Better Culture, Faster is a brilliant read for busy leaders who want a no-nonsense, succinct guide to culture change.
In the past, businesses believed ‘culture’ was a soft and fluffy subject. They thought it meant putting bean bags in meeting rooms and was only something HR needed to concern themselves with.
More recently, organisations have realised that their company’s culture directly impacts their ability to achieve their business goals, but many still don’t know how to implement culture change and think it will take years. In tough economic times, or when competition is fierce, however, companies don’t have years to change and must improve performance now.
Andrew Saffron’s new book draws on 30 years of experience working with some of the world’s biggest multi-billion-dollar organisations, within both the public and private sector. Cutting through the gimmicks usually associated with ‘culture’ (see bean bags above!), Better Culture, Faster outlines a step-by-step instructional manual for defining what changes need to be made to get culture right, and how to apply them without a huge price tag. Uniquely, Andrew believes culture change can be done rapidly, and outlines why his five-step methodology is key to this.
For organisations wondering where to begin with this, chapter two contains a handy guide to analysing company culture in just eight minutes. Dubbed a ‘culture analysis exercise’, it promises to guarantee the reader enough insight to know what needs to be tackled to bring about performance improving culture change.
Chapter three is where the instruction manual starts to become detailed, outlining the following five-step method:
- Step 1: Define and Decree the behavioral standards you expect of everyone
- Step 2: Excite and Educate everyone about how to embody and embed those standards
- Step 3: Exert and Enable performance by aligning your infrastructure
- Step 4: Assess and Advise people’s performance against those standards
- Step 5: Reward and Reprimand positive and negative performance
The final third section of the book explains how to make culture change stick, including sections on leading culture change and the role of the manager.
Unlike many guides on this topic, the book is short but sweet and avoids waffle, something Andrew says is intentional because busy readers are increasingly time-poor and spending more time in meetings which do not derive value – if that resonates, then this is a book for you!
Suitable for business leaders, managers, HR professionals and anyone interested in the why and how of culture change.
