575 Madison Avenue, NYC

575 Madison Avenue, NYC

  • Call Now : 212.605.0200
  • Home
  • Covid 19 Response
  • About Us – 575 Madison Avenue
  • Office Plans
    • Office Space
    • Virtual Offices
  • Virtual Offices
  • Meeting Rooms
  • Visitors
    • Area Information
    • Area Map
    • Directions
  • Blog
  • Contact Us

What Being Kidnapped as a Child Taught Me about Culture

June 12, 2015 by Blog Posts

by Kevin Sheridan

575 Madison Avenue New York City Native Amer Head DressRecently, the famous dictionary producer Merriam-Webster named culture as the “Word of the Year.” I am sure most experts on Employee Engagement were not surprised by Merriam-Webster’s choice. Indeed, legendary management expert Peter Drucker was one of the first to get it right years ago when he coined the phrase, “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast.” While Drucker first said this decades ago, the words still ring very true in today’s business environment and workplace landscape. His seminal point in making this statement was that all of a company’s efforts on strategy will fall flat if the company culture is not sound and in alignment with its purpose and people. Likewise, if job candidates aren’t as careful about assessing the culture of their potential new employer, they will mistakenly choose the wrong new employer and quickly find themselves in job search “transition” mode again.

I learned a difficult lesson on culture when I was just a child. At age 10 and living with my mother and three sisters, I was illegally kidnapped by my father and brought from a lily-white Chicago suburb to an American Indian reservation in Northern Wisconsin. Neither my Father nor any of my new family members were American Indian; they simply lived on the reservation’s land. Since state laws differ about how to handle child custody cases and additional laws exist to protect Indian reservations and their inhabitants, the pending criminal charges against my Dad were soon dropped and my sisters and I found ourselves stuck in a cultural environment that felt like another planet. I was sent to a nearly-all Chippewa Indian grade school, where I quickly learned that my skin color had become my own cultural “baggage.”

CLICK TO FINISH THE ARTICLE

World-Wide Business Centres
575 Madison Avenue – 10th floor
New York, NY 10022
(212) 605-0200

Filed Under: Uncategorized

  • Home
  • About Us – 575 Madison Avenue
  • Office Plans
  • Virtual Tours
  • Meeting Rooms
  • Visitors
  • Blog
  • Testimonials
  • Image Gallery – 575 Madison Avenue
  • Contact Us
World-Wide Business Centres
575 Madison Avenue, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10022-2511, Phone : 212.605.0200, E-mail : info@wwbcn.com
Developed and Designed By :