Accolades for Culture Renovation®
“The best playbooks are a combination of reliable research, relatable examples, and actionable strategies. This is the best playbook I’ve seen when it comes to creating organizational cultures that create competitive advantage, unlock performance, and rehumanize work.”
Brené Brown, PhD, author of New York Times #1 bestseller Dare to Lead
“Your employees are the engine that powers ideas, innovation, and success of your company every day. A strong culture can provide the right fuel to nurture and empower your teams. In Culture Renovation, Kevin reinforces how leaders can learn from others and create the environment that enables each employee to make a difference.”
Ajay Banga, Chief Executive Officer, Mastercard
“Today’s top talent is seeking employers with a strong purpose aligned with their purpose. They want clear direction for the future and a culture that drives the strongest engagement and best performance and rewards. The company examples and steps that Kevin Oakes provides are the guideposts and evidence for employees to sign on.”
Beth Ford, President and CEO, Land O’Lakes
“In today’s unpredictable and constantly changing environment, creating an agile and resilient culture is the difference between whether a company thrives or lags the competition. Culture Renovation is the blueprint executives need to future-proof the company.”
Marshall Goldsmith, New York Times #1 bestselling author of Triggers, Mojo, and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
Kathleen Hogan, Chief People Officer, Microsoft
“Happy employees lead to happy customers. When companies put employees first and invest in people and culture, it creates a virtuous cycle that leads to business success. In Culture Renovation, Oakes outlines steps that any company can implement to make positive and lasting culture change.”
Ashley Goldsmith, Chief People Officer, Workday
“Changing an organization’s culture is often attempted, and rarely achieved. In Culture Renovation, Oakes leverages research and practical real-life examples to help any organization effectively change culture to compete more successfully in the future.”
Christy Pambianchi, EVP & CHRO, Verizon
“The real stories about the intersection between HR and senior leadership—and how important that was in successfully evolving a culture—is worth the read alone. What Oakes lays out in Culture Renovation is a must-have manual for making sustainable culture change happen now and in the years to come.”
Dean Carter, VP of HR, Patagonia
“Talking about changing a company’s culture is common. Doing it—in a sustainable way, is rare. Culture Renovation is a must-have primer for making that change happen. Oakes highlights the critical partnership between the CEO and CHRO, and the cooperation between HR and the leaders in an organization. In Culture Renovation, Oakes beautifully captures how critical the human resources function has become to create an organizational culture that will thrive over the long term.”
Pat Wadors, Chief People Officer, Procore
“Too many companies post their values on the wall and their websites and expect their employees and customers to magically behave exactly as those words describe. Culture Renovation helps clearly define how much more you can achieve when you take the steps to renovate your culture from the inside out, not the outside in.”
Ana White, Chief Human Resources Officer, F5
“Culture sets the stage for connecting people to each other and to unleash their own greatest potential. Kevin provides a useful context for thinking about continual growth and evolution whilst navigating ever-changing environments.”
Michael Fraccaro, Chief People Officer, Mastercard
“Creating an agile and vibrant culture is key to thriving in today’s constantly changing business environment. Culture Renovation provides a thoughtful blueprint that any company can follow to evolve culture for high performance—including where to start and how to sustain change over time. It’s a practical, insightful guide that should be on any CHRO’s go-to list.”
Kristen Ludgate, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, 3M
“What’s clear is that corporate culture needs an overhaul. What’s less clear is how to undertake that massive task. Thank goodness, then, for Kevin Oakes. In Culture Renovation he lays out a straightforward framework that any business leader can use to face the future with confidence and to build a great organization from the inside out.”
Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive, and To Sell Is Human
“People-focused leaders understand an internally healthy culture is the cause of financial success, not the result. In Culture Renovation, Oakes outlines 18 proven action steps that any company can implement to make immediate positive culture change and sustain it long term.”
Garry Ridge, CEO and Chairman, WD-40 Company
“Culture Renovation confirms what I’ve long believed and experienced: It takes an appreciation of the past, and all its lessons, in order to evolve your company’s culture for the long term.”
François Locoh-Donou, CEO of F5
“Few things are more important than culture. And no matter how strong and unique your culture, it always can be improved and needs to evolve. With vivid examples, key data, and brisk writing, Culture Renovation shows you step-by-step the dos and don’ts of upgrading your culture. I highly recommend it to anyone who cares about culture… which should be everyone.”
Bret Snyder, President and CEO, W.L. Gore & Associates
“The importance of corporate culture can simply not be overemphasized. Earlier books made a convincing case that culture drives organization performance and ultimate success. This is the first book to lay out a well-researched, practical road map for how a company refurbishes its culture. Chock-full of down-to-earth, workable solutions, it is destined to be the classic handbook on this extremely vital issue.”
Jack Zenger, CEO of Zenger Folkman and author of the bestselling The New Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders
“A company’s external brand is significantly influenced by its culture, yet few executives pay as much attention to internal sentiment as they do externally. In Culture Renovation, Oakes lays out a straightforward, complete framework that any business leader should internalize if they are interested in building a great organization from the inside out.”
Jay Deutsch, CEO, BDA
“While culture change needs to start at the top, successful leaders understand that to truly renovate culture you need a co-creation mindset throughout the workforce. That not only means understanding who the influencers and energizers are but also the blockers and detractors. In Culture Renovation, Kevin details the practices and steps that successful organizations have employed on their journey to create healthy and vibrant cultures. Kevin’s magic is that he combines over a decade of quantitative and qualitative research with the world’s leading organizations to generate unprecedented insight into successful culture change. His ability to position the ideas in clear compelling steps that make transparent what any leader can—and must—take will make this book an enduring classic.”
Rob Cross, Founder, Connected Commons, and Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership Babson College
“That culture matters for company performance is not news. What is new—and important for companies with unhealthy cultures—are the 18 practical steps companies can take to renovate their organizational cultures. Oakes has written a book that is evidence-based and practical on a topic of tremendous importance.”
Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor Stanford Business School and author of Dying for a Paycheck
“Today’s top talent is seeking employers with a strong purpose, innovative vision, and a culture fit. In Culture Renovation, Oakes documents 18 proven steps which i4cp’s research uncovered as common tactics implemented by high-performance organizations, coupled with case studies which highlight those steps in action. I can’t think of a better blueprint for any executive or company to effectively change their corporate culture.”
Elliott Masie, The Learning CONSORTIUM
“The fascinating stories about the intersection between HR and senior leadership—and how important that was in successfully changing a culture—are worth the read alone. But what Oakes lays out in Culture Renovation is a go-to manual for any human capital professional interested in improving a company’s culture now and maintaining that for years into the future.”
Dr. John Boudreau, Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California
