You’re trying to improve your company’s culture. How can you measure the impact of your change initiative?

A clear culture vision aligns with strategic goals and stakeholder expectations ??. It reflects core values and guides change initiatives, fostering alignment and unity across the organization. Communication and reinforcement ensure cultural coherence and drive organizational success.

Before measuring any aspect, it’s crucial to establish a distinct and inspiring vision for your desired culture. This vision must be in harmony with your strategic objectives, fundamental values, and the essence of your brand. Additionally, it should mirror the requirements and anticipations of all your stakeholders, such as your employees, customers, and partners. This envisioned culture should be actively shared and emphasized across your organization, acting as a beacon for your change initiative.

In order to Define the culture vision we need to Assess the current culture by using a variety of of tools such as Suveys ,Observation and Document Analysis. Then we need to Define the target culture and compare it to the current culture in order to identify the culture Gap. The culture GAP will be a main input while defining the culture Vision.

Organizational culture is about behaviour, habits and modus operandi, but it is based on human nature and in order to succeed in adapting and transforming organizations, we must quickly realize that we start with people and end with people. You need the right not the best culture. Being the sum of habits and behaviours, you should just think about how do you want people to act in your company, when you are not controlling them, and that should be your culture vision, basically!

In my experience culture is alive. Contributing to culture vision through change management initiative is a strategic decision. When this decision was made its because that company are listening to the signs. As change professionals we knows awareness and reinforcement is essential drivers of transformation, specially with communication movements, and so, the effective tactics requires to focus on this layers

Look at leadership, communication, taboos, power polls and link them to the behaviours and habits you want to see in your company. How should leadership be perceived, how do you want to communicate inside the organization. And just measure if the changes in directions you want to see actually happen.

In my experience, it's equally important to assess the processes that sustain existing work styles and behaviors. For example, fostering collaboration requires including objectives that can only be achieved through joint efforts. Similarly, prioritizing employee well-being necessitates refusing to accept routine overtime. Cultivating a more innovative culture means people who propose less-than-perfect ideas or make mistakes while experimenting with new approaches shouldn't be punished. I've seen companies often focusing solely on the desired behaviors - collaboration, innovation - without considering the environment and processes that would allow these behaviors to flourish.

Culture is such an ambigous concept, that in my opinion, it is never directly change- or measureable. Depending on what the goal is certain more specific criteria might pop out, as starting points as well as worthy indicators of change. Just changing a culture to "better" is no goal, as there's no better culture in general, except toxic cultures, but rather a good/bad fit for the tasks at hand, the environment & the people in it. Indicators can be how people communicate, how decisions are made, how conflicts are solved, how people describe their relationships at work, how people feel. Some of those indicators can theoretically be measured objectively, but as culture is what people experience measuring them subjectively is more meaningful.

Based on my experience, selecting the appropriate indicators is also critical to assessing the success of your change initiative. These indicators should be relevant, measurable, and actionable to provide insights that drive action. This results in a comprehensive assessment framework that includes inputs, outputs, outcomes, and impacts. Outputs, which identify deliverables and results, serve as concrete indications of progress. Meanwhile, outcomes, which are changes in attitudes and behaviors, indicate the initiative’s potential for transformation. Impacts, such as business performance with metrics such as revenue, changes in client populations, and rates of employee attrition, indicate the full extent of the initiative’s impact.

To measure the impact of a company culture change initiative: Employee Surveys: Gather morale, engagement, and satisfaction feedback. Retention Rates: Monitor changes in turnover. Engagement Scores: Track event participation and resource use. Feedback Mechanisms: Establish channels for ongoing input. Observational Data: Note behavior and interaction changes. Performance Metrics: Assess productivity and quality. Cultural Alignment: Evaluate alignment with desired values. Leadership Behavior: Assess leadership's cultural alignment. External Reputation: Monitor perceptions outside the company. Qualitative Feedback: Gather insights through interviews. These methods offer a thorough assessment of cultural change impact.

Culture is not good or bad, but appropriate or inappropriate in a given context, depending on the plans your organization has. We will not be able to define a good culture and implement it in every company in the world, the solution is to analyse and understand our own organizational culture and then make decisions based on this information and avoid surprises later in the implementation.