Walking the talk - building a a culture for success

 

Lots of HR and OD people are raving about Walking the Talk. It’s the most detailed, practical and readable book I’ve come across on how to change organisational culture. It’s written by a highly experienced and successful culture change specialist.

 

There are 16 comprehensive chapters in three sections: preparing for the journey, the culture development plan, and special circumstances (cultures within cultures, M&A, and small and medium businesses). The painstaking explanations about the origins and relationship of values and culture are excellent. And I loved the very detailed coverage of the beliefs, values, symbols and systems of five typical cultures you may wish to aim for: achievement, one-team, customer-centric, people-first and innovative.

 

It won’t matter what industry or country you’re in. It will all make sense. There are plenty of suggestions about exactly what you should do. It’s all there. And the 25 page case study of Lion Nathan helps (although, curiously, the measurement tools used to track culture and leaders’ behaviour, both from Human Synergistics, don’t rate a mention.)

 

Sadly Random House has let this book down. It deserves better. It’s as though the dictation of a life’s work has been typed but not edited. An editor could cut some of the plugs for the author’s consulting firm at the start, fix at least one typo, rewrite the odd illogical sentence, correct the misleading information about survey sample sizes, chop many of the exclamation marks, and add an index as a quality business book of 390 pages needs an index.

 

Nevertheless, this is an enjoyable read with loads of examples, tables and lists. There are no references, but there is a reading list of 20 excellent suggestions. This is an essential book for anyone in OD or HR, and strongly recommended to anyone who wants a solid grounding in organisational culture and what it takes to change it.

 

Rodney Gray

Employee Communication & Surveys

Sydney, Australia

 

This review published in 2005 in both Melcrum publications (US and UK)

 

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