Assessing Organizational Culture
There’s a saying that goes: Culture eats strategy for breakfast. And that is spot on: you could concur on adjusting your strategy, your customer service or whatever, but if this intended change doesn’t align with the current organizational culture, you won’t get very far…
Organizational culture describes what you appreciate, the way you see things, your ideas and visions about work and so on and so: your doings. Because culture influences behavior so directly, it’s what makes the difference when it comes to results! Actually implementing change and boosting performance, begins in the brains of managers as well as people on the floor. It’s all about the culture they have in common. The trick is to let it operate for you instead of hinder change.
How would this be possible? If you have some reference you will know where you stand. For about any change process the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) is a very well-defined starting point. This method is now used by more than 10,000 organizations worldwide and is endorsed and developed by professors Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn.
The OCAI recognizes four culture types with competing values founded on the Competing Values Framework. Those are:
- Clan Culture, based on Cooperating
- Adhocracy Culture, based on Creating
- Market Culture, based on Competing
- Hierarchy Culture, based on Controlling
Though this classification may be minimal, it works very well. Participants assess 6 vital parts of their organization’s culture when completing the online survey. The result is a profile of the current culture, that is a mix of the 4 archetypes above.
Most of the time one of the culture types is dominant. For example, some people might have a dominant Adhocracy Culture, focusing on original products and services, being innovative and taking risks.
After the change has occurred, people assess their preferred culture for the future. It is highly interesting and helpful to compare these 2 profiles. There could be a large difference between the current and preferred circumstances, signifying that people are set for significant change and that they’re currently feeling unsatisfied about their working climate.
For instance, a number of colleagues have a open working climate, but they know they should focus more on results. So they agree to improve features of Market Culture and begin using factors of competition to get things done.
The principal step to lucrative, maintainable change is rating organizational culture. It tells you where your team or organization is currently and where they want to go. It is very informative to learn where executives and employees differ and differentiate various subgroups. That gives guiding principles on what to do next: how could you overcome resistance, what exactly do employees expect, how could executives make the change program better, etcetera.
Detailing your results in a workshop, takes you from the simple but clear four-typology to tailor made solutions for your organization. Working with every participants, you’ll be able to work out differences and truly get people to not only say YES to the change program, but act like YES and actually implement the new behavior. And that’s where change truly happens!
