REVIEW: Dr. Thomas R. Krause — If Your Culture Could Talk (BOOK)
“Culture change is easy to talk about — in fact, consultants often make a meal of it. Organizational leaders know that culture matters, and that some parts of the organization have different cultural attributes than others. But few leaders can honestly say they know how
to create, maintain, and enhance their culture.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: https://www.thomasaquinas.edu/about/governance/thomas-r-krause
They often confuse the outcomes of a lacking culture with the attributes needed to be effective. And, in reality, changing an organization’s culture can be at the very least difficult and sometimes near impossible,” writes Dr. Thomas R. Krause in his new book, If Your Culture Could Talk: A Story of Culture Change. “I often ask myself, why is organizational culture such an enigma? Why is it so easy to grasp the concept of culture but so difficult to change it? Why is creating a thriving organizational culture so difficult? Why do organizational leaders keep struggling year after year after year? The success of a culture change effort depends on the degree to which leaders understand and relate their own decisions, behaviors, and thought processes to the culture itself.”
So begins one of the better business and leadership advice books out there. Dr. Krause writes with this dynamic, but focused and very precise prose. Everything feels like a component of a tightly wound and well-oiled ideological machine, in servitude to the greater point(s) of the read, while also able to expand upon themselves in their own domains clearly and concisely. Krause is able to be witty, affable, and immersive in his writing too. Often books of this nature suffer from acquired taste, a target audience in mind when they’re written so as to provide implementation structure to one specific group.
But Krause writes in a manner that makes this book palatable to a much wider reading base. After all, to a certain degree, the arguments and structure advocated for in the text come from a humanistic place. Krause is able to demonstrate aptly how these kinds of implementations are not rocket science, or requiring of an MBA. It really is quite simple, and it’s the corporatized muddying of the waters that can make understanding them, and making such practices sustainable, difficult.
“An organization recognizes and responds to the integrity of its leaders in many ways. For example, the concept of ‘justice,’ the perception that ‘We are an organization that treats people fairly’ is pivotal to each employee’s relationship to the rest of the organization. This perception creates a foundation for working relationships based on trust, effective communication, and teamwork.
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/If-Your-Culture-Could-Talk/dp/B0D9ZNYZND
The ethos of our leadership creates and depends on such a foundation,” Krause writes, in a narrative part of the read. “This isn’t just a concept, it is operationalized by the
decisions we make every day. Selection of leaders, how we approach acquisitions, budget cuts, new facilities and products — the wide range of decisions we make that affect our people. To the extent to which these decisions are made fairly and without bias, is the extent to which we
gain or lose the credibility we must have to form a strong culture.”
Colin Jordan
