Culture Renovation: 18 Leadership Actions to Build an Unshakeable Company

by Kevin Oakes

Seize and expand the competitive edge with a smart, well-managed culture “renovation” Most business leaders understand the power of a dynamic, positive culture―but almost every effort to change culture fails. Why? The approach is often all wrong. Rather than attempt to “transform” a new culture from the ground up, leaders need to instead spearhead a culture renovation. It’s all about keeping what works, changing what needs to be changed, and ensuring proper care and maintenance―much like refurbishing and living in a beautiful historic home and improving its overall value. In Culture Renovation , the head of the world’s leading HR research firm―the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp)―Kevin Oakes provides tangible, tactical insights drawn from a robust data set and informed by CEOs and HR leaders at many of the world’s top companies. You’ll find everything you need to rebuild your corporate culture with care and expertise,
Oakes identifies 18 proven leadership actions for turning any culture into an agile, resilient, and innovative high-performance organization. You’ll learn how to best understand the culture in place today and set a new cultural path for decades to come; develop a co-creation mindset; identify influencers and blockers; ferret out skeptics and non-believers; measure, monitor, and report progress; and implement “next practices” in talent strategies to sustain the renovation. Culture Renovation delivers everything you need to plan, build, and maintain a corporate culture that drives profits, growth, and business sustainability now and well into the future.

Genres: Leadership, Business, Nonfiction, Cultural, Historical Romance

352 pages, Hardcover

Published January 12, 2021

Reviews

[Rita Simonavičiūtė-Koreivė · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great, well structured and read book, putting the knowledge researched into actionable steps!
Very much recommend it to any leaders, HR and non HR.

[Suhas Kashyap · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Organizations try to excel the tendency is to infuse cutting edge products, get into niche areas, invest on future skills and talents. Quite often "Cultural" renovation not considered to be one of the key levers. Culture is left to evolve without deliberately putting the needed efforts. Organizations and leaders who know how to renovate cultures can turn around organization and bring best business results (Eg: Satya Nadella took Over Microsoft from Steve Ballmer and turned the ship around , by putting "culture renovation "as the epicenter of transformation, result Microsoft turned from brink of irrelavence to close to $3 trillion dollar organization. We often hear organizations and leaders quoting blanket statements like "Cultural transition is hard" "Cultural transition should start at the top" and many more. What I see is many leaders and organizations know the theory but are clueless about the tactics needed for the transformation. This is where Kevins book comes so handy because it gives such a nice blue print for cultural transformation, all practical all proven.
Every page of the book is backed with huge research data. Additionally one more treasure which this book offers is successful industry examples, case studies from other organizations, which is hard to get outside. All in all a brilliant book if you are looking to understand the methodology around "cultural renovation" or you want to lead the cultural transformation of your team, your function or your organization. This book caters to all. Give it a try if you are interested in learning the proven tactics around the intersectionality of business and cultural renovation.

[Richard Batts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever renovated something ─ like an antique clock, old car or a house? To successfully renovate it, you needed a manual or blueprints. 

Kevin Oakes, head of the HR research firm The Institute for Corporate Productivity, used this analogy in his book, Culture Renovation, to describe how an organization should approach a culture change.

He suggests that you need a blueprint before starting.
In the book, Oakes describes his design of a three-part (18-step) blueprint for cultural change where you don’t tear down the culture to start from scratch. You use the pieces that are still working to ‘renovate’ it

[Jason Watkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a must read on the topic of organizational culture. Refreshing, pragmatic, and yet, also contained smart ideas on ways to embed positive culture change. He provides an 18 step approach and covers a wide range of relevant concepts an employer would be wise to consider. I appreciated his view on assessing the overall “employee experience, from start to finish”. What’s missing for me: staying power. Culture change takes time, a long time in most cases. How does one ensure his/her plan for change have the staying power toward permanent shifts in culture? I would appreciated more content on that idea.

[Steve Brock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was Stevo's Business Book of the Week for the week of 1/24, as selected by Stevo's Book Reviews on the Internet and Stevo's Novel Ideas. Seize and expand the competitive edge with a smart, well-managed culture “renovation.”

Find more Business Books of the week on my Goodreads Listopia page at https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/9..., and find many more recommended books on my Amazon Influencer page at https://www.amazon.com/shop/stevo4747 or by searching for me on Google.

[Lester · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a well structured and well written book for those who need some kind of structure to implement cultural change in their organisations. It is broken down into 3 sections - planning, implementing, and maintaining cultural systems. The first two sections of these are interesting and useful. The last is more a collections of ideas, and I did not find it as structured as the first two. However, there are many books out there which give ideas on desired cultures and behaviours, but few which provide a playbook as structured as this one.

[Revellee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this more than I expected. The case studies and examples are interesting. The author does a decent job of outlining the general steps that have worked in culture renovations for other companies - "a blueprint of proven tactics." I could see a lot of applicable truths and lessons in every chapter.

My only issues with the book is that the author talks mostly about very large publicly traded companies (would have appreciated more variety in types of businesses), and he name drops a lot or relies on testimonies from personal friends.

[❀ Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiring and timely in a world of workplaces that need to empower team members to feel good about their jobs, care for themselves and others which leads to strong work and happy customers/patients. When employees love their jobs, this positivity helps the work be done well. It is a time when we all need to consider the cultures of our teams and organizations to get a handle on retention and recruitment.

[sid graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really got the wheels turning for me (a couple of cringe moments around diversity but overall a stimulating experience and useful blueprint)

Fav quotes from the Microsoft power duo:

“The day the learn-it-all says, ‘I’m done’ is when you become a know-it-all.” — Nadella

“We have to earn our aspired culture every day.” — Hogan

[Theresa (Teri) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect book for the transition our organization is undertaking. Yea, there was a lot of common sense in the steps, but the case studies and the the author’s own experiences drove home what needs to be done in order to renovate culture and build a high performing team.

[Alyssa Foll · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an important book on leadership and culture. I'm not convinced that all 18 build on each other or that there is a thesis that is being advanced throughout the book, but there were some excellent examples and helpful pointers.

[Gillian Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great for companies who are undergoing change or want to know how to relate to employees! Great stories and practical examples.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 ~ ebook

[Teri Temme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent!!!

[Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Appreciated the tangible steps and many case studies. Very much skewed to large, global companies, which makes it hard to translate to small organizations.

[Kand!ce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for leaders and managers.

[Franziska B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Consolidation of many business books and their insights. But for some reason I couldn’t get so many takeaways here couldn’t immerse myself in this so much.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Couple of gripes, especially in language and perspective around inclusion and diversity, but overall this book was pretty awesome. It took me this long to read because I was adding post-its everywhere.