Making Organizational Culture Great - by Jennifer Chatman & Glenn R Carroll

About the Book

"Those who accept the challenge of trying to leverage their organization's culture for strategic success often feel mystified, uneasy, or skeptical. One major reason managers experience unease in dealing with culture is that popular beliefs about culture are pervasive and potentially misleading--only some are accurate, reflecting underlying facts, while many are inaccurate, more akin to myths. This book will deconstruct the facts and fictions surrounding the five most common beliefs they've encountered: 1. Culture shows great inertia, it doesn't change much and you as a manager can't really change it; 2. Culture can only be managed from the top down, using authority, it's all about managers imposing their will on employees and forming the culture themselves; 3. Culture consists of soft, fuzzy and ambiguous phenomena; thinking about culture remains elusive and it cannot be measured objectively; 4. Culture only benefits those who fit in, so-called aligned employees benefit from culture while some valuable others are neglected; and 5. Culture can make people happy, but it does not matter for business performance, culture does not impact the bottom line. Each chapter will examine the facts and fictions of these beliefs with the aim of explaining and interpreting established and foundational social science on culture for executives and students alike. The authors will offer guidance on how to manage organizational culture accordingly, leveraging their business and social science expertise, studies of individual companies, and frameworks that can be used to set up, design, develop and maintain the culture of an organization"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Leaders remain skeptical about the power of organizational culture even though extensive research shows that it is crucial to business success. Can a manager really influence an organization's culture, or do executives just try to impose a culture on their employees? Is the concept of culture too vague to measure objectively and improve? What happens to valuable employees who feel left out by the prevailing culture? Even if a "good" culture makes team members happy, does it actually affect the bottom line?

This essential book answers the biggest questions about organizational culture, offering research-backed insights for leaders on shaping and managing an environment that spurs achievement. The management experts Jennifer A. Chatman and Glenn R. Carroll--a psychologist and a sociologist--draw on social-scientific findings to evaluate and debunk common misconceptions. They show how research on culture empowers managers to identify what really matters and deploy it productively. Chatman and Carroll also provide actionable levers to build and maintain organizational culture, from crafting a culture that supports strategic objectives to ensuring that it can adapt as conditions change.

Making Organizational Culture Great features compelling examples from companies and nonprofits including Apple, Genentech, Disney, Ford, Netflix, Maersk, Google, Cisco, Southwest Airlines, and many others. A practical guide for current and aspiring leaders, this book reveals how to manage culture consistently, comprehensively, and coherently.

Review Quotes

At WD-40 Company, we believe that culture is the ultimate source of competitive advantage; it takes a long time to build a culture that is strong, strategically relevant, and adaptive over time, and such a culture, once built, is extremely hard to copy. This excellent book is a wonderful guide as to why culture is such a strong source of sustainable advantage, with many practical tips and highly relevant case studies. The book helps demystify company culture, which many leaders have never formally studied and which can often be perceived as quite an opaque subject. Highly recommended!--Steve Brass, CEO, WD-40 Company

Chatman and Carroll put together a coherent narrative about what corporate culture is, how to improve and change your culture, and how to deliver performance from your organization through culture. This is a must read for any business leader looking to deliver impact.--Alfred Lin, partner, Sequoia Capital

Chatman and Carroll's latest book charts the promise and pitfalls of culture, providing an invaluable roadmap for managers, leaders, and executives to drive exceptional performance. It's an indispensable guide for building enduring, high-performing teams and companies.--Laszlo Bock, former chief human resources officer, Google, and two-time founder/CEO

In Making Organizational Culture Great, Chatman and Carroll cut through the hype by providing accessible insights from organizational culture research; they provide leaders with pragmatic and robust practices for aligning culture and strategy. This is the book for managers interested in lifting their organization to new heights!--Kristin Sverchek, former president, Lyft

This book busts some of the biggest myths about organizational culture. With rigorous evidence and vivid cases, two experts illuminate how to understand and improve systems of values, norms, and behaviors.--Adam Grant, New York Times best-selling author of Hidden Potential and Think Again, host of the podcast Re: Thinking

About the Author

Jennifer A. Chatman is Bank of America Dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and codirector of the Berkeley Haas Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. She is cohost of the podcast The Culture Kit with Jenny and Sameer.

Glenn R. Carroll is Adams Distinguished Professor of Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and professor (by courtesy) of sociology at Stanford University. He is coauthor of Making Great Strategy: Arguing for Organizational Advantage (Columbia, 2021).