The Culture Climb: How to Build a Work Culture That Maximizes Your Impact
Jaime Taets with Chelsey Paulson
Fast Company Press (June 2023)

“Where everyone knows your name…” and cares  

It is no coincidence that companies annually ranked the most highly admired and best to work for are also ranked among those that are most profitable and have the greatest cap value in their industry segment. However different they may be in most other respects, all of them have a workplace culture within which personal growth and professional development are most likely to thrive. In many (if not most) other companies, the strongest resistance to change is cultural in nature, the result of what James O’Toole so aptly characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.”

In this book, written with Chelsey Paulson, Jaime Taets observes, in culturally defective businesses, “underneath each of [their] operational challenges is a more human-centered issue that is going unaddressed — meaning the challenges persist month after month, year after year.” The solution to human-centered issues is culture. And culture is all about people. If you want to get your business unstuck, if you want to take it to the next level, you are going to have to address culture.” HOW?

“Welcome to the Culture Mountain.” Taets has devised an impact model to achieve and then sustain an empowered workforce that produces profitable growth, “month after month, year after year.” Check out Figure 0.1 on Page xiv.

The material in The Culture Climb is organized within three Parts: The Culture Gap (Chapters 1-5), How High-Impact Culture Works (6-10), and Taking Your First Next Steps (11-16). What Taets and her associates have learned “is that it’s possible to be a good company without a strong culture, but you’ll never be a great company without it.” I agree while citing Marshall Goldsmith’s observation that “what got you here won’t get you there.” My own opinion is that what got you here won’t even allow you to remain, where you are now, however “here” and “there” are defined. All of the strongest and weakest companies have a high-impact culture, for better or worse.

These are among the subjects and issues that Taets discusses that are of greatest interest and value to me.

o The “culture gap” that complicates (sometimes precludes) communication, cooperation, and collaboration
o How cultural values drive organizational performance, for better or worse
o The power of first-person PLURAL pronouns
o Culture viewed as an “anchor” and a “foundation” for an organization
o Culture viewed as an “anchor” and a “sail” for individuals within an organization
o Culture viewed as a “magnet” and “model”  for other organizations other individuals
o Ensuring that the organization becomes and remains solid, “for all seasons” through “the best of times, the worst f times”
o Follow the community’s True North, no matter what
o Measure what you manage and manage what you measure…but also measure what others don’t.

Note: I can’t speak for Taets but in this instance I presume to insist that intangibles are NOT immeasurable. Empathy, for example, and civility. Using a scale of 0-10 (from Not at All to Completely) ask your people to rate how appreciated they feel they and their efforfts are in the given company.

o With the destination identified and the preparations completed, BEGIN the “journey” and track progress every step of the way.

With the assistance of Chelsey Paulson, Jaime Taets has written a “must read” for those who are determined to maximize their impact on their company’s efforts to establish or atrengthen a workplace culture within which personal growth and professional development are most likely to thrive. Congratuations! Bravo!

Here are two concluding suggestions: Highlight key passages, and, keep a lined notebook near at hand while reading The Culture Climb in which you record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines) and page references as well as your responses to questions or issues suggested by the material. These two simple tactics will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.