The Values-Driven Organization

Book excerpt: 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.