3 Book Selections to Help You Enhance Your Corporate Culture

In my last article, we discussed how continual learning can make today’s executives more effective—and even, more enlightened—business leaders. Fortunately, continuing education needn’t take the form of expensive MBA degrees, week-long professional seminars, or costly annual subscriptions to trade publications. In fact, there are dozens of excellent books on business management and corporate culture that can be purchased new, bought used for just a few dollars, or happily borrowed (for free!) at your local library. 

In the spirt of ongoing learning and discovery, what follows are some of my favorite books on corporate culture. These wonderful resources can shift your worldview, benefiting you, your staff, and yes, your office culture. Want to expand your horizons? Simply take one to bed and read a chapter a night or download the audio editions and listen to them when you walk the dog, work out, or on your commute to work. 

The cost is minimal, and the insights received can be truly invaluable. If not, life changing.

The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle (Random House 2017)

This 2017 bestseller by journalist Daniel Coyle deep-dives into the principles behind America’s most successful teams and organizations. The book is divided into three parts, each dedicated to one of three critical skills necessary for building a great culture: building safety, sharing vulnerability, and establishing purpose.

Throughout the book, Coyle provides numerous examples of successful teams as disparate as Pixar, the Navy SEALS, and the San Antonio Spurs. Coyle skillfully examines their respective cultures to identify those elements that contribute to their success. He also provides practical advice and exercises for individuals and organizations to implement these principles, especially to improve or finesse your own team culture. 

Overall, The Culture Code can provide you with valuable insights and actionable steps you can use today to build a culture of trust, collaboration, and high performance. But don’t just take my word for it. Here’s what the New York Journal of Books has to say about this title:

“The Culture Code does not disappoint, for Coyle eloquently, evocatively, effectively informs and illuminates the true meaning of culture as derived from the Latin cultus, which means care.”

Under the Hood:  Fire Up and Fine-Tune Your Employee Culture by Stan Slap (Portfolio 2015)

In this book, international business consultant Stan Slap employs insights from his years of proprietary research, including surveys of over 15,000 employees from companies worldwide, to illustrate the importance of culture. Like Coyle, he helpfully offers practical tactics to improve it. Topics covered range from how to identify a company’s core values to creating a culture of ownership to increasing employee commitment to an organization.

This book is an easy read as Slap writes in a light-hearted tone. He also makes even the most complex concepts simple and engaging. Here you’ll find original tactics and insights to drive organizational performance through culture-building. This especially makes it a useful resource for anyone seeking to increase growth, profitability, and workplace engagement.

Here's what Goodreads says:

“This deeply researched book reveals why an employee culture is an entirely separate organism living within a company, with its own purpose and priorities… Like Slap’s previous bestseller, Bury My Heart at Conference Room B, this book is provocative, irreverent, heartfelt, and often very funny.”

Trust Factor:  The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies by Paul J. Zak (AMACOM 2017)

A credentialed neuroscientist by trade, Dr. Paul J. Zak takes a unique approach to the study of company culture by looking at the biological science behind the creation of trust and its importance to the success of complex organizations. His research is particularly useful for increasing company performance, productivity, and talent retention. In his book, Zak addresses such key questions as, “Why is culture so difficult to improve?” “Why do so many employees check-out?” and “Why are monetary rewards often nothing more than short-term solutions to long-term problems?”

Trust Factor answers all these questions by opening a window into how brain chemicals affect behavior and the various ways you can leverage chemical rewards systems to literally rewire your employee behavior for the better. Here’s what Harper Collins has to say about Dr. Zak’s work:

“Stop recycling the same ineffective strategies and programs for improving culture. By using the simple mechanisms in Trust Factor, you can create a perpetual trust-building cycle between your management and staff, thus ending stubborn workplace patterns.”

*****

These are just three books I heartily recommend for understanding the importance of company culture for business success as well as acquiring the practical tools to shape it to your organizational needs. Of course, I have even more recommendations, but these offer a great place to start.

For more information on what company culture is, why it’s so important in the age of Quiet Quitting, and how to improve it, please drop me a line at laura@conoverconsulting.com. My team and I have been corporate culture and compensation specialists for more than 30 years, and we stand ready and able to take your company to the next level.