Do You Understand Your Organization's Culture?

Many organizations have a culture that they can’t easily define. They know it when they see it, but they also know that they don’t have a clear idea of what the culture is and why it matters to them.

According to Deloitte, fewer than one in three executives (28%) report that they understand their organization’s culture. They know culture is important, but don’t understand it.

The good news is that culture isn’t something you can just “figure out.” It takes time and effort to get to know your organization and its people, and then even more time and effort to improve upon what you learn about them.

So how do you go about understanding your organization? The first step is by asking questions like:

What does success look like here? What are we trying to achieve? How do we measure our success? What does failure look like here? What could we not tolerate if someone were not working well with us or with our customers? How would we describe our values? What do we value most? How do those values translate into behavior on a day-to-day basis?

Then depending who in your organization you ask these types of questions to, will depend on the answers you receive. The bottom line is, trying to understand the culture of a large group of people is really hard and really important. It’s hard because the more people that are involved, the more likely it is that there will be differences in how they think about things. It’s important because if you don’t understand the culture of your organization, then you won’t have any idea what success looks like there or what it takes to achieve it.

A lot of companies use surveys to attempt to measure the culture within their organization but these are almost always forced upon people, are slow and not very accurate. You have probably heard the phrase of 'gaming it', and that's precisely what people do with surveys. They give their manager what he or she wants to hear and not necessarily their true feelings.

This is why it is so important to understand what culture is and how it impacts your organization. It’s not just a buzzword, it's a way of thinking, behaving and feeling that goes beyond traditional surveys or even focus groups. It has to do with the way people interact with one another and how they view their work environment.

Embrace technology to assist with measuring and improving your culture. A scalable, organic, accurate and fun way to measure culture is with POSITIVO and according to Michael Servos, the CEO at EXAPT "Listen Léon fits perfectly with our EXAPT values of family cohesion and individual responsibility."

If you are unable to measure your culture accurately, how are you expected to take action to fix it? How can you possibly know if the changes you made were effective if there was no way of measuring them in the first place?

The answer is simple: You cannot measure what doesn’t exist. If your organization lacks a culture-centric approach or even worse, doesn’t know they have one; then there is no point in trying to improve it.

What if you could measure and improve your culture? What would that look like? That’s exactly what EXAPT and many others have done, and it’s made a huge difference. POSITIVO are helping some of the worlds largest companies to move forward in their efforts to build a more cohesive organization.

They’ve taken the first steps towards creating a culture that is built on trust and alignment. With these foundations in place, they can start to build a world-class organization that achieves its goals every day.

This is a big change for many companies, and it can be scary. But the truth is that it doesn’t have to be. You don’t need to know everything about culture or how it works. The important thing is that you are able to embrace change for the benefit of your people.

You don’t need to be afraid of culture change. It doesn’t have to be hard or time consuming, and it can certainly be fun! If you take the time to understand what it is that your company needs from a cultural perspective, then you will be better positioned to create an environment where people are engaged and happy.

Reach out to me today to discuss how we can help with measuring and improving your culture.