One could state that Culture eats strategy for breakfast. And you could agree on adjusting your strategy or your customer service, but if this change does not line up with the current organizational culture, you will not be successful…
Organizational culture describes what a team appreciates, the way they view things, their collective assumptions and visions about work and so on and so: their behavior. When it comes down to results, organizational culture makes the difference because it influences behavior so strongly. Actually implementing change and enhancing performance, starts in the minds of managers and employees. It has everything to do with shared culture. The trick is to let it work for you and not strangle change.
What could make that happen? You don’t know where you stand unless you have some reference. The OCAI which stands for Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument, has proven to be a clear starting point for almost any change process. This tool is currently applied by over 10,000 organizations globally and is validated and extended by professors Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn.
Built on the Competing Values Framework, the OCAI distinguishes 4 culture types with competing values. Those are:
- Hierarchy Culture, based on Controlling
- Clan Culture, based on Cooperating
- Adhocracy Culture, based on Creating
- Market Culture, based on Competing
Participants assess 6 vital characteristics of their organization’s culture when finishing the online survey. The outcome is a outline of the current culture, that’s a combination of the four archetypes above.
Frequently one of the culture types is prevalent. For example, some people have a predominant Adhocracy Culture, centering on new products and services, being innovative and taking risks.
After the change has occurred, people rate their preferred culture for the future. It’s highly interesting and helpful to compare these two profiles. In case of a big difference between the current and preferred situation, people might be set for significant change or are not feeling satisfied about their current working climate.
The initial step to profitable, sustainable change is measuring organizational culture. It tells you where your team or organization is currently and where they want to go. It’s very informative to differentiate distinctive subgroups and learn where for instance executives and employees differ. That gives approaches on what to do next: how could executives make the change program better, how could you overcome resistance, what exactly do employees expect, and so on and so forth.
To go from the minimal but clear four-typology to tailor made solutions for your organization you can work out your results in a workshop. Working with all members, you will be able to work out differences and genuinely get people to not only say YES to the change program, but act like YES and truly apply the new behavior. And that is where change actually occurs!