As we all know, company culture is currently a hot topic and there’s widespread agreement from CEOs and Boards (92%) that investing in culture has improved their organisation’s financial performance*.
Over the years, I’ve worked with a lot of companies on their culture transformation programmes and the one thing that they all had in common was the frustration felt at not being able to accurately measure success along the way. In a lot of cases complex measurements were put in place, albeit with the best intent, but which fell far short in accuracy and caused a lot of discontent and conflict internally.
There were several reasons why I was attracted to becoming a Barrett Culture Transformation Tools Practitioner recently. Not only do I value Richard Barrett’s core model, the Seven Levels of Consciousness Model, is cleverly mapped to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and was developed to give a better understanding into people’s motivations, but the quick-to-complete Culture Values Assessment delivers an insightful report that subsequently acts as a benchmark to measure against – in my opinion the Holy Grail!
What’s also powerful is the fact that this Cultural Values Assessment is completed by colleagues across the organisation. Not only do colleagues therefore feel involved and respected, but they are the ones that know the company inside out, where it currently stands from a culture perspective - warts and all - and what they feel it would take for it to become a high performing entity. For those at the top of the tree who don’t necessarily have a finger on the pulse of internal organisational sentiment, this gives invaluable understanding and something concrete to act and focus on.
Organisations don’t transform, people do. The annual culture assessment allows companies to determine the personal needs of their colleagues and monitor the extent to which they feel aligned with the culture (values) and the extent in which they feel on track (vision alignment). Together with the level of Cultural Entropy (dysfunction and limiting core values) and Health, these indicators enable the company to assess the level of colleague engagement and the relevant levers that need to be pulled in direct response to the employee feedback.
At a time when company culture is so crucial to bottom line success, the Culture Capitaliser Phase 1 and 2 approach I’ve created can hugely move the dial. The high level outline of the programme you’ll see on my website and can be tailored, but the model and assessment report bring a much more robust framework to follow. Do get in touch if you want to find out more or take a look at my website here.
*Culture and Boards at a glance (Ernst & Young 2016)