A few days ago I happened to read this document about Culture and Ethos in companies.

I believe that it was Jacopo Romei sharing it, but anyway, I got impressed by the core concept:

… culture is created and re-created by the choices made by individuals every day […] People make the culture, so invest in your people foremost.

The document is quite interesting, even though slightly naive, but there is one principle that got my attention:

Plan around trust; allow for mistakes

  • If tempted to introduce a policy, ask whether or not it is needed because you don’t trust everybody to do the right thing.
  • Mistakes are OK; expect them and learn from them.
  • Instead of adding a rule, hire better people so that you need less rules

I know a few companies which lost most of the valuable people due to the lack of trust.

In God we trust

This morning I was again inspired by Jacopo (can you see a pattern here as I do?): he was sharing his thoughts about society and censorship and he mentioned the sentence which is the title of this post

The healthier a society is, the less rules are needed

Let me be naive here: what if a country can plan around trust and be transparent.
What if a country could share at least some of the Culture and Ethos principles defined in that document?

Maybe changing the whole “hiring” concepts to be education related.
Could you figure it out?

Perhaps the worst thing we can do for culture is try to preserve it.