Louis "Lou" Carter

CEO, Founder, Organizational Psychologist, and Author

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About

Louis Carter is an organizational psychologist, founder, and CEO of Best Practice Institute and Most Loved Workplace®. He is known for pioneering research on emotional connectedness at work and for creating the Love of Workplace Index™, which powers the Most Loved Workplace® certification and rankings published with major media partners.

He is the author of several books on leadership and organizational culture, including In Great Company (McGraw-Hill), which introduced his SPARK model for building workplaces people genuinely love. His earlier edited volumes, such as Best Practices in Leadership Development and Organization Change and Best Practices in Talent Management, brought together leading practitioners and scholars to document what actually works inside organizations.

Carter’s work combines social-organizational psychology, data science, and practical leadership application. Through Most Loved Workplace®, he helps companies measure employee sentiment, turn comments into action plans, and build reputations as places people would love to work. His methodologies are used by organizations ranging from fast-growing tech companies to large, global enterprises.

Over his career, he has advised CEOs, CHROs, and executive teams on culture, leadership, and reputation, and his ideas have appeared in major business and management outlets.

Publications

In Great Company: How to achieve peak performance by creating an emotionally connected workplace

McGraw Hill

Feb 2019

In Great Company presents a practical approach to ensure that your employees perform at their highest possible levels. It’s not about increasing salaries, offering huge bonuses, or investing in the latest employee engagement tools. The real answer is simpler, deeper, and longer-lasting: getting your people to love where they work. Founder and CEO of one of today’s top leadership development firms, Best Practices Institute, Louis Carter takes you step by step through the process of building a lasting emotional connection between your staff and your company. Carter’s proven strategy is founded on five key principles: collaboration, optimism, values, respect, and performance. Fuse them together, and your company will be the envy of your industry. This groundbreaking guide provides everything you need to create an environment where people have a strong sense of belonging—a place where people finally feel like they’re part of something big, where employees want to work collaboratively and creatively, where your staff and your company grow together. Bridge the engagement gap by ensuring that every member of your team spends their entire work day in great company.

The Change Champion's Fieldguide (2nd Edition): Strategies and Tools for Leading Change in Your Organization

John Wiley & Sons

Jul 2013

The Change Champion’s Fieldguide, described as a book that will, 'become one of the most quoted, referenced, and used business books in the first decade of the 2000's,' by Professor Vijay Govindarajan, of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, contains successful tools, instruments, case studies, and models from the best in the industry that you can immediately apply for initiating and leading change within your social or organizational system.

The Best of Best Practices

T&D Training and Development

Aug 2011

In today's uncertain economic climate, the ability to identify effective and actionable solutions to business challenges is more crucial than ever to the strategic management process. Best practice benchmarking providers can be invaluable to top-level decision makers who are presented with complex organizational puzzles and an overwhelming abundance of possible solutions. By using carefully refined analytical techniques, a wealth of management expertise, and the power of collaboration among dedicated business professionals, benchmarking organizations can help companies to make sense of the universe of potential strategic directions.

Top 5 Do’s and Don’ts of Talent Development

Training Magazine

Aug 2011

A company must have effective and capable leadership at every rung of the ladder to remain resilient, adaptable, and productive.

Best Practices in Talent Management: How the World's Leading Corporations Manage, Develop, and Retain Top Talent

Jossey Bass

Dec 2009

Comprehensive in scope, this book features more than 15 case studies and dozens of competency models, tools, instruments, and training material from the world's best global talent management systems and campaigns that show how they successfully implemented and maintained talent management programs. Each case study includes tools, templates, competency models, guidelines, and training materials that can easily transfer to the real-world work of HR professionals. In addition the book is written by leading-edge contributions from the top thinkers in the field.

Best Practices in Leadership Development and Organization Change

Jossey Bass

Dec 2004

This important book shares effective approaches, tools, and specific methods for leadership development and organizational change from successful organizations such as Agilent Technologies, Corning, GE Capital, Hewlett Packard, Honeywell Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, MIT, Motorola, and Praxair. These exemplary organizations serve as models for leadership development and organizational change by demonstrating commitment to objectives and culture, transforming behaviors and perceptions, implementing competency models, and exhibiting strong top management leadership support.

Best Practices in Leadership Development

John Wiley & Sons

Jan 2000

This book helps anyone charged with a leadership development initiative or learning about leadership development, offering practical examples and tools from companies renowned for developing leaders.

Leading the Global Workforce

Jossey Bass

Jan 1999