The field of culture building is exploding right now with new things being published every day. The purpose of this is page to curate useful and timely content to support culture builders (you!) to do their best work.
Here you will find a ton of links to both inspirational and practical content including:
- Culture Building Inspiration: Links to maps, models, manifestos and a large collection of company culture codes.
- Culture Building How To: A collection of links organized around the primary focus areas and drivers of building team culture: Culture Code Design; Hiring, Onboarding & Separating; Managing Performance; Leadership Example
- Foundational Culture Building Books: Our top ten list of the books to enhance your perspective or guide your culture building efforts.
- Culture Builder Conferences and Gatherings: Get connected to the tribe of culture builders.
Every month we send out a roundup of all the top resources we found that month. If you want that in your inbox, enter your name and email below to get in on the action!
Lastly, If you know of a culture building resource that should be include on this page, please get in touch and let us know so that we can feature it in our next monthly resource roundup.
Latest and greatest
How to: Culture Code
Values with teeth: Create more meaningful values statements
by Levi Nieminen, Ph.D. Gotham Culture
How culture impacts revenue
The ‘woo-woo’ stuff has a calculable impact on revenue by Janine Davis, Evolution
The culture builder resource round-ups are a community, crowd-sourced effort. Please send us your suggestions for the best culture builder resources out there so that we can feature it in our monthly resource roundup.
Our Favorite Resources
Asana’s head of diversity wants you to have hard conversations at work
By Rachel Zurer, Conscious Company Media
The culture builder resource round-ups are a community, crowd-sourced effort. Please send us your suggestions for the best culture builder resources out there so that we can feature it in our monthly resource roundup.
Culture Building Inspiration
- Culture Builders Manifesto (coming soon!)
- Culture Map – Cultures evolve just like all things. Where is your team culture now? What’s the next evolutionary step?
- Netflix Culture Deck – Originally published in 2009, this deck launched a larger conversation about culture.
- How Asana Built The Best Company Culture In Tech | Fast Company – Taylor Lorenz, Inc Magazine
How to: Culture Code Design
- Culture is the most important thing we’re building (by Toni Moyes)
- More examples of Culture Codes (by Tettra)
- Even more examples (from slideshare)
- Values With Teeth: How to Create More Meaningful Values Statements
- Culture Code Field Guide (Presented by Culture Lab)
How to: Hiring, Onboarding & Separating
- Welcome to Diversity Debt: The Crisis That Could Sink Uber – Susan Wu @ Backchannel
- Your Company’s Culture is Who You Hire, Fire, & Promote – Dr. Cameron Sepah on Medium
- How to Rands – VP of Engineering at Slack’s give advice to a new team member on how to best work with him. Michael Lopp on Medium
How to: Performance Management
- The future of performance management – Boris Ewenstein, Bryan Hancock and Asmus Komm @ McKinsey.
- Your Company’s Culture is Who You Hire, Fire, & Promote – Dr. Cameron Sepah on Medium
- Kill Your Performance Ratings – David Rock, Josh Davis, & Beth Jones in Strategy + Business
- How To Build a Company Where The Best Ideas Win – Ray Dalio Ted Talk
How to: Leadership Examples
- ‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups
- Get Your Focus Back By Reclaiming Your Final 5% – Caneel Joyce, Evolution
- The Check-In: The Easy Way to Make Time For Reflection – Matt Auron, Evolution
- What Great Listeners Actually Do – Jack Zenger & Joseph Folkman in HBR
- Outsmarting the Brain’s Blame Game at Work – Dr. Robert Cooper
- How Morale Changes as a Startup Grows – David Niu & Mark Roberge in HBR
- When Fear Is a Competitive Advantage — 4 Steps to Make It Work for You – Justin Milano @ Good Start-ups
- The One Thing Every Leader Needs to Learn: How to Scale Change – Adam Pisoni in First Round
Top Culture Building Books
Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux Get a glimpse of what cutting edge company cultures are doing.
Scaling Teams by David Loftesness and Alexander Grosse This book –written two tech managers who have lived it – is an inspiring and practical guide for culture builders who are scaling their teams quickly.
Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler & Jamie Wheal Inspiring introduction to the power of the “flow state.” It’s quite possible that future workplace environments will be evaluated based on how well and how often they help teams get into a collective “flow state”
Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block From the one clearest thinkers in the field, this book offers a prescription for how to transform our existing context (aka culture building) from one of deficiencies, interests, and entitlement to one of possibility, generosity, and gifts.
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Diana Chapman, Jim Dethmer, Kaley Klemp Being a conscious leader is a prerequisite of being an effective culture builder. I give this book to more clients than any other book. The definitive guide on how to be a conscious leader.
The Connected Company by Dave Gray makes the case for why we need to evolve the way we organize and do business in this age of hyper-connectivity and innovation.
Zapp the Lightning of Empowerment by William C. Byham PhD This is where it all started for me. Written as a fable about a “normal company in “Normalsville, USA,” this helped me start perceiving culture as something concrete and tangible vs. just academic.
Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott Conversation Building is Culture Building. This book (which preceded Crucial Conversations and Radical Candor by almost a decade) is clear, beautifully written, and a powerful call for us to develop the courage and skill to have the difficult conversations.
Age of Heretics by Art Kleiner and Warren Bennis For all the OD geeks out there who want to know about the “history of radical thinkers” whose shoulders we all stand on.
Conscious Business by Fred Kofman A guidebook on how culture builders and leaders can lead through being –not just doing– to evolve your team or company to the next level.
The culture builder resource round-ups are a community, crowd-sourced effort. Please send us your suggestions for the best culture builder resources out there so that we can feature it in our monthly resource roundup.
Partners
Evolution is a boutique coaching, consulting, and investment firm that partners with start-up and high-growth companies to drive long-term, holistic success through leadership and culture. We work exclusively with companies that strive to be iconic, world-enriching, evolutionary businesses, such as Amazon, Slack, Radiology Partners, Change.org, Density, and Dropbox.
Conscious Company Media is on a mission to redefine success in business in service of all life. Their print and digital articles, courses, and events help business leaders practice healthy leadership, create healthy workplaces, and stand for a healthier world.
Culture Labx is a global community of founders, designers, and practitioners who curate conversations, connect communities, and experiment with the future of work.
Gamechangers.co ranks the world’s top for-benefit organizations and makes their best practices easily searchable, giving entrepreneurs and executives access to best-in-class methods that have been proven to create meaningful impact while maintaining a financially successful organization.
Work Revolution is a a movement + advocacy group that promotes human and meaningful work for everyone. There you will find profiles and interviews of culture building change agents, influencers, and start-up gurus.
Conscious Leadership Group is at the forefront of a movement to support the expansion of conscious leadership in the world. Here you will find a treasure chest of videos, blogs, meditations and other resources around conscious leadership.
Geyser is a Performance Culture & Brand Consultancy. We’re creative problem solvers who thrive on the challenge of authentic communication to influence positive change and create inspired workplaces that are better for people.