The Values-Driven Organization: Unleashing Human Potential for Performance and Profit

by Richard Barrett

Based on significant new research from multiple sources, Richard Barrett creates a compelling narrative about why values-driven organizations are the most successful organizations on the planet. According to Barrett, understanding employee s needs what people value is the key to creating a high performing organization. When you support employees in satisfying their needs, they respond with high levels of employee engagement and willingly bring their commitment and creativity to their work.

This book updates and brings together in one volume, two of Richard Barrett s previous publications, Liberating the Corporate Soul (1998) and Building a Values-Driven Organisation (2006), to provide a reference manual for leaders and change agents who wish to create a values-driven organization. The text provides both a leadership approach, and a language, for organizational transformation and culture change that incorporates concepts such as cultural entropy, values alignment and whole system change.

With an updated set of cultural diagnostic tools and a wide range of new and exciting case studies on culture and leadership development, The Values-Driven Organization will be essential reading for students, researchers and practitioners in the fields of organizational change, leadership and ethics."

Genres: Business, Leadership, Psychology

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Marcus Solberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly interesting book about the great importance of coming up with suitable values that will serve to drive your organisation in the direction it should be going, as well as about how to implement these values trough the personal development/transformation of the leaders and employees, as well as about how to align the company's structures with these values.

The book is a bit repetitive, which might make sense for the purpose of wanting to really hammer home the message, but which makes the reading of some parts of the book a bit dull. I'm also a bit sceptical towards the author's (explicitly) basing a lot of his theory on "Vedic philosophical/spiritual tradition"; There's a lot of talk about "the soul", which I think I could have had forbearance with if it wasn't for authors definition of it in the following terms:

"Your soul is a field of conscious awareness that exists beyond space and time in the energetic realm of the quantum energy field."

This quote is just plain embarrassing and I doubt that the author himself knows what this is supposed to mean (I also doubt that he has the right qualifications to make this kind of statement about "quantum energy fields").

On the positive note, the author seems to have quite a lot of experience (both practical and research based) when it comes to working with company cultures, and a lot of the material in the book is quite interesting. However, I don't really see the point of slightly butchering Maslow's hierarchy of needs model in order to create a new model of needs (or "consciousness" as the author is referring to it as). I guess having your own model, based on Maslow's model, is felt to be a bit more sexy as compared to just using the existing one, but I might be overly harsh here.

I'm currently involved in a writing project that has to do with this book, so I might update this review and make it a bit more lengthy/informational later (I might also be too lazy to do that, so don't hold your breath...).

Maybe this sounded like a complete trashing of this book, but the book is actually quite informative and interesting - It's just that I hold quite strong opinions when it comes to authors straying into the "spiritual" realm (a.k.a. "not-actually-knowing-what-they-are-talking-about-but-it-sounds-good-in the-ears-of-the-spiritually-inclined-and-not-very-reasons-demanding-people-realm").

Recommended reading for anyone interested in understanding the importance of company culture, how it works, and how it can be measured and improved!

[Michael Bodekaer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book. So many great insights - supported by empirical data - showing the importance of a great culture in modern creative/knowledge organizations.

Much of what I read, was already known from reading other similar books, however the book manages to present all the data on organizational culture in a very simple and easy-to-understand framework.
This we've already leveraged in many of our teams to map the values of everyone in our organizations and therefore define the values of our culture in a very collaborative process.

I highly highly recommend this book for anyone focused on building a strong culture in their organization.

[Rodrigo Ramos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leitura muito interessante e com vários conceitos importantes que explicam o motivo de organizações serem excelentes (para seus colaboradores, acionistas, clientes e o mundo) e outras não: os seus valores praticados de verdade e não os impressos em folders, escritos no site ou em qualquer documento da organização. Mostra também que esses valores são criados e disseminados pelos líderes das organizações, inclusive líderes que já não estão mais na empresa.
Vou ter bastante trabalho pra praticar tudo o que foi abordado nesse livro. E isso é ótimo!

[Anthony Tenaglier · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a world that seems to be getting more chaotic and harder to find a stable footing in, "value" based models in life are guiding the successful companies of today. In his seven levels of consciousness model, Barrett provides for the reader, a map to follow for the values wished to become in life.