Win from Within: Build Organizational Culture for Competitive Advantage

"There's a famous saying from Peter Drucker, that "culture eats strategy for breakfast." However, there's a contrary assertion in management circles that strategy is "hard," while culture is "soft." The impact of a strategy on growth and profit can be measured, quantified, analyzed to the finest detail; while that of a culture cannot, as it is supposedly more flexible, subjective, and difficult to assess in detail. If you get the core values shared by everyone right, the rest will take care of itself. A strong culture helps assure good performance. Changing an organization's culture takes a very long time. In this book, Heskett asserts that all of these claims are essentially wrong. Culture is not soft, and its impact on profit and long-term competitive success can be quantified. Too many efforts to change a culture peter out after an initial push to identify values shared by everyone in the organization. A strong culture can support very good performance in some organizations, but can cause poor performance in others if it reinforces bad habits. But with the proper leadership, culture change can be engineered in months, not years, and certainly within a CEO's tenure. Utilizing case studies, stories of management in action, and carefully constructed numbers, this book explores the importance of culture in providing a base for strategic change"--