"Rob Goffee, at London Business School"

“Suppose you want to design the best company on earth to work for. What would it be like? For three years we’ve been investigating this question by asking hundreds of executives in surveys and in seminars all over the world to describe their ideal organization. This mission arose from our research into the relationship between authenticity and effective leadership. Simply put, people will not follow a leader they feel is inauthentic. But the executives we questioned made it clear that to be authentic, they needed to work for an authentic organization.”

“A company's culture is often buried so deeply inside rituals, assumptions, attitudes, and values that it becomes transparent to an organization's members only when, for some reason, it changes.”

“Small businessmen and entrepreneurs came firmly back in fashion when this book was first published in 1980. As the Western economies moved into recession, many governments, particularly Mrs Thatcher’s administration, looked to the entrepreneurial spirit of the small businessman to rejuvenate and revitalise Western society.”

“For us, an authentic organization is one in which you can be your best self, you can identify with the organizational purpose, you can understand and trust it. These are the qualities that came through from interviews with individuals working in organizations around the world.”

“Our work on leadership encouraged people to “be themselves, more, with skill.” This message has resonated well. But one response has been that people will act authentically when they find themselves in authentic organizations. So our new book answers the question, “what would an authentic organization look like?” We have identified six DREAMS dimensions here:”

“Highly engaged employees are, on average, 50% more likely to exceed expectations that the least-engaged workers. And companies with highly engaged people outperform firms with the most disengaged folks- by 54% in employee retention, by 89% in customer satisfaction, and by fourfold in revenue growth.”