Organizational culture change: 6 advantages to improve performance

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there! What the rabbit told Alice is also true when reversed. If you don’t know where you are now, you will never get where you want to be.

This is what happens to some managers and organizations. They are working to achieve goals and improve performance. But 80% of your efforts generate 20% results or even less. That’s not because your goals aren’t set correctly. They are. The only thing missing is a precise heading. Standing right here, what would be the most effective way to achieve that future?

So, with your goals set and preparing for change, take 15 minutes to assess your organizational culture. Why? Because culture is found to make a difference. That is why up to 70% of organizational culture change programs fail. Wouldn’t it be great to avoid that? Make your change efforts more effective, aiming to achieve 20% efforts that generate 80% results, and take your organizational culture consider. Learn about current potential and potential endurance right here, right at your feet. Knowing it is dealing with it. Overcome resistance and mobilize your organization’s potential. It is a powerful starting point for successful change. Leave as soon as you have done this!

Are you ready? Just follow me!

Fifteen minutes will be enough for managers and staff to assess their organizational culture quickly, easily and reliably. The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) is developed by Professors Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn and is a validated research method. It is not surprising that the OCAI is currently used by more than 10,000 companies around the world. How is it possible that this instrument takes such a short time and is still valid?

The competing values ​​framework

Cameron & Quinn learned from statistical analysis that out of a list of thirty-nine indicators of effectiveness for organizations, only two dimensions made a difference. Then four quadrants were built, corresponding to four types of organizational culture that differ strongly in these two dimensions:

• Internal focus and integration VS External focus and differentiation

• Stability and control VS Flexibility and discretion

Organizations in the two left quadrants are internally focused, such as: What is important to us and how do we want to work? The two quadrants on the right consist of organizations that externally focus on: What is important to the market, competitors, and customers? The upper quadrants want flexibility, while in the lower quadrants organizations value stability and control.

In summary, the four archetypes of culture are:

1. Clan culture: a friendly and people-oriented work environment where colleagues have a lot in common, similar to a family. They value teamwork and consensus. Executives are viewed as mentors or father figures. There is a great implication. Success is defined as addressing customer needs and caring for people.

2. Adhocracy Culture: A dynamic and creative work environment. Employees take initiatives and risks. Leaders are seen as innovators. Experiments, innovation and prominence are emphasized. Success is growth and the creation of new products or services.

3. Market culture: a results-based organization that emphasizes getting the job done and getting things done. People are competitive and focus on goals. Leaders are tough drivers, producers, and rivals at the same time. Market penetration and stocks are the definitions of success.

4. Hierarchy culture: A formalized and structured work environment. Procedures are leading. Leaders are coordinators based on efficiency. Keeping the organization running smoothly is of the utmost importance. Reliable delivery, smooth planning, and low costs define success.

Of course, these descriptions are a bit short and therefore monochromatic. They are only intended to give you a quick overview of all four types. You can consult a more extensive and nuanced explanation about the OCAI.

Six key features

To find your organization’s core values, and therefore the dominant culture type, you need to complete a short survey. Just evaluate the following six characteristics of organizational culture:

• key features

• organizational leadership

• employee management

• organism glue

• strategic emphasis

• success criteria

The organizational culture assessment shows four statements for each of the key culture characteristics mentioned above. By dividing 100 points between these four descriptions, you will get a weighted assessment of the current mix of cultures.

As in reality, it is not necessary to choose only one type of culture. The reality is ambivalent and so is the organizational culture. The Competing Values ​​Framework states that values ​​and corresponding organizational cultures compete with each other. Organizations can spend their money, attention, and time only once, so they tend to emphasize certain values. Quinn and Cameron found that flexible organizations are the most effective, which sometimes leads to contradictory behaviors. Research shows that there is no single “best” type of culture. The best mix of types of cultures depends on the situation. In a saturated market, for example, you might thrive on a competitive market culture, while this culture would produce opposite effects in a start-up that thrives on innovation, creativity, and serving new developing markets.

