Practice Makes Culture

Praise for this book

• In Practice Makes Culture, the authors, who were once my colleagues at Rally, revive and expand on timeless practices that can help cultivate a culture of leadership at every level, bringing forward a legacy that’s more relevant now than ever. I’m grateful to Christine and Ronica for dedicating their efforts to making these insights accessible, not just for others, but for me as well. Their work is a powerful reminder that culture-making is a living, breathing process.

• I’ve been asked countless times how to build a great culture. After twenty years of building and advising companies, I’ve seen most culture initiatives fail—especially enterprise-wide, top-down efforts. What Ronica and Christine understand, and what this book makes actionable, is how real cultural change actually happens. Leaders serious about building a culture that produces results should read this book.

• I’ve known Christine for over two decades—building companies together and spending long miles on bikes in the Colorado mountains. Those experiences taught me what this book makes clear: culture isn’t declared, it’s practiced. As a three-time CEO and board director, I’ve seen many change efforts fail. Practice Makes Culture is different—a practical, day-by-day, meeting-by-meeting system for making change stick.

• I've spent over two decades helping companies transform how millions of people work together. Some of my most game-changing moments have come from eight years of collaboration with Christine and Ronica. What I learned from these two extraordinary humans changed me irrevocably—not just as a leader, but as a person. You simply cannot unsee how vital storytelling, presence, honesty, and the courage to have hard conversations are to being both a good leader and a good teammate. I carry their wisdom into every interaction, personal and professional—into leadership meetings, my podcast, and in service of my Quaker community. Practice Makes Culture is a gift: it offers readers the tools to begin practicing in ways that will change them—and the cultures around them—forever.

• It’s been a decade of intentional, sustainable growth for me and the The Food Corridor team. And honestly, we wouldn’t be where we are, especially in those early, formative years, without Christine’s guidance and the frameworks she equipped us with. I’m thrilled that more people will now get access to the wisdom that helped shape our success through this book.

• In two decades of nonprofit leadership, I’ve learned that the hardest part of mission-driven work isn't the mission—it's the culture. Practice Makes Culture arrives at a crucial moment for organizations navigating today’s rapidly evolving challenges. It is, quite simply, at the top of my list for leaders who want to ensure their impact is matched by their integrity. For anyone striving to make their organization live up to the values that drew people to this work in the first place, this is essential reading. It stands firmly alongside classics like Brené Brown’s 'Dare to Lead' as a definitive guide for the modern leader.

• Practice Makes Culture reflects everything I admire about Christine and Ronica’s approach to transformation: practical, human-centered, and grounded in what actually works. As someone who has spent more than two decades advising C-suites, leading HR organizations, and coaching executives through complex change, I can confidently say this book belongs on every leader’s desk. It bridges the gap between knowing what culture you want and knowing how to build it. It shows leaders how to implement an organizational operating system that turns culture into business results—one meeting, one conversation, one practice at a time.

• At LPL Financial, we weren’t just transforming technology — we were transforming how people led. Everyone had a seat, a voice, and the chance to show their value — from executives to programmers. That’s what this book makes accessible — what Practice Makes Culture enables: turning silence into courage, hierarchy into connection, and attempted change into meaningful transformation.

• This book is amazing. Even though Christine has led us through these exercises before, as I read the book I found myself remembering tactics that I loved and taking handwritten notes off to the side so I could leverage them in our quarterly planning onsite the next week. Practice Makes Culture is a trusted handbook I'll keep using.

• Every change effort has one constant: humans. This book reveals practical ways to harness human psychology and transform change into lasting impact.

• This book will help your organization win. Firehunter didn’t win just because we had the right strategy or wrote down the right values. We won because we practiced them—in how we hired, coached, disagreed, and made decisions when the stakes were high. Over time, that repetition turned values into Culture, and Culture into a lasting edge.

• Practice Makes Culture gets it right: Culture isn't what you say—it's what you practice every day. The values John and I established—and practiced—at Firehunter created a unique culture that taught me how to build high-performance teams throughout my career. This book will guide you to do that, too.