Tag: culture

Cartoon blog day 31: RIP Stan Lee

20181113 RIP Stan Lee

I am still sad. Even before knowing Stan Lee, you sort of knew him. In certain documentaries about comics, people criticized him for taking the credit for solely creating characters like Spider-man when Steve Ditko came up with the brilliant design we now know and love.

But Stan always took the time to mention the talented artists who worked with him Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita and so on.

Everybody loves Stan Lee, he was our link to what people referred to as Golden Age of comics.

I truly mean it, his legacy lives on. An artist always puts a little bit of himself in everything they do, in that way those who looked up to his characters also looked up to Stan Lee, the author.

He taught me that it was cool to be good, you can use your superpowers to help people. When most boys went to the gym to impress girls in high school, the loser I was I went to the gym to look as close as I can to his characters hoping it would give me superpowers.

We have lost a living superhero who made even a skinny, shy kid from India dream his way out of his shell, thank you Stan Lee, Rest In Peace.

Cartoon blog day 13: Corporate culture

I used to work for a multinational company in the automotive industry. I don’t know how much money the company spent on building a “corporate culture”, needless to say it felt important.

There is nothing wrong with that, after all, you have people from different cultures working together towards company’s goals.

CBD13 Corporate culture.jpg

I am still not sure whether this corporate culture is a solution to cultural differences or a genuine attempt to make employees feel like they belong in a social structure. You have probably heard Managers’ speeches like “We are a family”. (Then what about my real family?)

As you might have noticed I referred to the corporate culture as a possible solution which means cultural differences are seen as problems.

But cultural differences are problems only when faced with the method that the company followed so far to get successful results. A Japanese company follows a Japanese approach, a French company follows a French approach and so on.

Cultural differences are not problems, they are part of our reality.

I feel that these differences are not discussed in all honesty not only because of their complexity but also in fear of offending someone in the process. It’s like a relationship in a couple if you don’t address the differences they will build up exponentially. But people won’t talk about them, because it’s easier to break up than to lose your job.

Bonne journée.