The Culture Quotient: Ten Dimensions of a High-performance Culture

Based on never-before-shared insights from more than 1,000 organizations and millions of employees, this insightful book reveals the ten essential culture qualities that can help any organization prepare for, and thrive in a constantly changing future.

The Culture Quotient provides a simple, easy-to-read approach to culture that guides readers every step of the way. It focuses on helping companies achieve better financial results, as well as increasing employee engagement, and improving talent acquisition and retention.

The Culture Quotient is written with three main goals. The first is to inspire readers. The second is to provide tangible data, tips, and actions. And the third is to share culture stories from many industry leaders that show the power and results of culture initiatives in action. The Culture Quotient features forty-five culture stories and excerpts written exclusively for this book. Some featured companies include American Express, GoDaddy, Bazaarvoice, and many others. The Culture Quotient combines these three goals to provide practical takeaways and tips to help readers implement similar culture programs at their company.

The author Greg Besner, is the founder of CultureIQ, a company that helps organizations around the world create high-performance cultures. He is also a highly rated adjunct professor at New York University Stern School of Business, and he was one of the original investors in Zappos.com. Besner was recently ranked in USA Today as the eighth best CEO in the United States among a pool of fifty thousand companies. He also was named the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® in New Jersey.

The Culture Quotient highlights qualities that help any organization achieve a high-performance culture. Business leaders have been seeking a practical yet data-driven solution for managing culture for a very long time. Now leaders have it with The Culture Quotient.

 

Greg Besner is the Founder and Vice Chairman of CultureIQ, a global company that helps organizations create high-performance cultures. Besner founded CultureIQ in 2013, and since then he and his firm have assisted more than one thousand organizations and millions of employees strengthen their company culture. Of note, he was an early investor in Zappos.com, which inspired his commitment to organizational culture.

In 2018, Besner was ranked in USA Today the 8th best CEO in the United States among a pool of 50,000 companies. He was also named the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® in New Jersey in 2003.

In addition to his leadership role with CultureIQ, Besner has been on the faculty of New York University Stern School of Business since 2013. He is a highly rated adjunct professor teaching hundreds of students topics including organizational culture, leadership and entrepreneurship.

Prior to launching CultureIQ, Besner was the Founder and CEO of Computershare Executive Services, an equity compensation management company formally known as Restricted Stock Systems, Inc. (“RSS”).  Besner founded RSS in 2000, and sold it to Computershare Limited in 2007. He remained as President of Computershare Executive Services until 2009.

In 2000, Besner co-founded Leslie Hsu LLC, a consumer products company that has launched brands such as UGG® Handbags and True Religion Handbags. Besner and his team are currently launching SUNFLOW, a premium beach brand introduced in the summer of 2020.

Besner’s business articles are frequently published in magazines, and his interviews and presentations have been featured in numerous media publications and podcasts. He is a sought after speaker for leadership conferences around the world on the topic of business, culture, and the future of work.

In 2020, Besner completed his sixth year of the Harvard Business School Presidents’ Program in Leadership. He has also earned his MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Management and Finance, and his BA from Rutgers College in English Literature and Economics. 

The visionary CEO of Zappos explains how an emphasis on corporate culture can lead to unprecedented success. Pay new employees $2000 to quit. Make customer service the entire company, not just a department. Focus on company culture as the #1 priority. Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business. Help employees grow both personally and professionally. Seek to change the world. Oh, and make money too. Sound crazy? It's all standard operating procedure at Zappos.com, the online retailer that's doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales every year. In 1999, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) sold LinkExchange, the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for $265 million. He then joined Zappos as an adviser and investor, and eventually became CEO. In 2009, Zappos was listed as one of Fortune magazine's top 25 companies to work for, and was acquired by Amazon later that year in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing. In his first book, Tony shares the different business lessons he learned in life, from a lemonade stand and pizza business through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Ultimately, he shows how using happiness as a framework can produce profits, passion, and purpose both in business and in life.