The style of your organization is unique. However, the differences with other styles are minor. There are not too many ways in which a company unfolds itself into the (near) future. We all have to solve problems. We are to compete and cooperate. We are to build equipment and systems. We organize activities. We interact with clients and sell products or services.

Still there is this unique voice that resonates between the walls of your organization. The tone of this voice can alter, but much of it is as it is. Yours!

Style is a way of life. The way you organize activities, plan projects, manage people, solve conflicts, and react on disasters.

And with all that, style shows you the way. Like a tradition. Like a ritual. It is a way of conduct. As a habit; the repetition of activities.

Like the house-style is defined by rules, your organizational style also responds to rules. Those rules are tacit. It is the implicit knowledge of the way your organization organizes.

If you read the style guide of the economist - - which refers to the guide written by George Orwell (Politics and the English Language: http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/language.html) - - you experience a guide that shows you part of your writing solution. It directs you.

Therefore, the word Guide combines very powerful with the word Style.

A Management Style Guide guides your organization, not only management. It shows the rules that you implicitly use. Rules that have solved conflict in previous situations and that have produced case-law. Situation you have dealt with before. And solved. Most of the time you can just follow that way

2006 Hans Bool