No Excuses: How You Can Turn Any Workplace into a Great One

Introduction: Creating a Great Workplace

Culture matters. A company's culture determines the limits of its success. Recent surveys conducted by both PricewaterhouseCoopers and IBM assessing the key issues that CEOs face in growing their firms highlight the role of people and culture as crucial to long-term competitive advantage.¹ Organizations today seek the most useful strategies and methods to create a culture of excellence where employees go above and beyond. And decades of research underscore the importance of workplace culture in firm performance.

In 2011, we published The Great Workplace: How to Build It, How to Keep It, and Why It Matters. We advanced the idea that creating a great workplace is central to organizing for business success. ...