The Critical Few: Energize Your Company's Culture by Choosing What Really Matters by Jon Katzenbach

Product description

Every organization has a unique culture, but they all have one thing in common. Whenever they have a big change to make, powerful emotional forces in their culture appear, at first, to resist it. But there are other culture forces under the surface that can be potential sources of catalytic strength. The best leaders succeed by tapping those "critical few" sources. Using an unusual, dialogue-based approach, Katzenbach shows how a sharp focus on just these elements reduces complexity and enables leaders to create profound cultural transformation and positive, lasting impact on performance. The critical few elements are:

The critical few traits the shared characteristics that are at the heart of people's emotional connection to what they do.

The critical few behaviors people's actions that would lead a company to succeed if they were replicated at greater scale.

The critical few people individuals whose emotional intuition and institutional trust make them valued guides for transformation, wherever they are on the org chart.

Review

"This book describes the practice of culture change in personal detail and highlights through a composite story how the culture change process itself is a multi-faceted adventure, not the imposition of a few steps from a generic change model."
--Edgar H. Schein, Professor Emeritus, MIT Sloan School of Management, Author with Peter Schein of the 5th Edition of Organizational Culture and Leadership (2017) and Humble Leadership (2018)

"Katzenbach, Anderson, and Thomas expertly outline how to manage organizational culture as a critical asset in practical and actionable terms. Their decades of experience in advising leading organizations shines here as a pragmatic, optimistic guide to management."
--Tim Ryan, US Chairman and Senior Partner at PwC

"As a student of habit creation, I loved the The Critical Few. It guides leaders to follow a discipline of simplicity, to be deliberate and purposeful, and to focus on what matters. Best of all, it encourages leaders at all levels to close the book, engage in real conversations, and build teams that matter."
--Charles Duhigg, author of bestsellers The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better

About the Author

Jon R. Katzenbach is a Managing Director in the New York office of Strategy& (formerly Booz & Company), the strategy consulting business within PricewaterhouseCoopers. Previously, Jon was with McKinsey & Company and the founder of Katzenbach Partners LLC, a firm specializing in organization, leadership, workforce performance, and strategy. Over its ten years of existence, Jon and his partners built Katzenbach Partners to be one of the leading management consulting firms.
James Thomas is a co-author.
Gretchen Anderson is a co-author.