About the Authors

Jon R. Katzenbach, James Thomas, and Gretchen Anderson are leaders at the Katzenbach Center, a global knowledge center focusing on culture and leadership at PwC’s Strategy&. The center aims to unite like-minded individuals inside and outside the firm who are passionate and curious about the intersection of people, culture, and organizations. The Katzenbach Center builds capabilities related to its core content areas, conducts original research, provides coaching and support to teams, and works directly with clients. For access to our latest thinking, follow our blog series, The Critical Few, on strategy+business (https://www.strategy-business.com/the-critical-few).

Jon R. Katzenbach is the founder of the Katzenbach Center at Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting business. With more than five decades of experience advising leaders, Jon is a recognized expert in organizational performance, collaboration, corporate governance, culture challenges, and employee motivation. Before the integration with PwC, Jon was a senior partner with Strategy& (formerly Booz & Company). Prior to Booz & Company, Jon was founder of Katzenbach Partners LLC, a firm specializing in organization, leadership, governance, and strategy. For thirty years prior to founding his own firm, he was a director with McKinsey. He is the author or coauthor of many articles and notable books, including The Wisdom of Teams, Peak Performance, Leading outside the Lines, and Why Pride Matters More Than Money. Articles published in recent years that presage ideas in this book include “10 Principles of Organizational Culture” in strategy+business, coauthored with James Thomas and Carolin Oelschlegel, and “Cultural Change That Sticks” in Harvard Business Review, coauthored with Ilona Steffen and Caroline Kronley.

Jon attended Brigham Young University and graduated with distinction from Stanford University in 1954 with a bachelor of arts degree in economics. He obtained his master of business administration from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, in 1959. Jon also served in the navy during the Korean War as a lieutenant (jg) in the Pacific on the USS Whetstone (LSD 27) and on the USS Nicholas (DDE 449).

James Thomas is a partner with PwC’s Strategy& based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He leads the Katzenbach Center in the Middle East. In addition to having a background in oil and gas strategy consulting, James has worked extensively with organizations across industry sectors and across Europe and the Middle East to understand and evolve their cultures in pursuit of their strategic goals.

His client project experiences, from culture diagnostic to behavior-based transformation programs, have enabled substantial codification and development of the Katzenbach methodology. James has also spoken and written extensively on the topics of culture, behavior, and leadership, including “10 Principles of Organizational Culture” in strategy+business, coauthored with Jon Katzenbach and Carolin Oelschlegel, and the report A Culture of Success: Using Culture for World-Class Results in GCC Companies, coauthored with Georges Chehade, Per-Ola Karlsson, and Jon Katzenbach.

James holds a bachelor of science degree from Durham University. He lives in Dubai with his wife, Sophie, and three children, Sebastian, Florence, and Theodore.

Gretchen Anderson is a director at the Katzenbach Center, where she works with client teams across the globe who are operating at the intersection of strategy and organizational performance. Gretchen has been developing expertise in this field since she joined Katzenbach Partners in 2003. In the fifteen years since, she has developed a global, cross-industry perspective on the complex relationship between individual motivation and organizational performance. She writes, speaks, and advises on these topics.

Gretchen has a doctorate in literature from Stanford University. She likes to claim that her graduate thesis, which focused on women poets in Greenwich Village, signaled her eventual interest in how each individual’s work life evolves in response to his or her environment. As an undergraduate, she studied at St. Hugh’s College at Oxford University and graduated summa cum laude from Middlebury College in Vermont. She currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with her two children, Jane and Calvin.