Organizational Culture Change – 6 Advantages to Improve Performance

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there! What the rabbit told Alice is also true when she is reversed. If you don’t know where you are now, you will never get to 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 course. Being precisely here, what would be the most effective way to achieve that future?

So, with your goals in place and gearing up for change, spend 15 minutes assessing your organizational culture. Because? 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 for 20% efforts that drive 80% results, and take your current organizational culture consider. Know the current potential and possible resistance right here, right now, at his feet. Knowing is dealing with it. Overcome resistance and mobilize the potential of your organization. It is a powerful starting point for successful change. Leave not before you have done this!

Are you ready? Just follow me!

Fifteen minutes will be enough for managers and staff to quickly, easily and reliably assess their organizational culture. The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) is developed by Professors Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn and is a validated research method. No wonder OCAI is currently used by more than 10,000 companies around the world. How is it that this instrument has been around for so little time and is still valid?

The Competing Values ​​Framework

Cameron & Quinn learned from the statistical analysis that out of a list of thirty-nine indicators of effectiveness for organizations, only two dimensions made a difference. So 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 left two 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 focus externally on: What is important to the market, competitors, and customers? The upper quadrants want flexibility, while the lower organizations value stability and control.

In summary, the four archetypes of culture are:

1. Clan Culture: A friendly, people-oriented work environment where colleagues have a lot in common, similar to a family. They value teamwork and consensus. Executives are seen as mentors or father figures. There is a big implication. Success is defined as meeting 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 goal-focused. Leaders are hard drives, producers, and rivals all at the same time. Market penetration and actions are the definitions of success.

4. Hierarchy Culture: A formalized and structured work environment. The procedures are leading. Leaders are efficiency-based coordinators. Keeping the organization running smoothly is most crucial. Reliable delivery, smooth planning, and low costs define success.

Of course, these descriptions are a bit short and therefore monochrome. They are only meant to give you a quick overview of the four types. You can consult a more extensive and nuanced explanation of the ICAO.

Six key features

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

• dominant characteristics

• organizational leadership

• employee management

• organizing glue

• strategic emphasis

• success criteria

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

Just like in reality, you don’t need to choose just one type of culture. The reality is ambivalent and so is the organizational culture. The competing values ​​framework states that corresponding organizational values ​​and 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, sometimes leading to contradictory behavior. Research shows that there is no single “best” type of culture. The best mix of culture types 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, for example, a people-oriented clan culture and a 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 pave 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 the preferred future in mind. You divide 100 points while imagining that in five years the desired situation has come true.

The result!

Now you know where you stand and where you want to go! In just 15 minutes, an entire team or organization can assess their 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, an online automated OCAI tool is available that is free for individual participants and very reasonably priced for teams and organizations.

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

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 cultural profile provides a lot of quantified information:

1. The dominant culture and its strength

2. The difference between the current culture and the preferred one.

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 points more to a people-oriented clan culture. The difference between the current and preferred profiles indicates your organization’s willingness to change (or its current discontent) and gives an idea of ​​what type 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 inconsistency means that there are inconsistencies that can consume a lot of time, energy, etc.

ad 4 and 5: It is interesting to compare your cultural profile with 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 tuning

Once you have this quantized image, you can color it and detail it with some qualitative information. Instead of doing interviews through the organization, as some consultants tend to do, you could simply settle for an OCAI workshop. Interviews are not only labor intensive, but also produce a lot of information that is difficult to standardize or combine into a meaningful whole. Working with your results in an OCAI workshop is adding qualitative information, refining your profile, understanding it better and working in consensus on the current and preferred situation. When this is achieved, it mobilizes people’s readiness for change. That’s a lot of potential to work with. It’s 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 change program effectively with the OCAI workshops.

6 benefits for performance

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

As a consultant guiding organizational change, I was enthusiastic about using the Organizational Culture Assessment Tool. A success discriminator once considered “vague” and unwieldy became easy to understand and even use, mobilizing employees beyond their “normal” resistance to change.

The OCAI has 6 advantages that help organizations improve performance:

1. It is focused: It measures the six key dimensions that made a difference in organizational success.

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

3. It is to involve: either by including all the staff or those who give direction and guide the change.

4. It is quantitative: based on figures, completed with qualitative information by working with the results to establish the desired changes.

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

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

So if you’re planning a roadmap for change, spend 15 minutes at your current position. Any traveler can realize the great advantage they gain by taking the best possible path, avoiding obstacles and achieving the future they want. Use these 6 advantages of OCAI and improve organizational performance.