Key Conclusions from our Research on
Culture and Performance

In their book Unleashing Human Energy through Culture Change: From a Toxic Culture to a High-Performance Organization, Don Rust and Alan Weinstein identify six key factors that led to a toxic, unproductive work environment in General Motors’ largest engine plant, located outside of Buffalo, New York. Those factors were:

  1. Conflict between employees and management, or “industrial warfare”

  2. Employee disengagement from their work, which Alan and Don describe as “industrial depression”

  3. Bully management, a coercive management style that uses threats, aggression, and discipline

  4. An over-emphasis on short-term profits

  5. Lack of job security

  6. Work that is dull and uninspiring, and poor working conditions

With an ultimatum from General Motors headquarters that the plant would close unless a union contract was signed and new work was allocated for the plant, Don Rust convened a meeting of his management team and union leadership. Together, they created a plan to change the culture and win new business. The plan was successful, resulting in the plant being General Motors’ most productive engine plant.

In Healthy Culture, Healthy Business: Twenty-one Ways to Build a Culture for Success, Alan Weinstein and Don Rust interviewed leaders of twenty-one companies about their culture and business success. Here are the authors’ major findings:

  1. Six components of a healthy culture were identified

  2. Clearly, healthy cultures lead to business success

  3. Best practices were identified for creating and maintaining healthy cultures

  4. Healthy cultures require leadership that is intentional, resolute, and passionate about culture

  5. Eliminating counterculture behavior is essential to building and maintaining a healthy culture

  6. Leadership succession is the greatest challenge to sustaining healthy cultures.

In his book Executive Coaching and the Process of Change: A Practitioner’s Guide, Alan Weinstein identifies six key components of leadership coaching:

  1. Executive coaching is about change. Without perceived tension between goals and current behavior, there will be no change.

  2. Everyone has a personal balance sheet of assets and liabilities. Coaching strives to leverage assets while managing liabilities.

  3. Reflection is a powerful tool to apply new behaviors to past experience, resulting in greater effectiveness.

  4. Coaching helps leaders reframe challenges to provide better pathways for change.

  5. Partnering is most effective when one person’s assets compliment another person’s liabilities.

  6. Coaching is most effective when a coach is knowledgeable about business, enabling insightful, probing questions to facilitate change.