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“Everyone recognizes the importance of culture and acts as if they understand it, while in reality, very few understand the consequences of culture at all,” says Dr. Thomas R. Krause, CEO of Krause Bell Group and a member of the Thomas Aquinas College Board of Governors. “I wanted to help leaders understand and effect organizational change.”

follows CEO John, a technical man who prefers data to people, as his company is thrust into a corporate catastrophe caused by its culture. John, along with his mentor, Jane, and incompetent HR head Marvin, is encountered by Culture personified — a blunt and brutally honest creature that helps John and his peers view in a whole new light the problems brought on by their company’s organizational ethos.

“I was working with a particular client who was having a lot of difficulty achieving the culture change they wanted, and I started thinking about how I could help them understand it better,” explains Dr. Krause. “As I was thinking about what culture is and how it comes to be, it occurred to me: What if you could talk directly to culture itself? That idea led to a story that I thought would be more fun, helpful, and approachable to an organizational leader than an academic description of the thing.”

Dr. Krause is founding partner of the Krause Bell Group, an international consulting firm specializing in organizational culture and safety management. He is a prolific author and speaker on the topics of leadership, organizational safety improvement, and culture change. In 2010, he joined the College’s Board of Governors after falling in love with the curriculum through his daughter, Christel (Kelsey ’91). Since then, he has regularly employed graduates of the College at his various companies, as he believes their moral and intellectual formation sets them a step above the rest.

“A TAC graduate has a certain level of integrity you can always count on,” says Dr. Krause. “He or she also has a sense of curiosity about underlying philosophical issues and will not take something for granted just because it’s the regular way to think about it. They notice things — such as flaws in their company’s culture, for example — that someone with a more typical or secular background may not question at all.”