Inside Flap Text
Building on the success of their previous book, The Oz Principle, Connors and Smith explore the direct link between a company's culture and the results it produces. Journey to the Emerald City details a clear road map for accelerating the move to a Culture of Accountability in which people focus on achieving the results critical to a company's future.
Connors and Smith provide a program to transform entrenched patterns into potent new ways of being and doing. Getting to the core of why people work as they do is a dynamic process demanding that leaders take control of the culture to create experiences that foster beliefs, that drive actions, that produce the ultimate competitive advantage.
Filled with success stories, the authors introduce a step-by-step model to help people at any level of the organization take action that will alter the culture's belief system in order to produce the desired results.
Table of Contents
Preface - vii
PART ONE
Understanding Company Culture
Chapter One The Yellow Brick Road: Accelerating the Journey..................................5
Chapter Two The Emerald City: Building a Culture of Accountability........................25
PART TWO
Shifting To A New Culture
Chapter Three Defining Results That Lead to Success.............................................55
Chapter Four Generating Action That Gets Results....................................................77
Chapter Five Identifying Beliefs That Produce Action................................................101
Chapter Six Creating Experiences That Instill the Right Beliefs..............................123
PART THREE
Accelerating Culture Change
Chapter Seven Using Focused Feedback to Accelerate Change............................147
Chapter Eight Aligning a Culture for Rapid Progress.................................................167
Chapter Nine Employing Leadership to Move the Change Forward........................191
Chapter Ten Enrolling the Entire Organization in the Transition...............................215
Index - 241
Preface
In the search for increased value, improved profits, lower costs and growing market share, corporations have demonstrated great effectiveness in picking the "low-hanging fruit" of improved performance. Reengineered processes have heightened the ability of terms to successfully capitalize on the value of the company's assets in significant ways. Yet, in the midst of almost endless performance improvement programs, we still see the single greatest asset of an organization - its people - go underutilized.
When leaders and managers begin to actively manage the cultural environment of their organization, we see an exciting, impressive, and tangible return on "human assets."
Shaping culture is the process of leading people in a way that fundamentally impacts the way they think and act. We have witnessed numerous efforts to impact results by shaping culture over the past decade. Each of these efforts, when guided by leaders dedicated to the needed culture change, has been rewarded with record reductions in costs, record sales, record gains in market share, record profits, record stock prices and record personal rewards.
In this book, Journey to the Emerald City, we describe a process of managing culture that accelerates the ability to achieve organizational results. In addition, we show you how to create a Culture of Accountability, where people think and act in the manner necessary for your organization to achieve results. And we show you how to create that culture quickly so that you can achieve competitive and organizational advantage.
Our work has as its foundation one simple idea that we described in our first book, The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual and Organizational Accountability. An organization will perform at its highest potential if, and only if, each of its members assumes personal accountability for achieving its results. When people become personally accountable for achieving the company's results, powerful transformations occur: A goal becomes an organizing principle. A job becomes a mission. A task becomes a challenge. A company becomes a team. And a manager becomes a leader.
These may strike you as worthwhile changes, and they are. However, like most worthwhile changes, they are not easily achieved. It takes time to bring about a true culture transformation. Therefore, managers have repeatedly asked us, "How can we accelerate the transition to a new, more effective culture?"
This book answers that question. Here we show you how to build an effective company culture quickly and surely. Given the pace of change today, the value of being able to quickly adjust, or even transform, company culture should be evident. Competitive, regulatory, and technological change happens so fast and frequently that the ability of a company to change rapidly and repeatedly provides a sharp competitive edge.
We pursue culture change for one reason and one reason only: to enable companies to achieve the results they want and need to attain. Results are the product of the way people think and act. The way people think and act in an organization amounts to that organization's culture. It's as simple as that. Since management is the art and science of getting things done through others, we view managing culture - managing the way people think and act - as the essence of leadership.
We're not talking about secret methods or psychological games. Nor are we talking about social experiments or workplace engineering. Instead we offer a practical model of leadership, in which managers - openly and completely - become accountable for fulfilling the purpose of the organization. In the process, they lead others to achieve the results the organization has committed itself to achieving.
In this book, you will learn practical methods of drawing forth people's wholehearted commitment to achieving organizational results. You will discover a simple, powerful framework for understanding company culture and for changing it. In example after example, you will see what has worked for leaders in a variety of companies, specific things that you can do every day in your company to create an effective culture, quickly.
In our work with scores of organizations and thousands of individuals, we have seen the power of organizational culture, for better and worse. We've seen organizational results held hostage by a company's culture. We have also seen the transformation in performance, products and profits - and in people - that occurs when managers lead a company to a new, more effective culture. And, when they do it quickly, we have seen them gain both organizational and competitive advantage.
We want you to experience this journey as well.
Testimonials
"Journey to the Emerald City is a must-read for every leader dealing with change and the need to create greater accountability and improved performance. This book outlines a process that delivers results and improves performance in a powerful way that reaches every level of the organization, from the executive team to the front-line workforce."
DAVID SCHLOTTERBECK
President and CEO, ALARIS Medical Systems
"A company's ability to create a Culture of Accountability will ultimately be the true test of its capacity to achieve organizational results. Journey to the Emerald City clearly paves the road to creating a company culture that produces results with a foundation of both personal and organizational accountability."
DON A. O'GRADY
Director, Leadership & Organizational Effectiveness, TRW, Inc.
"This book and its predecessor, The Oz Principle, offer excellent and practical insight in how to build a Culture of Accountability. Organizations that implement the principles and practices found in Journey to the Emerald City can successfully and continuously create a culture that will produce outstanding results and enjoy significant competitive advantage."
JOHN HOGAN
President of Brokerage Services Division, ADP
"Connors and Smith offer, through a very methodical approach and through common sense observations, the path to a clearly defined and sustainable culture that business leaders will be well advised to reflect on and follow."
J.P. MILLON
President & CEO, PCS Health Systems, Inc.
"Rather than presenting a formula for 'one best way' to run an organization, Journey to the Emerald City provides a practical and powerful desktop guide for any organization or team leader who has a genuine interest in shifting their organizational culture in a 'non-cookie cutter' format."
ABEL PORTER
President and CEO, Smith's Food & Drug Centers, Inc.
"Sustainable Competitiveness is only available to the Operating Management that understands and practices the principles outlined by Connors and Smith. Aided by their 'this is what it looks like' approach, the reader gains real insight for action that leads to results."
RONALD W. DOLLENS
President and CEO, Guidant
"Written in the same remarkable vein as The Oz Principle, Journey to the Emerald City uses masterful illustrations, powerful language and keen insight to continue the quest towards creating more accountable, adaptable work cultures. Read this book, apply it, and then recognize you're 'not in Kansas anymore.'"
DR. STEPHEN R. COVEY
Co-founder Franklin Covey Company
Author of #1 best-selling
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
"Journey to the Emerald City is a call to action and a significant help in setting a framework for team actions that produce more effective results. Each of us needs to be reminded that the actions we take to get results are based on our experiences and beliefs and that changing those beliefs, although very hard, can greatly influence our results in business and personal life. Journey to the Emerald City is a 'must read' for anyone looking to create greater effectiveness in their organization."
JOHN BENT
Director, Information Systems
Amgen, Inc.
To order Journey to the Emerald City, click here.
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