Ignite Culture: Empowering and Leading a Healthy, High-Performance Organization from the Inside Out

Margaret Graziano | KeenAlignment Press 236p, e-book, $7.99, ASIN B0BQCZB4HF

Arguing that “dysfunctional behavior … has driven many valuable companies into the ground,” Graziano offers a resource guide crafted to embolden business owners and company leaders to create environments and business cultures that are healthy, accommodating, and pleasant, to increase overall employee satisfaction in an era of mass resignations. Starting from the top with the company CEOs, leaders, and then employees, Graziano maps out a domino effect of change that will increase business morale—and, in turn, profit margins. Ignite Culture makes the case that “businesses are human systems,” and that reshaping companies by creating better leaders creates a standard that can be met company-wide and cultivates a high quality of work across the board.

Graziano draws on her more than 20 years of experience to pen this detailed guide on how to navigate this post-pandemic era. Ignite Culture features anecdotes from successful companies with well-oiled cultures and companies who had to make fixes to produce maximum results. This guide pushes company leaders to make the first move in creating change, as culture is “shaped and determined by the behavioral norms of the leadership team.” The emphasis is on the practical, the creation of “Liberating Structures” and the practice of open communication, with each chapter ending with clear takeaways, follow-up questions, and an exercise in adjusting one’s mindset.

Practical advice for managers and others covers active listening, developing and following through with a vision, mastering “generative, future-based language,” and other crucial skills. This engaging, interactive self-help book will benefit leaders with its humanizing approach to changing the way companies do business, while employees will find edification in its persuasive examination of how a healthy work environment should function and how to evaluate if a company is a strong fit for their needs. Here’s a clear-eyed tool-kit for businesses eager to ace the new standards.

Clear-eyed advice for business leaders on creating strong company cultures.

Great for fans of Ben Horowitz’s What You Do Is Who You Are, Christine Kane’s The Soul Sourced Entrepreneur.