Culture as a Product: References Library
Last year I’ve took the Clifton Strengths Finder test to discover my natural talents. Now I know, one of my top-5 is Input (not like I didn’t know it before, but it’s always nice to get some proof of concept!). Gallup’s guide describes people of Input like this:
You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information — words, facts, books, and quotations — or you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting.
Another usual trait for people strong at Input is to put these “collection items” to use, to be able to easily find something in the archives and share it with people interested in it. As for me, it’s not because of good memory, it’s just because I like to keep my collections well-organized :)
Many people approached me after giving a speech at the HR API conference about How we build culture at RealtimeBoard and asked, what I recommend to read about building organizational culture. I can’t claim a gold reader status yet, but I have many books and articles on my list. As a true Input-freak, I’ve made a board to keep my collection in one place and recently came to anidea that it might be useful for others interested in the topic too. So why not share?
It’s a public board, you can easily view and comment it, just follow the link: Culture as a product references library
(In case you have a problem accessing this board, please ping me directly at anna.d@miro.com)
There are books, articles, and case studies both in English and Russian, as well as links to my articles and presentations that I usually publish here.
I’ve discovered, the books related to culture fall into 4 broad categories:
- Books on culture itself specifically cover theory and research related to forming and transforming organizational culture. However, I couldn’t find anything relatively fresh on this topic.
- Books on management usually have a part related to building culture. Those focused on building employee engagement and strong leadership cover it more often than others. Among many great books listed on the board, I want to specifically recommend Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek and Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frederic Laloux.
- Most of the success story books written by entrepreneurs and CPOs of companies like Google, Netflix, Zappos, Toyota, etc also have a chapter about culture. Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live by Laszlo Bock is still on my to-read list, but I constantly take so many of Google’s practices and insights from Re:Work and luckily work now with Tom Mills, our Head of Sales who previously worked with Laszlo at Google.
- Books on employer branding also cover the culture topic because it’s one of the EVP core parts for many modern companies.
Right now I am reading Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord, ex-Chief Talent Officer of Netflix and co-creator of their famous culture deck. The next on the queue is Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright.
What are you reading? What could you add to this board and what are your personal must-reads on culture?
