By James Heskett
FT Press, $44.95, 372 pages

This book should inspire leaders of companies to start with people and shape their organizations cultures to drive engagement, inclusion, trust, innovation, and results. It is the essential handbook for today’s organizations that care about their people and are determined that theirs is an organization of the future. In fifteen chapters featuring the author’s vast knowledge of management, this book provides a thoughtful prospect on how to challenge the performance hurdle managers face in today’s competitive marketplace. This outstanding book will enable one to view the voluminous literature on organization and culture so as to assist in understanding managing organizations during the period since 2008, when many CEOs put their organizations through reforms to address declining demand and rapid globalization. In this book one is shown how culture affects the bottom line and is the most important task any supervisor and manager faces

“If lenders take the authors sound advice to heart, corporate performance will improve and trust in business can be restored.”

As one reads this book and its case studies, one will be learning from a master teacher with a wealth of experience. One is shown how, through four R’s, one can improve its culture of an organization.

Of interest to this reviewer was Appendix A: Sample Questions, for measuring the strength and health of any corporate culture. This questionnaire is divided into 6 segments: mission,shared assumptions and values, expectations versus experience, trust, engagement and ownership, policies, organizational ,learning, and measurement of results.

A very technical book which should interest the general reader as well as the corporate community.

Reviewed by Claude Ury