family behind. Read the rest of this entry »
Think back to where you were during the Enron scandal. It has been eleven years since the day that scandal broke, and we’ve come a long way in terms of the transparency expected from corporations and the ethics of financial management. But now here we are in 2012, and still the nation’s largest financial institution, The Federal Reserve, is perhaps the least transparent of all—until now.
