Rules of Belonging

Organisational culture is very poorly understood and has been way over-complicated. It's not easy, but it is simple. Once you know what to look for, you can identify the current culture of any group by the current rules of belonging in that group; you can articulate the desired culture as the new rules of belonging that will help speed up the execution of your strategy; and move from the current to desired state in a series of clear, deliberately managed steps.

The subject of organisational culture has become a particularly hot topic in Australia as a result of the recent Royal Commission into misconduct in the financial services industry. However, it is also a hot topic globally with regulators of financial services and other industries increasingly seeking to enforce culture measurement and management and to sanction leaders who do not properly do both - up to and including criminal prosecution.

Practically every senior leader is now looking at how to measure and manage culture and is struggling to know how to address it. The somewhat tragic fact is that most of them don't know what it is, let alone how to manage it. They consistently confuse culture with employee engagement (they are not the same thing!) and are running around trying to solve the wrong problem. We are seeing lots of frantic activity, most of which won't achieve anything other than making it look like someone is doing something, but almost none of which will result in actual culture change.

Meanwhile leaders at all levels in large and small organisations are stuck with dysfunctional teams and need a way to take action immediately that will actually make a difference. Improving the culture of their team will speed up their ability to implement and radically reduce the time they would otherwise spend on managing conflict and dysfunction. This book will show them how.