Change the Culture, Change the Game Book Summary, by Roger Connors

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1-Page Summary of Change the Culture, Change the Game

Overview

How to Be a Positive Leader is about how companies can make employees more positive and productive. It starts with the author explaining why it’s important, then discusses research from that field of study. The book also includes real-world examples from several organizations on how they became more positive and productive places to work. Many leaders think that by simply stating a goal, everyone will align their efforts toward reaching the goal. That doesn’t happen! Instead, you have to integrate change all over your organization—from top down and bottom up—to ensure sustained success in achieving goals.

If you want to change your organization, it’s not enough to just make a few changes. You have to overhaul the entire culture and replace inefficient processes with streamlined ones. The author will explain how General Motors did this by changing its corporate culture; that it was a transition, not a transformation; and how one bookstore lets employees give tokens of appreciation to each other.

Big Idea #1: The pyramid is a tool to help you achieve your goals. First, define your firm’s experiences, beliefs and actions.

Managers shape a company’s culture every day by creating experiences for employees. Employees learn how things are done and the organizational culture is established. But not all cultures are healthy; some can even do more harm than good. This is why leaders need to focus on creating a positive, beneficial culture for their companies that goes from the ground up and includes everyone in the organization. However, it’s difficult to create such a culture because of conflicting opinions among managers about what creates a successful culture within an organization.

The first step in winning is to define your goals and the strategy to reach them. For example, General Motors decided on a culture change that would make it stop losing money once and for all. How did they come up with this idea? To shape your organization’s culture and help you win, you have to understand the results pyramid.

Three things — experiences, beliefs and actions — are critical to the success of any organization. The more you focus on each one, the better you’ll do in reaching your goals. The bottom layer is a good foundation for what comes above it; experience leads to beliefs, which help drive action and produce results. This philosophy can apply to just about anyone or anything; Alaris Medical Systems had problems fulfilling its own promises with investors expecting great returns every quarter because it lacked key elements that would allow them to succeed. But once they started focusing on these three levels, not only were they able to improve their stock price but also make innovative breakthroughs in medical technology.

The Alaris executives discussed with every manager how to create the right experiences that would produce effective actions and ultimately achieve the company’s desired target results.

Once the new program was introduced, every employee at every level of Alaris became focused and optimistic about their goals. They were determined to achieve results in a timely manner, which they did within six months.

Big Idea #2: When you have a culture of accountability, you’ll see your organization perform at its highest level.

So, what kind of culture do you need to create within your organization? It all starts with being accountable.

Accountability is important in a strong organizational culture, and it can be achieved by everyone. In order to move towards accountability, we need to take four steps. First, we have to see the situation from other people’s point of view and be honest about what others are saying. Then we must communicate with them honestly so they know where they stand with us. After that, we should give feedback so that others can understand our viewpoint as well as theirs. Finally, we need to hear the difficult truths that expose real circumstances at hand; only then will we be able to solve problems effectively.

Change the Culture, Change the Game Book Summary, by Roger Connors