The Katzenbach Center

The experts on organizational culture, teaming and informal organization

The Katzenbach Center helps clients close the strategy-through-execution gap by putting their cultures to work. With a network of practitioners advising across multiple industries, geographies, and client situations, we guide clients as they tap the power of their cultures and unlock the wisdom of teams to foster performance.

Our time-tested methodology and focused thought leadership is rooted in the original works of leading organizational strategy advisor and best-selling author, Jon Katzenbach.

Key topic areas

Culture is the self-sustaining patterns of behaviors and mindsets that determine how work gets done. Many business leaders understand that culture plays an important role in business performance, but most struggle to align culture with strategy and fully harness this power. We help clients work with and within their existing cultures to drive long-term performance. Our emphasis on a critical few behaviors over mindsets is what differentiates our approach.

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Teams are a flexible and efficient way to enhance organizational performance. Clients can utilize the power of disciplined teaming to further strategic objectives. In the 20 years since Jon Katzenbach wrote The Wisdom of Teams, our experience and approach on leadership and “high performing” teams have helped many clients succeed across a wide range of business problems and industries.

Teams are a flexible and efficient way to enhance organizational performance. Clients can utilize the power of disciplined teaming to further strategic objectives. In the 20 years since Jon Katzenbach wrote The Wisdom of Teams, our experience and approach on leadership and “high performing” teams have helped many clients succeed across a wide range of business problems and industries.
Teams are a flexible and efficient way to enhance organizational performance. Clients can utilize the power of disciplined teaming to further strategic objectives. In the 20 years since Jon Katzenbach wrote The Wisdom of Teams, our experience and approach on leadership and “high performing” teams have helped many clients succeed across a wide range of business problems and industries.
Teams are a flexible and efficient way to enhance organizational performance. Clients can utilize the power of disciplined teaming to further strategic objectives. In the 20 years since Jon Katzenbach wrote The Wisdom of Teams, our experience and approach on leadership and “high performing” teams have helped many clients succeed across a wide range of business problems and industries.

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We believe organizations that leverage their informal networks have a greater potential to achieve business results. Our tools and techniques related to identifying and engaging Authentic Informal Leaders (AILs) help clients harness the energy and skills of key people to spread critical behaviors. Pride Building in particular is premised on a simple idea: every organization has a group of employees who excel at motivating colleagues to achieve stellar results.

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What we do

Oil company facing a challenging road ahead

A middle eastern national oil company was facing a significant demographic shift in their workforce and an increasingly competitive external environment. To succeed in this new environment, the client developed an ambitious long-term strategic plan. Leadership soon realized that in order for the plan to succeed, they needed to leverage the strengths of their existing culture and get emotional commitment from the organization. Together, we prioritized 4 critical behaviors and deployed them across a series of pilots. Ultimately, we recorded business performance improvements that were directly attributable to behavior change.

Talk to one of our experts about your organization's culture

Car manufacturer recovered from the brink

A North American car manufacturer on the brink of bankruptcy tackled its deeply embedded culture after formal changes—reshaping strategy and optimizing costs—weren’t moving the needle far enough. To evolve the culture in a sustainable way, the organization relied on leaders to role model new behaviors and leveraged "authentic informal leaders" to spread the behaviors throughout the organization rapidly. Ultimately, the effort resulted in faster decision-making, increased accountability, and improved customer and product focus.

Talk to one of our experts about your organization's culture

Information technology company re-found its mojo

Following a number of leadership changes and declining performance in the market, a tech company CEO began to wonder if culture wasn’t the problem. Her organization had a long history, steeped in pride, but she felt it was adrift. We helped them redefine their ecosystem of values, core principles, leadership attributes, behaviors, and "rallying cry" that made the culture unique and compelling. To help the message spread and behaviors stick, the client engaged ~1,250 "pride builders" across 85 countries globally. Within a year, engagement scores increased by 10%.

Talk to one of our experts about how to engage your informal organization

Pulling together the best diverse team

A banking group in ANZSEA had experienced rapid, inorganic growth resulting in diverse and opposing ways of working, and was looking forward to achieving aggressive 5 year targets. We helped the bank understand its cultural strengths across divisions / locations and use them to accelerate priority strategic imperatives. First, we engaged with leaders to diagnose the existing culture and sub-cultures. We identified a long list of behaviors and refined them into three critical behaviors that the organization spread across a workforce of 40,000+.

Talk to one of our experts about how to get the most out of your teams

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Reid Carpenter

Reid Carpenter

Director, Strategy& US

Varya Davidson

Varya Davidson

Partner, Australia

James Thomas

James Thomas

Partner, Strategy& Middle East

Paolo Morley-Fletcher

Paolo Morley-Fletcher

Director, Strategy& Italy

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