If you were thinking that the current lineup for presidential elections is quite wild, here is a different kind of option: rumor goes that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is going to run for President in 2020. And to make sure the word gets out, a #DreamForce15 team is walking around giving away $2 for each tweet featuring the tag #Benioff2020. 

Every other day I bump into an article that proclaims, or at least predicts, where the next Silicon Valley will be. If you ask me, the answer is clear: nowhere. A business environment doesn't develop in a vacuum, but in a specific cultural and social context. Therefore trying to clone a specific business ecosystem within a completely different culture yields often silly results. I believe we all agree that building a Tour Eiffel replica did not suddenly transform a town where people go to drink and gamble into Paris.

I wanted to add this sentence to the title, but it was making it too long: 
Have you look at your culture lately?

Culture forms the matrix of all human interactions, and it seems that the awareness of its impact on business and life is finally reaching mainstream. Merriam Webster has named "culture" word of the year (2014) andAdvertisingAge points out that "culture becomes crucial to customer engagement and brand building in 2015", and that success of a company"is increasingly measured by their ability to gain cultural traction."

There is a lot of hype in Silicon Valley about the importance of culture. And while many companies, organizations, MBA programs and execs benefit from using or hiring culture specialists, many others are merely bragging about their "passion" for "culture change" without really doing anything other than replacing "HR" with "People Specialists" or something along those lines.

So, what is a Culture Influencer and why all organizations should get one? Here are my 7 cents: