Add The Culture Engine to Your Personal Development List

I’ve been spending some time this month with The Culture Engine by S. Chris Edmonds. Edmonds is the founder and CEO of The Purposeful Culture Group and the best selling author or co-author of seven books, including his latest book, The Culture Engine, and Ken Blanchard’s Leading at a Higher Level.

I picked The Culture Engine up because this summer I plan to do a little bit of a deep dive into transforming corporate cultures and developing healthy corporate cultures.

What I discovered was The Culture Engine is a gold mine!  In addition to a very nice set of tools designed to help organizations drive results, inspire employees and transform workplaces, a very robust look at applying the same tools in an effort to transform yourself is included in chapter two.

As I’ve worked my way through the book, I found it to be an easy and inspiring read. Interwoven with great stories about how various practices have played out in the companies with which Edmonds has consulted. It’s also been a challenging read as I’ve paused at many points to work through an exercise myself (and think through how it would play in some of the churches with which I am consulting.

The most important takeaway for me was Edmonds thinking about the importance of developing an organizational constitution; “a living, breathing document that outlines clear agreements on the team or company’s purposes and the values and behaviors that all team leaders and members believe in and commit to (p. 17).”

The rest of The Culture Engine includes the work that will help you develop an organizational constitution. Clarifying your organization’s purpose, defining values in behavioral terms (where they can be observed), and planning strategies and goals for the coming year are just a few of the very valuable aspects covered and they all play into the development of an organizational constitution.

If you’re involved at all in the development or stewardship of a culture, The Culture Engine: A Framework for Driving Results, Inspiring Your Employees, and Transforming Your Workplace is a must read in my opinion. I highly recommend it.