When is culture assessment important?

Several trigger points indicate the need for an organizational culture assessment:

When one of these three conditions is true, it is essential to signal to people that leaders REALIZE the culture needs attention, and are willing to work on it.  That is what a culture assessment does.

In an era of accelerating change, managing company culture as a business process is how you create a unifying, stabilizing force for people, while building habits to adapt and evolve to change more naturally, easily, and quickly.

When Culture Matters

Culture is defined as the collective habits and behaviors among teams and people that enables – or hinders – achievement of the strategy and goals.

Change in business is failing at very high rates – upwards of 75%.  This happens because companies are unconsciously leading with outdated management habits from an era when stability and predictability were the landscape (ie, the industrial era).

Now, we are in the Information Age – business evolves more quickly. It is also more complex – a service and technology economy requires people to think, act and work together in collaborative ways that do not fit command-and-control structures.

Yet, most companies are still using management systems akin to driving a horse-and-buggy on today’s super-highways.

Let’s examine this process more in-depth …

Habits in a workplace are usually molded – consciously or unconsciously – from the founding leaders’ vision and values. (Similar to how your family works).

Then BAM! Change happens.  (which is accelerating in most industries). If you never revisit outdated habits that served us in an era, you will see performance slide as an inverse relationship to growth.  But since habits are largely unconscious, and adopted from our role models, the evolution of new management practices is NOT automatic.

In a family system, leaving culture to chance, is akin to parenting teenagers the same way you did when they were toddlers: A recipe for conflict and chaos.

In an organization, when everyone could sit in a room and talk together, understood the hierarchy, or knew their roles inside/out, change was easier.  With rapid growth, a series of mergers, a new CEO – there is a growing feeling of chaos, confusion, and lack of control.  That is what leads to “resistance” to change.

Culture assessment during such a time, helps take that first important step in evolving your management habits beyond the horse-and-buggy era!  You can receive a FREE culture self-assessment in the Culture Toolkit Sampler on my website.

Culture assessment is also an important method to understanding what the obstacles and “change climate” are on the front lines of your organization.

Culture assessment helps you identify the proper success factors, prior to rolling out a big change.

To get our free self-assessment, sign up on our mailing list (see right column of this blog) and receive it in our free Culture Builder Sampler.

To schedule a consultation with Lisa Jackson regarding cultural assessment, please contact lisa@corporateculturepros.com

Reality Culture Channel:  Watch in March for my Culture Video Tips: Brief, lively and (usually) entertaining short tips on culture building from Yours Truly, Lisa Jackson.

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