You can find your unique cultural mix of eg people-oriented clan culture and results-oriented market culture. By knowing your specific combination of internal focus and flexibility (clan culture) versus external focus and stability (market culture), you can prepare a successful path to the preferred situation.

In the evaluation you also define the preferred situation. Just rate the six key aspects of organizational culture again, but this time keep your preferred future in mind. You divide 100 points while imagining that five years from now and the desired situation has come true.

The result!

Now you know where you are and where you want to go! In just 15 minutes, an entire team or organization can assess its starting point and goal.

Before there was an automated version of the OCAI, it was a lot of work to calculate the profiles by hand. Today, there is an automated online OCAI tool available that is free for individual participants and very reasonably priced for teams and organizations.

With this online tool, each participant receives their personal profiles of current and preferred culture by email. A team of participants can discuss their personal profiles and create a joint profile as the basis for their change program.

In the case of large corporations with a large number of participants, it is possible to work with the collective profile, built by averaging all the individual results. This provides a clear and quantified starting point for change.

A culture profile provides a lot of quantified information:

1. The dominant culture and its strength

2. The difference between current and preferred culture

3. The congruence of the six characteristics

4. Comparison with the average of the sector or industrial group

5. The development phase of the organization.

Ad 1: Imagine you have a very dominant market culture (48 out of 100 points) – This indicates that people experience a culture of competition and getting things done.

Ad 2: For example, you see that employees would prefer 10 more points of a people-oriented clan culture. The difference between current and preferred profiles indicates your organization’s willingness to change (or its current discontent) and gives an impression of what kind of change or approach would be motivating.

Ad 3: Congruence means that the 6 key characteristics of the culture align, so that they all emphasize, for example, the market culture. In general, this works without a problem, while incongruity means that there are inconsistencies that can take a lot of time, energy, etc.

Announcements 4 and 5: It is interesting to compare your cultural profile with that of your economic sector and see how mature your organization is. Cultures evolve over time from extreme flexibility to greater stability and external orientation.

Qualitative fine adjustment

Once you have this quantized image, you can color it and detail it with qualitative information. Instead of doing interviews across the organization, as some consultants often do, you could simply settle for an OCAI workshop. Not only are interviews a lot of work, but they also produce a large amount of information that is difficult to standardize or combine into a meaningful whole. Working with your results in an OCAI workshop is to add qualitative information, refine your profile, understand it better, and work on a consensus on the current and preferred situation. When this is accomplished, it mobilizes people’s willingness to change. That is a lot of potential to work with. It is a great energy to start a change, I can tell from experience.

In my next article I will tell you how you can work with your results and start your program of change effectively with the OCAI workshops.

6 performance benefits

In conclusion, diagnosing and changing organizational culture can pay off if done correctly. Do not neglect culture, as it is a very important factor. Let culture work for you and improve performance.

As a consultant guiding organizational change, I was excited about using the Organizational Culture Assessment Tool. A discriminatory factor for success that was previously considered “vague” and unmanageable, has been made easy to understand and even use, mobilizing employees beyond their “normal” resistance to change.

OCAI has 6 advantages that help organizations improve performance:

1. It’s Focused – Measures the six key dimensions found to make a difference in organizational success.

2. It is timely: both the evaluation and the development of a change strategy can be accomplished in a reasonable period of time.

3. It involves: either by including all staff or those who provide direction and guide change.

4. It is quantitative: based on figures, supplemented with qualitative information as you work with the results to establish the desired changes.

5. It is manageable: it can be implemented by a team (managerial); external consultants are not necessarily necessary.

6. It is valid: the OCAI is validated and people recognize its results.

So if you are planning a roadmap to change, spend 15 minutes on your current position. Any traveler can see the great advantage they get from taking the best possible path, avoiding obstacles, and reaching their preferred future.