Misc
The Iceberg That Sinks Organizational Culture Change
Most people are aware of the incredible power that company culture has in making or breaking a company.
While the concept of culture seems qualitative and fuzzy to many entrepreneurs or managers, the research on the impact of culture on organizations is very clear and data-driven. Companies with highly-engaged employees have low turnover, high productivity, more satisfied customers, and higher profits.
To sum it up culture’s potential impact more succinctly, management guru Peter Drucker famously put it a different way: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
The Pitfalls of Culture Change
The benefits of a strong company culture are many – and it’s no surprise to see companies all over the world aspiring to build world-class cultures within their organizations at almost any cost.
The problem is that company culture, just like the culture that permeates through society, is based on hidden sets of assumptions, social norms, traditions, and unwritten rules that represent the way things actually get done in a company. As a result, decision makers often underestimate how challenging cultural change can be.
Today’s infographic comes from executive consultant Torben Rick, and it uses an iceberg analogy to show why organizational culture change sinks so many ships. At the top of the mass, there are visible indicators of a culture – but underneath is a bigger, invisible mass that holds all the ingrained cultural assumptions that are extremely difficult to affect.
As Torben Rick puts it, the iceberg represents “the way we say we get things done” in contrast to the deeply-ingrained “way that things actually get done” within an organization.
In other words, for managers to positively affect cultural change, they not only need to address the top of the iceberg (vision, mission, values, etc.) but they must also make inroads on the bottom of the iceberg, which makes up more like 90% of a company’s actual culture.
Unfortunately, transforming these underlying perceptions, traditions, and shared assumptions is the real hard part of the exercise, and it can take many months or even years to see the results of such initiatives.
How to Build a Strong Company Culture
Cultural change cannot happen in one week of meetings, or through a few memos sent from higher ups. To effectively shape the bottom of the iceberg – those deeply-ingrained beliefs held throughout the organization – change must happen over a longer period of time where leading is done by example, and employees have the support they need to grow.
The following infographic from ZeroCater offers six ways to help get you started in building a strong culture.
As you embark on your voyage to build a stronger company culture, remember that organizational change is more complex and ingrained than it initially seems.
The amount of companies that are successful in these endeavors is far fewer than the amount that have tried – and this iceberg of organizational culture change has sunk many ships over time.
Gaming
Ranked: The Best Selling Video Games in History
This chart shows the top ten best selling video games, ranked by software units sold. Six of them have been released in the last 12 years.
Creator Program
Ranked: The Best Selling Video Games in History
It’s a good time to be a video game fan. Not only is the gaming industry booming and projected to grow to $320 billion by 2026, but every year is bringing new evolutions in the medium.
2022 saw massive launches in both games (Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarök) and media based on games (the films Uncharted and Sonic the Hedgehog 2). 2023 has already seen the release of major flagship TV series based on a game, HBO’s The Last of Us, and the much-anticipated The Super Mario Bros. Movie is slated to release in April.
But which game is the best, or most successful? That debate may never end, but from company reports and sales data aggregated by Wikipedia, Samuel Parker’s chart of the most-sold video games as of March 3, 2023 can at least tell us which ones have been the most popular.
Top Ten Video Games Sold in History
The best selling video game didn’t need multimillion dollar budgets, sixty-hour narratives, or celebrity voice actors and ad spots. The independently-developed (indie) Minecraft, with its pixelated blocks, takes the top spot on this list.
| Rank | Game | Sales (units) | Year Released | Developer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Minecraft | 238.0M | 2011 | Mojang Studios |
| 2 | GTA 5 | 175.0M | 2013 | Rockstar |
| 3 | Tetris (EA) | 100.0M | 2006 | EA Mobile |
| 4 | Wii Sport | 82.9M | 2006 | Nintendo |
| 5 | PUBG: Battlegrounds | 75.0M | 2017 | PUBG Corp |
| 6 | Mario Kart 8 | 60.5M | 2014 | Nintendo |
| 7 | Super Mario Bros. | 58.0M | 1985 | Nintendo |
| 8 | Read Dead Redemption 2 | 50.0M | 2018 | Rockstar |
| 9 | Pokémon Red/Green/Blue/Yellow | 47.5M | 1996 | GameFreak |
| 10 | Terraria | 44.5M | 2011 | Re-Logic |
Minecraft sold more units than the combined forces of Grand Theft Auto 5 (#2) and Red Dead Redemption 2 (#8), both made by industry giant Rockstar. Its immense popularity has been credited to its simple gameplay (no goals), creative structure (build anything), and engaged community with player-run servers and additional feature creations (known as mods).
Another simple favorite, Tetris, comes in at third place with 100 million units sold of its 2006 re-release. Millennials continue to make up a large chunk of the video game playing demographic which might explain Tetris’ sales.
But newer games are making up the majority of sales records. PUBG: Battlegrounds, a battle-royale shooter game which helped popularize the genre (and eventually its competitor Fortnite) asserts its popularity at #5. That puts it well ahead of the better-known shooter Call of Duty, even despite PUBG being banned in a number of countries for the alleged impact on the mental health of gamers.
The oldest game to make the list is Super Mario Bros. (#7), apt considering it is credited with reviving the video game industry after it crashed in 1983. The original staple side-scroller has sold 58 million copies worldwide.
Developer Dominance
Though the top selling games span various series of games, a few developers managed to repeatedly find success.
| Developer | Top 20 Best-Selling Games |
|---|---|
| Nintendo | 11 |
| Rockstar | 2 |
| Others | 7 |
Japanese video game titan Nintendo developed three games (Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart, Wii Sport/Fitness) in the top 10 and another eight in the top 20. That’s not including its co-ownership of Pokémon, the world’s highest-grossing media franchise.
American publisher Rockstar Games also managed to score multiple hits, though its longer development cycle necessary to create cinematic games gives it fewer potential candidates. That might change with the much-anticipated GTA 6 reportedly in production.
Best Selling Genres
The most popular genres in the top 10 give players the freedom to impose their will upon the world and pursue objectives at their leisure:
| Genre | Games |
|---|---|
| Sandbox/Open World | 4 |
| Simulation | 2 |
| Others | 4 |
Two games (Minecraft, Terraria) are classic sandbox games, where worlds are procedurally generated and there are no gameplay goals. Another two (GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2) are in the adjacent open-world genre, with a combination of sandbox elements and a narrative structure.
However, with new games launching and selling millions of units every year, new entrants to the top 10 list of best selling video games of all-time seems likely. How will these developers, genres, and games fare over time?
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