Culture Change & Assessment

"Culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game.”

- Lou Gerstner, Former Chairman and CEO of IBM and

Author of Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?

By now, we all know that culture is a set of beliefs, values, and norms that create the unique character of an organization. As such, people’s actions (or in-actions) basically represent the personality of an organization and drive certain behaviors. Most importantly, these beliefs are typically derived by the leaders who impact the culture most--the members of the senior leadership team. However, the key questions for the senior leadership team are:

Are these the right behaviors being reinforced and rewarded to support the
organization’s market leadership strategy?
Is the senior management team aligned in their beliefs of what the “right” culture is?
How much or little must the culture shift to support the market leadership strategy?
Is the senior management team aligned with the next level down leaders?
To what extent are the senior leaders role-modeling the right cultural behaviors?
Is the senior management team out of touch with the obstacles to achieving the desired culture?

A Organization Culture Assessment: The Conflicting Values Framework

“Almost all successful companies have developed something special that supersedes corporate strategy, market presence, or technological advantages. They have found the power that resides in developing and managing a unique corporate culture.”

- Kim Cameron, University of Michigan Business School

A sample question from the short, six question assessment tool is below.
Raters are asked to distribute 100 points across each of the four questions.

We use Cameron & Quinn’s “Competing Values Framework” which is a model designed to diagnose cultural balance through a simple, six question assessment tool that is completed by the senior management team and their direct reports one level down in the organization. This process helps us examine the level of attunement between these two critical leadership groups. Since strategic alignment is so important, analyzing and resolving the values conflicts that exist on the senior leadership team (e.g. internal vs. external focus) and with the “next level down” is essential to achieve an integrated organizational strategy. At the highest level, this model captures the tension between two competing demands on two critical dimensions: internal versus external focus and flexibility/discretion versus stability/control. This is clearly a senior management decision.

In our strategic alliance with Management Central, Inc., we have the capability to assess these important questions by implementing Cameron & Quinn’s Cultural Balance Model with our clients. Management Central, Inc. also provides numerous consolidated and comparative analyses and graphs, broken down by functions, to examine the culture issues on an aggregated basis as well as comparatively by individual functional teams.

Please click on FLASH DEMO button to view Cameron & Quinn's "Competing Values Framework"

Flash Demo

As represented, this Senior Marketing Leadership team needs to shift the culture to more of an entrepreneurial, innovative and risk-taking environment to create a future pipeline of new products. However, the current culture is more focused on coordinating efficient processes and achieving short-term results. Therefore, the culture and behaviors required to create an entrepreneurial and innovative culture to create new products is trumped by the need for short-term success and bureaucratic policies that are clearly getting in their way of their market leadership strategy.

Who can fix this major conundrum? The Senior Management Team, as a real team! It cannot be addressed by one-off solutions or by one or two team members. In our experience, a cohesive, high trust, and interdependent senior management team can achieve the culture shift much more quickly and effectively as a united team. This exemplifies why reflecting the “reality” mirror to the senior leadership team is so important. It crystallizes the challenges they face as a leadership team by taking accountability for removing the barriers and obstacles to achieving their vision and realizing their market leadership strategy.

SAMPLE MARKETING PROJECT

Net Shift: Innovation/Risk-Taking Culture

Senior Marketing Leadership Team vs. Direct Reports (One Level Down)

In the end, understanding the culture as it is now, versus what it should be, is essential before attempting to resolve business challenges, employee engagement gaps, productivity declines, or lack of team effectiveness and trust throughout the organization. Equally as important, as market demands change, new competitors comes into the market, mergers and acquisitions take place, and change initiatives become imperative, without a concrete understanding of the culture as it is today, and how it needs to shift, any substantial change effort will be much more difficult, if not impossible.

New Team Leaders

We also recommend implementing this model for executives taking over a new function or role. It enables him/her to quickly grasp the “cultural” issues getting in the way of their new team’s engagement, productivity and/or morale.