The Positive Organization

Breaking Free from Conventional Cultures, Constraints, and Beliefs

By: Robert E. Quinn

Narrated by: Wayne Shepherd

Beholden to accepted assumptions about people and organizations, too many enterprises waste human potential. Robert Quinn shows how to defy convention and create organizations where people feel fully engaged and continually rewarded, where - both individually and collectively - they flourish and exceed expectations.

The problem is that leaders are following a negative and constraining "mental map" that insists organizations must be rigid, top-down hierarchies and that the people in them are driven mainly by self-interest and fear. But leaders can adopt a different mental map, one where organizations are networks of fluid, evolving relationships and where people are motivated by a desire to grow, learn, and serve a larger goal. Using dozens of memorable stories, Quinn describes specific actions leaders can take to facilitate the emergence of this organizational culture - helping people gain a sense of purpose, engage in authentic conversations, see new possibilities, and sacrifice for the common good.

The book includes the positive organization generator, a tool that provides 100 real-life practices from positive organizations and helps you reinvent them to fit your specific needs. With the POG you can identify and implement the practices that will have the greatest impact on your organization.

At its heart, the book helps leaders see new possibilities that lie within the acknowledged realities of organizational life. It provides five keys for learning to be "bilingual" - speaking the conventional language of business as well as the language of the positive organization. When leaders can do this, they are able to make real and lasting change.

©2015 Robert E. Quinn (P)2015 Robert E. Quinn

Outstanding. A fresh way to look at change

It is a unique and insightful way of looking at organizations and leading organizational change.

Good for a start, but not more

I read “Corporate Culture” book by HBR (its a set of articles) and after reading Quinn’s and Takor’s article there I was expecting a lot of new insights from this read. Well, it seems that I read to many books on purpose and corporate culture to be engaged with this one. Basic good ideas, nice stories from practice, but doesn’t feel like something worth writing a book about. I contrast this one to the “Everyone Culture” that was focused specifically on creating a Deep Development Organizations and the difference is very substantial. If you are only diving to to the topic of positive organizations this is a good start, but I would rather recommend books on Appreciative Inquiry — they have the same vibe but way more practical tools. Oh, and the website with the 100 promised practices doesn’t work anymore.