Culture Shift (PDF)

Shortlisted for the 2020 Business Book Awards

Nowadays, stakeholder consideration focuses as much on an organization's culture as it does on the bottom line - employees want to work for a company that has clear values and an engaging environment; customers and clients want to know they're supporting a worthwhile brand; and investors look to back socially responsible companies with good organizational health.

Too often, businesses see culture change as a project with a defined end point - once the project is considered 'done', the dominant culture re-emerges and things go back to how they were. Culture Shift guides organizations on how to do things differently, ensuring that culture really does shift (with minimal budget and no external consultants) and putting culture permanently at the core of running the business.

Founded on behavioural economics, Culture Shift recognises that people do not always make average assumptions or follow rational logic. Changing a culture, therefore, is not about telling people what to do and expecting them to fall neatly in line - it's about identifying where they are now and how they make decisions, in order to help them form new habits to create a sustainable culture shift, from the very top of the organization's workforce to the bottom.

Using her extensive experience, Kirsty Bashforth outlines exactly what it takes to oversee sustainable culture change in an organization. The book explores how to communicate cultural expectations to a number of stakeholders; implement new, lasting habits in the workforce; effectively measure and track organizational culture; as well as deal with pushback from senior leadership when, as time passes, the planned culture shift risks falling lower on their agenda.