Best Books on Organizational Culture in 2022
If you'd like to learn about building a better organizational culture, read this curated list of books. These books will help you identify how your office culture can be improved, how to communicate change, and how to anticipate and address implementation challenges.
12 Must-Read Books on Organizational Culture
If you are a leader and/or work in the field of Human Resources and are tasked with building great corporate culture, these hand-picked recommendations of books should definitely be part of your reading list.
Note: As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases resulting from the 'Buy the Book' links in this article.
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
- Daniel Coyle
In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle goes inside some of the world’s most successful organizations—including the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six, IDEO, and the San Antonio Spurs—and reveals what makes them tick. He demystifies the culture-building process by identifying three key skills that generate cohesion and cooperation, and explains how diverse groups learn to function with a single mind.
Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them
- Gary Hamel, Michele Zanini
In Humanocracy, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for excising bureaucracy and replacing it with something better. Drawing on more than a decade of research and packed with practical examples, Humanocracy lays out a detailed blueprint for creating organizations that are as inspired and ingenious as the human beings inside them.
HBR's 10 Must Reads on Building a Great Culture
- Harvard Business Review
If you read nothing else on building a better organizational culture, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you identify where your culture can be improved, communicate change, and anticipate and address implementation challenges.
The Hero Factor: How Great Leaders Transform Organizations and Create Winning Cultures
- Jeffrey W. Hayzlett, Jim Eber
Veteran entrepreneur and former Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett knows firsthand what it takes to go from zero to hero in a world where every leader, business, and brand is held accountable by their customers and employees. In these pages, Hayzlett challenges leaders like you to examine their own values and behaviors as he shines a light on what happens to companies when their values no longer align with their mission. He shows you how to transform your organization and create a hero company by becoming a hero leader yourself.
How to Be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive
- Jennifer Brown
We know why diversity is important, but how do we drive real change at work? Diversity and inclusion expert Jennifer Brown provides a step-by-step guide for the personal and emotional journey we must undertake to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't
- Jim Collins
Can a good company become a great company and if so, how? In Good to Great, Jim Collins concludes that it is possible. Collins and his team sorted through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They settled on 11 and discovered common traits that challenge conventional notions of corporate success. At the heart of those truly great companies was their corporate culture.
Work Rules! (Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead)
- Laszlo Block
From the visionary head of Google's innovative People Operations comes a groundbreaking inquiry into the philosophy of work -- and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and ensuring that they succeed.
The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business
- Patrick M. Lencioni
There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. In this book, Lencioni delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides.
An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization
- Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey
What if a company created a culture in which everyone could overcome their internal barriers to change and use errors and vulnerabilities as opportunities for personal and company growth? Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey have found and studied such companies — Deliberately Developmental Organizations (DDOs). An Everyone Culture dives deep into three companies that embody this approach. It reveals the design principles, concrete practices, and underlying science at the heart of DDOs.
The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace
- Ron Friedman
In The Best Place to Work, award-winning psychologist Ron Friedman, Ph.D. uses the latest research from the fields of motivation, creativity, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and management to reveal what really makes us successful at work. Combining powerful stories with cutting edge findings, Friedman shows leaders at every level how they can use scientifically-proven techniques to promote smarter thinking, greater innovation, and stronger performance.
Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't
- Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek's second book is the natural extension of Start with Why, expanding his ideas at the organizational level. Determining a company’s WHY is crucial, but only the beginning. The next step is how do you get people on board with your WHY? How do you inspire deep trust and commitment to the company and one another? Drawing on powerful and inspiring stories, Sinek shows how to sustain an organization’s WHY while continually adding people to the mix.
Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
- Tony Hsieh
Pay new employees $2,000 to quit; Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company; Make company culture the #1 priority; Apply research from the science of happiness to business; Help employees grow personally and professionally; Seek to change the world; Oh, and make money too. Delivering Happiness shows how a very different kind of culture is a powerful model for achieving success-and how by concentrating on the happiness of those around you, you can dramatically increase your own.
