A lot of change programs within organizations and teams just go under. There’s a saying that goes like this: Culture eats strategy for breakfast. And you could agree on adjusting your strategy or your customer service, but if this change does not align with the current organizational culture, you will not be successful…
Organizational culture characterizes what you value, the way you comprehend things, your assumptions and convictions about work and so on and so: your behavior. When you look at results, organizational culture makes the difference because it has such a capital impact on behavior. It is in the minds of managers and employees where realizing change and boosting performance begins. It has everything to do with the culture that they have in common. Let it operate for you instead of hamper change.
How would that be doable? 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 nearly any change process. This method is currently used by more than 10,000 organizations worldwide and is formalized and developed by professors Kim Cameron & Robert Quinn.
Looking at the Competing Values Framework there are 4 culture types with competing values the OCAI distinguishes. These are:
- Hierarchy Culture, based on Controlling
- Clan Culture, based on Cooperating
- Adhocracy Culture, based on Creating
- Market Culture, based on Competing
Though this typology may be uncomplicated, it works hugely well. When finalizing the online survey, test takers value six essential parts of their organization’s culture. The outcome is a outline of the current culture, that is a mix of the four archetypes above.
Typically one of the culture types is dominant. For instance, some people have a dominant Adhocracy Culture, focusing on original products and services, being innovative and taking risks.
People rate their preferred culture for the future, after the change has occurred. It is really interesting and useful to compare these 2 profiles. There could be a large gap between the current and preferred state, denoting that people are prepared for significant change and that they’re currently feeling unsatisfied about their working climate.
For example, a number of colleagues have a warm working climate, but they know they should concentrate more on results. So they agree to enhance features of Market Culture and start using pieces of competition to get things done.
Assessing organizational culture is the principal step to booming, sustainable change. It tells you where your team or organization is right now and where they want to go. It’s very instructive to discover numerous subgroups and understand where for instance executives and employees differ. That gives methods 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.
Specifying your results in a workshop, takes you from the straight forward but clear-cut four-typology to tailor made solutions for your organization. Working with all participants, you’ll 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 enforce the new behavior. And that’s where change actually happens!