Culture is intangible but powerful; culture is invisible but touchable.
In order to improve and optimize organizational
culture, first of all, the companies need to know how to assess their
organizational culture objectively and systematically.
Identify the specific
attributes of organizational culture. You will have to identify what
are the specific attributes of an Organization Culture and which ones you are
interested to assess. So the first question is "what do you want to know?”. Any cultural assessment starts on a premise that there is a particular angle on the organization’s culture which is important. With that in mind, you decide HOW to do it, which might or might not be using, what you are asking here as the BEST Organizational Culture Assessment.
Identify the culture gaps between ‘as is’ and ‘to be’ state. Say, an organization wants to be
more people-centric which is driven by the data from a recent pulse survey, a
profile of the perceived as-is culture shows what people perceive the present
profile to be across the following elements - overall profile, organizational
characteristics, organizational leadership, management of employees,
Organizational Glue, Strategic Emphasis, Criteria of Success. Obviously the
perception is not absolute but a relative perception of how people see the
culture (perception is reality). An as-is profile is created; a future profile
is also developed and discussed. The
gaps between the as-is state and future "help" leaders with what is
perceived to be needed in order to achieve that future state - a road map of
change is then developed.
Three dimensions of cultural perspectives: Multi-dimensional business values, behaviors and underlying assumptions. Some instruments assess culture from a Values
perspective. Others assess culture by behaviors. Most of the culture experts
believe there is no instrument that could possibly assess culture as it is too
complex and overly focuses on the underlying assumptions which are a deeper
level of understanding. Some cultural instruments are in fact measuring climate
rather than culture. In the end, it comes down to which perspective you wish to
take - Values, Behaviors or Underlying Assumptions. There’re few instruments
that cover all three and hence why qualitative data is so important to pick up
the richness and the 'invisible' aspects of culture, underlying assumptions and
unwritten rules
Do employee surveys
for their feedback about ideal cultures. What the assessment measures are
the underlying motivational drivers -- whether an individual or collective
organizational level -- that drives one's focus, mental map, decision-making
style, relationship to norms, time and change, etc. Together these patterns
ultimately drive behavior, actions, and performance. One part of the
assessment is to get employees to identify what the ideal culture would look
like and the instrument captures the current culture. It breaks down all cultures
into constructive, passive-aggressive and passive defensive and assigns
behaviors to each of these categories, a problem statement usually drives the
process to profile and diagnosing the perceived as-is organization culture
and helps with developing a future profile, then the prescriptive solutions can
better fix the different matters more effectively.
A culture assessment is
tough, but it may be worth the effort. As strong, adaptive cultures tend to nurture
higher business performers, compared to those with weak or non-adaptive
cultures. But the qualities that make up those cultures are unique and specific
to each of those organizations. So statistical validity, high correlations,
rigorous design, etc. are all very important for selecting an assessment.
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