Carolyn Taylor is one of the world’s experts in corporate culture. Following an application sponsored by Bob Joss, recently retired Dean of Stanford Business School, and previously CEO of Westpac, the US government recently awarded Carolyn an O-1 visa, a category reserved for individuals considered to have risen to the top of their field globally.
Her book, Walking the Talk: Building a Culture for Success (Random House, 2005) was described by Strategic HR Review as the most detailed, practical and readable book on how to change organisational culture, and continues to sell strongly today.
Born in London, Carolyn Taylor spent some years in Australia where she pioneered work in leadership, values and culture through her company Corporate Vision. The firm was in the BRW 100 fastest growing Australian companies five years in a row, and her achievements led her to being a finalist Telstra Businesswoman of the Year in 1998, and Australian Business Woman’s Hall of Fame in the same year.
Carolyn Taylor is well regarded in the international business community for her provocative facilitation skills, her sound advice on culture and teams, and her inspiring public speaking. Executives appreciate her ability to demonstrate links between strategy, culture and leadership behaviour, and to ground her work in pragmatic, hard business outcomes.
In 2005, Carolyn joined a global consulting firm as an Academic Board member where she introduced a culture practice, and worked with executives in some of the world’s leading companies to build the cultures they required and ensure that they themselves were walking their talk. She was Global Sales and Marketing Partner during a period of 300% growth and led several of the largest culture change projects in which the company was involved. Her clients included Henri de Castries, CEO of AXA, Candido Bracher, President of Itau BBA Brazil, Sheryl Sandberg, the executive responsible for the monetization of Google, and now COO of Facebook; Mark Begor, EGM GE Money.
In 2009, driven by a vision to promote her culture management methodologies to a much larger group of internal and external culture advocates, she co-founded a new company, Walking the Talk, to build an integrated culture management system – diagnostic, planning and training tools – to enable companies to capitalize on their culture and to build internal capability. Walking the Talk tools are available throughout the world through hand picked business partners who themselves play roles which help clients build culture to align with their strategic intent.
