What a great book, I thoroughly enjoyed the feedback from the author on how to help the culture from within a team, and how not to rely on culture to fix issues. There are some tough questions that I needed to ask myself before I needed to ask them of my team. The author did a great job of giving ideas but reminding me that I needed to work just as hard as I asked my employees. Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

While this was an interesting premise and I did find some lessons valuable, I think the delivery could have been a bit more compelling at times.

This book encourages immediate action. The first pages lead straight into concepts and exercises to use wherever you want to cultivate culture. Simple concepts, important to all places where people want to work together effectively and want to foster a good culture which is actually practised and not just a phrase on the company website. A copy of this should be with every team leader and whipped out for a lucky dip each time they gather.

There were a few activities in here that I'd be interested to try with my team, but on the whole, it feels a little bit patronizing and more appropriate for a grade school class. Some of the suggestions to give rewards or recognition were to have a pizza party, or give out stickers or candy. If I asked my team to write down their conflicts on pieces of different colored fruit and stick them to a tree, I think they'd all think I'd lost my mind.

I also found the activities to be pretty shallow, focused mainly on buzzwords without a lot of substance behind them. Yes, it's good to get to know team members by finding out what you have in common, but spending three minutes discussing your favorite color or sandwich type is just not going to move the needle that much in terms of company culture.

No one, absolutely no one, wants to sit in a meeting where someone's got a big flipchart and a marker and asks you to define buzzwords and phrases like "walk the talk" or talk about what it means to "have empathy". The reality is that improving culture is not a 10-15 minute activity that you do at the beginning of a meeting.

Thank you to BenBella Books and NetGalley for access to this free e-arc in exchange for an honest review.