S. Chris Edmonds

An organizational "North Star," codifying valued behaviors for optimal performance The Culture Engine shows leaders how to create a high performing, values aligned culture through the creation of an organizational constitution. With practical step-by-step guidance, readers learn how to define their organization's culture, delineate the behaviors that contribute to greater performance and greater engagement, and draft a document that codifies those behaviors into a constitution that guides behavior towards an ideal: a safe, inspiring workplace. The discussion focuses on people, including who should be involved at the outset and how to engage employees from start to finish, while examples of effective constitutions provide guidance toward drafting a document that can actualize an organization's potential. Culture drives everything that happens in an organization day to day, including focus, priorities, and the treatment of employees and customers. A great culture drives great performance, and can help attract and retain great talent. But a great culture isn't something that evolves naturally. The Culture Engine is a guide to strategically planning a culture by compiling the company's guiding principles and behaviors into an organizational constitution. Decide which behaviors and attitudes are desired in the organization Secure leader commitment to planning, drafting, and implementing the document Learn the most effective way to socialize the draft statement and get everyone on board Model desired behaviors to boost employee engagement throughout the process Organizational culture is not an amorphous thing – it comes down from the top, inspired and exemplified by the leadership. It can steer a company up or down, keep it on mission or force it off-course. For an organization to fulfill its potential, the culture must be on-point, truly reflecting the heart of the company from leaders to team members across the company. The Culture Engine helps leaders define the playing field, pushing performance to the next level.

A Framework for Driving Results, Inspiring Your Employees, and Transforming Your Workplace

The Culture Engine

Lisa Zigarmi

Work is a good thing yet it's not always a positive thing. It's not always gratifying or enriching because people spend a majority of their waking life in organizations that don't create wellness. A positive workplace provides a constructive environment that fulfills our needs for autonomy, connection, and impact, while ensuring the means to food and shelter. Workplaces that enable positivity give employees access to the essential elements of well-being: positive emotion, positive relationships, purpose and meaning, positive accomplishment, and positive health. These elements, taken together, create individual and collective flourishing. When the conditions for well-being are present in the workplace, everybody-employer, employees, external stakeholders, and the wider society-benefits. Expert organizational psychologists S. Chris Edmonds and Lisa Zigarmi have seen how positive organizations empower the people who work within them, while providing meaningful contributions to society. In #POSITIVITY at WORK tweet, they define and describe a positive workplace, and then go on to demonstrate how to engender positive emotions, relationships, accomplishment, and health at work. For example, since people show up at work with their hearts as well as their heads, leaders need to be as concerned with affect as well as results. Positive emotion reflects perceptions of safety, satisfaction, and achievement and produces future well-being and positive consequences. Expressing positive emotion is critical for human growth and development, and equally critical for organizational success. Or, to take another example, positive health, which means much more than just the absence of illness. Our physical conditions have a huge impact on our presence, skill application, and nimbleness at work. The more positive our physical health, the greater our connection to our work, peers, leaders, company, and customers. Enabling positivity at work is not simple. Healthy work cultures happen by design, not default. It takes intentional choice to foster a culture of wellness. The responsibility lies not only with the employer, but also with the individuals who make up the organization. And in this effort, S. Chris Edmonds and Lisa Zigarmi's designed-for-action #POSITIVITY at WORK tweet is a perfect guide, one that will help you create a healthy, affirmative work environment where every individual contributes, connects, succeeds, and thrives. #POSITIVITY at WORK tweet is part of the THiNKaha series whose slim and handy books contain 140 well-thought-out quotes (tweets/ahas). S. Chris Edmonds is a speaker, author, and senior consultant with the Ken Blanchard Companies. He is the author of #CORPORATE CULTURE tweet, co-author of Blanchard's bestselling book, Leading at a Higher Level, and also co-author of Blanchard's award-winning culture change process. As Blanchard's culture expert he has helped numerous clients create a high performing, values aligned culture using Blanchard's proven process. Thousands of his followers on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn look forward to his culture and leadership tweets each day. Lisa Zigarmi is a Lead Client Service Partner for The Ken Blanchard Companies(R) located in New York City. She works with Fortune 500 companies to build leadership capacity within their ranks and is passionate about creating saner, more effective, more meaning-driven organizations. She is currently researching employee work passion/engagement and helps leaders and organizations to create the conditions (role, organizational, and relational) for their employees to flourish. Lisa has an M.A. in Applied Positive Psychology from The University of Pennsylvania. She is also a certified coach, completing her coach training through The Coaches Training Institute.

140 Bite-Sized Ideas to Help You Create a Positive Organization Where Employees Thrive

# POSITIVITY at WORK Tweet Book01

Mark S. Babbitt

Discover the practical, step-by-step guide to creating a workplace culture that’s better for employees, customers, and stakeholders—and your company’s bottom line. For decades, talented people have tolerated old-school leaders who put results before respect, toxic company cultures, and workplaces that suck. But those days are over, and if leaders want to attract and retain the best employees—while improving productivity, customer service, employee satisfaction, and profits—it’s time for them to create work cultures where good comes first. The problem is that because the corporate world has too often been driven primarily by results, we seldom ask leaders to change their work cultures. Even if we did, most leaders don’t know how. This book provides the actionable inspiration and practical direction needed to make that change happen. In Good Comes First, S. Chris Edmonds and Mark S. Babbitt go beyond theoretical advice, using their combined 50 years of experience to present proven strategies for creating purposeful, positive and productive work cultures. Cultures where good comes first for employees, customers, leaders, and stakeholders—and where improved business outcomes quickly follow. In these pages, readers will learn to: • Appreciate why a good comes first culture is a business imperative – especially for younger generations. • Distance yourself from the competition that maintains its undefined work culture (one that most likely sucks). • Identify what “good” means for your company in today’s business climate – and in the future of work. • Define your uncompromising work culture as you build a foundation of respect AND results. • Formalize your team’s servant purpose so that everyone understands how what your team does improves lives and communities. • Specify respectful behaviors, so your desired values are observable, tangible, and measurable. • Align your entire organization to your desired work culture – where good comes first every day. • Assess the quality of your current work culture by measuring and monitoring how well your leaders and your executive team demonstrate your servant purpose, valued behaviors, strategies, and goals. • Hold everyone accountable for both respect and results through modeling, celebrating, measuring, coaching, and mentoring leaders and team members. • Implement real, needed change – and quit “thinking” and “talking” about change (but never really get change started). • Become a change champion while creating a lasting legacy as a business leader. • Build a team of good people doing good work in a good company. What’s more, Good Comes First shows you where potential barriers to success hide—and how to push through them—and illuminates the moments when you’ll feel the most satisfaction and gain the most traction. After reading this book, you will see that when done right, change is not only possible—it’s practical, powerful, and profitable. And you will realize that you are the right person, at the right time, to make that change happen.

S. Chris Edmonds

About

Books

Join the club