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Book Review of “The Culture Cycle: How to Shape the Unseen Force that Transforms Performance”

The Practical Leader

John Kotter and James Heskett’s classic book, Corporate Culture and Performance , is an organization development classic. Results (Four Rs, innovation, growth, and profitability). Heskett does a great job of showing how culture is critical to organizational success and providing powerful and highly illuminating examples.

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How to Ignite and Sustain Organizational Growth

Skip Prichard

James Heskett and John Kotter found that organizations with strong corporate cultures realized over eleven years revenue growth of 682 percent, employment growth of 282 percent and stock price growth of 901 percent. Conduct talent reviews sooner rather than later and identify the “keepers.” Simply put, culture drives performance.

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Culture Cycle: The Unseen Force that Transforms Performance

Harvard Business Review

Heskett describes how an effective culture can account for up to half of the differential in performance between organizations in the same business. Heskett discusses how to calculate the economic value of culture through the "Four Rs" of referrals, retention, returns to labor, and relationships with customers. Heskett.

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What Great Companies Know About Culture

Harvard Business Review

Heskett wrote in his latest book The Culture Cycle , effective culture can account for 20-30 percent of the differential in corporate performance when compared with "culturally unremarkable" competitors. But is there a direct correlation between employee investment and the balance sheet?

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Is Kindness a Strategy?

Harvard Business Review

I'm sure many supervisors at American would have issues with their colleague's innovative, if mildly deceptive, solution. Heskett of Harvard Business School observes, it's important to endow workers on the front line with "latitude within limits." Crisis averted. But, no matter how you look at it, it was an act of genuine kindness.