Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
From one of the founders of the organizational culture movement, and the author of the seminal The Wisdom of Teams (over 400,000 sold worldwide), a book that focuses on the key elements every leader can tap to transform company culture. Every organization has a unique culture, but they all have one thing in common. Whenever they have a big change to make, powerful emotional forces in their culture appear, at first, to resist it. But there are other culture forces under the surface that can be potential sources of catalytic strength. The best leaders succeed by tapping those "critical few" sources. Using an unusual, dialogue-based approach, Katzenbach shows how a sharp focus on just these elements reduces complexity and enables leaders to create profound cultural transformation and positive, lasting impact on performance. The critical few elements are:
The critical few traits the shared characteristics that are at the heart of people's emotional connection to what they do.
The critical few behaviors people's actions that would lead a company to succeed if they were replicated at greater scale.
The critical few people individuals whose emotional intuition and institutional trust make them valued guides for transformation, wherever they are on the org chart.
Synopsis
Without a deep understanding of your company's culture, any change effort you undertake will fail. Bestselling author Jon Katzenbach and his coauthors identify the four most critical cultural elements leaders need to focus on. In a global survey by the Katzenbach Center, 80 percent of respondents believed that their organization must evolve to succeed. But a full quarter of them reported that a change effort at their organization had resulted in no visible results. Why?
The fate of any change effort depends on whether and how leaders engage their culture: the self-sustaining patterns of behaving, feeling, thinking, and believing that determine how things are done in an organization. Culture is implicit rather than explicit, emotional rather than rational--that's what makes it so hard to work with, but that's also what makes it so powerful.
For the first time, this book lays out the Katzenbach Center's proven methodology for identifying your culture's four most critical elements: traits, characteristics that are at the heart of people's emotional connection to what they do; keystone behaviors, actions that would lead your company to succeed if they were replicated at a greater scale; authentic informal leaders, people who have a high degree of emotional intuition or social connectedness; and metrics, integrated, thoughtful measures to track progress, encourage the self-reinforcing cycle of lasting change and link to business performance.
By leveraging these critical few elements, you can tap into a source of catalytic change within your organization. People will make an emotional, not just a rational, commitment to new initiatives. You will elicit enthusiasm and creativity and build the kind of powerful company that people recognize for its innate value and effectiveness.