There is a saying that goes like this: Culture eats strategy for breakfast. And that’s right: you could concur on altering your strategy, your customer service or whatever, but if this planned change doesn’t line up with the current organizational culture, you won’t get far…
Organizational culture names what a team appreciates, the way they view things, their collective assumptions and opinions about work and so on and hence: their doings. When you look at results, organizational culture makes the difference because it has such a great effect on behavior. Organizational culture is in the brains of executives and people on the floor where implementing change and boosting performance starts. It’s all about shared culture. The trick is to let it work for you instead of hamper change.
What could make this happen? If you have some reference you will know where you stand. The OCAI which stands for Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument, has proven to be a well-defined starting point for nearly any organizational culture change process. This tool is endorsed and built on by professors Cameron and Quinn and is now used by over 10,000 organizations across the world.
Four types or organizational culture
The OCAI recognizes four types or organizational culture with competing values founded on the Competing Values Framework. Those are:
* Clan Culture, based on Cooperating
* Adhocracy Culture, based on Creating
* Market Culture, based on Competing
* Hierarchy Culture, based on Controlling
Participants assess 6 vital parts of their organization’s culture when ending the online survey. The outcome is a outline of the current organizational culture, that’s a mix of the four archetypes above.
Most of the time one of the culture types is predominant. For instance, some people might have a dominant Adhocracy Culture, centering on original products and services, being innovative and taking risks.
After the change has occurred, people measure their preferred organizational culture for the future. It’s highly interesting and helpful to compare these 2 profiles. There could be a large gap between the current and preferred circumstances, revealing that people are ready for real change and that they’re currently feeling unsatisfied about their working climate.
For instance, some colleagues have a nice working climate, but they know they should focus more on results. So they agree to enhance features of Market Culture and commence using parts of competition to get things done.
Rating organizational culture is the initial step to thriving, maintainable change. It’ll tell you where your team or organization is currently and where they want to go. It’s very informative to recognize different subgroups and determine where for instance executives and employees differ. That gives guidelines on what to do next: what exactly do employees expect, how could executives make the change program better, how could you overcome resistance, etcetera.
Detailing your results in a workshop, takes you from the plain but well-defined four-typology to tailor made solutions for your organization. Working with every members, you’ll be able to work out differences and truly get people to not only say YES to the organizational culture change program, but act like YES and truly enforce the new behavior. And there change really comes to pass!
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