Playbook For Building A High-Performing, Resilient Organization With Purpose

“It’s time to get intentional about organizational culture and to make it strong on purpose,” explain James D. White and Krista White, authors of the book Culture Design: How To Build A High-Performing, Resilient Organization With Purpose. 

“Strong company cultures, deliberately shaped, are the difference between businesses that are great versus those that are just good enough,” they add.
 
The authors define organizational culture as a set of actions, habits, rituals, and beliefs that determine how work gets done, how decisions get made, and how people experience their workplaces.
 
"Strong cultures don't emerge by accident," share the authors. "They're built—with clarity, consistency, and design. This book is your guide to intentionally designing a culture that is resilient, inclusive, powerful, and effective."
 
Informed by over thirty years of operating experience across sectors and in the boardroom, the authors offer these strategies for designing a culture with intention:
 
Knowing What Matters
Treat empathy as a core skill rather than a soft bonus to bridge understanding gaps with your workers. This will take both humility and an open mind.

Use the Future-Back method for filtering and prioritizing findings from culture audits to sharpen your end goal and clarify the steppingstones for it.

Activate teams by enlisting key HR, middle management, and cross-functional leaders as catalysts for implementing change.
 
Doing What Matters
Expect a push and pull dynamic when implementing a culture transformation but stick to your values and think outside the box when faced with challenges to your work.

Plan phases that build upon one another to provide a framework of stability.

Build mechanisms that reinforce and reward cultural priorities and desired behaviors.
 
Measuring What Matters

Design your surveys and other feedback mechanisms as thoughtfully as you are designing your culture. Concentrate your energy on action. Doing what matters is what makes measurement a virtuous cycle.

 
Some of my favorite takeaways from the book are the following teachings:
 
Empathy is the bedrock of designing culture. Without vulnerability, it will be hard to achieve empathy, because vulnerability invites connection; without it, others won’t really talk with you. They won’t feel comfortable sharing, and to develop empathy, people need to share. Opening up, as a leader, will build authenticity and trust.
 
Culture shifts often stall when employees don’t feel that their needs and opinions are being taken into account, and therefore they have less incentive to make any behavior adjustments. The mechanisms you use to collect feedback will enable you to close the loop and respond to any sore spots and resistance that emerge in your culture work.
 
Iteration is a mark of a great leader.
 
Leaders seek feedback and overcommunicate.
 
Middle management is critical in bringing culture to life and must be invested in. Middle management must have the right training, tools, and incentives to lead their teams.
 
A skilled storyteller can reach beyond the corporate lingo of a company’s ambitions and vision to connect their teammates with a greater collective purpose. This includes having a clear grasp on how your background has shaped you as a leader, which will serve as the foundation for how you relate to your colleagues.
 
Leaders have vision. They have the gumption to dream big, the foresight to envision future possibilities, and the fortitude to stay the course.
 
Leaders are lifelong learners.
 
And, finally, leaders see culture as an indispensable pillar of strategy. 
 

James D. White

  

Krista White

 
The authors share these additional insights with us:
 
Question: After an organization's leader reads the book and applies the learnings, how long will it typically take to effectively transform the organization's culture?
 
James and Krista White: There is no exact timeline, per se, but leaders should know that this work is continuous and iterative. While there isn’t a time when you can look up and say, “we’re transformed,” we do see clients and colleagues feeling the initial results of culture design within months or a year. 

It takes longer to show up in the bottom line, which is why it’s so important to stay the course and identify small wins to recognize and celebrate in a meaningful way. We all have huge goals but constantly striving towards a bar that is always out of reach leads to burnout. What are the signals that you’re heading in the right direction? Higher retention rates? Quicker turnaround for hiring and training plant or store employees?
 
The reason for doing this work consistently over time is to accelerate growth and profitability, which we have seen in companies who invest in culture design. What you focus on will differ based on your original strengths and gaps, but the answer to “how long will transformation take” must be broken into much smaller increments than your mid- to long-term future vision.
 
Question: Reflecting on the seven areas common among the most remarkable leaders you have met and worked with, which one or two areas do you believe are the most important traits for a leader to possess and why?
 
James and Krista White: While each of the areas we identified are key commonalities, we believe all of the most remarkable leaders must possess a strong sense of empathy. Empathetic leadership is at the core of a leader’s “why” for their organization, enabling a long-term vision that sees beyond the “now” into the “what could be.”
 
Empathy is a capability that can’t be faked but can be grown and nurtured through practices of humility, vulnerability, and active listening. A leader cannot be a for all or servant leader if their work is not underpinned by empathy for their colleagues, clients, consumers, and the communities they serve. This core trait also allows the best leaders to demonstrate a growth-mindset, be people first, reflect leadership courage, and always invest in building the next generation of leaders.
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James D. White is a transformational leader with more than thirty years of experience in the consumer products, retail, and restaurant industries. As CEO of Jamba Juice from 2008 to 2016, he led the successful turnaround and transformation of the company. He is a corporate director and adviser with twenty years of experience serving on more than fifteen public and private boards. White currently chairs the board of the Honest Company. He is the co-founder, Chair, and CEO of Culture Design Lab.
 
Krista White is a multigenre nonfiction and fiction writer. As a co-founder of Culture Design Lab, her work focuses on research, in-depth interviews, and harnessing her writing and storytelling skills to craft powerful narratives. In addition to her work at Culture Design Lab, Krista has consulted with individuals and companies on their strategies for intentional culture design, inclusion, and racial justice.
 
Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.