The Orange Revolution: How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization
*Starred Review* Why doesn’t every corporate leader actively listen to employees and to veteran consultants like Gostick and Elton (authors of the Carrot Principle books)? Though the answer to that question isn’t the subject of this book, adopting the how-to’s for realizing dreams could indeed provide the solution to staid, stagnant, and unrewarding work in America. As with most human resources type of business books, the authors present ideas in a many-stepped process, with principles to follow, often too many to remember. Yet if readers and executives just stick to their rule of three (wow, no surprises, and cheer), the rewards of an engaged workforce will probably ensue. Examples of great teams, believe it or not, proliferate here; in addition to the well-known cultures of a Zappos, for instance, there are also stories from Medical City Dallas Hospital, Pepsi Bottling Group, the Blue Angels, and Nash Finch, all about the power of teams to transform. And lest you think that the authors simply collected anecdotes, their philosophy is based on valid and overwhelming statistics, thanks to the Best Places to Work database (350,000 employees from 28 industries): 63 percent of workers surveyed found productivity to be positively affected when coworkers are friends outside of work (to cite just one finding). Take a letter to the C-suite: it’s all about work that matters. --Barbara Jacobs