Culture Index

Nagan Research Group LLC

Culture Index

Culture is rather like the weather, it has a major impact on our lives, everybody talks about it, but nothing much is done about it. That is about to change, at least regarding culture. The following will provide an overview of our approach to measure and manage the culture within an organization.

To begin let us put forward a definition of culture:

Culture’ - the set of core values that are held in common across the organization.

Several points:

· An effective culture cannot consist of an extensive laundry list. Practically the beliefs should be 10 or less with the fewer the better and be accepted across the organization.

· Some examples of values are:

· Value individuals and their contributions

· Allow open communication and criticism (Never shoot the messenger)

· Respond to root causes

· Learn from every experience: Improve every day

· To be effectively managed the culture needs to be measured.

‘Artifacts’ of management are not culture. As an example neither top down management nor independent silos represent culture. Other examples of artifacts are: matrix management, mentoring, "Artifacts" is the term introduced by the eminent M.I.T. social psychologist Edgar H. Schein in his landmark writings on organizational culture and leadership.(to learn more about Schein click here) These are the core business activities, management processes, and philosophies that characterize how a company does business on a day-to-day basis. Artifacts can be considered the "things" that are done in the cultural characterization, "how we do things around here." They are a combination of factors common to all organizations and unique to your specific organization.

The Culture Index provides a simple and effective way to measure where an organization stands regarding their own culture. For the index we chose two measures:

Culture Management – How your organization manages culture within your organization. At one end of the spectrum are organizations that ignore their internal culture and have no idea of what it is, nor how to measure and manage it. At the other end of the spectrum are organizations that measure and manage their culture.

Culture Alignment – How well the culture within your organization is aligned with your goals and objectives. Is it supportive and does it provide feedback and guidance to your staff? At one end of the spectrum are organizations that have no idea of their culture let alone if it is aligned with their objectives, at the other end are those who have made sure that their culture is aligned with their objectives.

For ease of understanding we have created a scale of 0-10 for each measure. This allows us to create the chart below which provides an easy way to categorize an organization and provide key actions each should take to improve their situation. An organization should want to be as far to the upper right as possible. Upper right good, lower left bad.

Using the mid point of each scale we can to create four quadrants as follows:

Adrift – These are the organizations that are adrift. They have no idea what their culture is meaning that in all likelihood there are multiple conflicting cultures within their organization. Nor do they try to measure or manage it in any significant fashion. They are adrift subject to all kinds of influences and effects. In all likelihood they are poor performers as their chaotic cultural environment likely leads to groups acting at cross purposes.

Un-Aligned – These are organizations that are trying to measure and manage their culture but have not made much, if any, of an attempt to align their culture with their organizations objectives. This organization can suffer from a lack of achieving its larger objectives since their culture is not aligned with their objectives.

Laissez-Faire – These organizations, generally small, have a culture that is aligned with their organizations objectives, likely because they are a small homogenous group with shared values, but make no effort to measure or manage it. If they do nothing as they grow the culture will likely fragment and they will slide into the ‘Adrift’ quadrant. Growth is their enemy.

Pros - These organizations measure and manage their culture and work at seeing that it is aligned with their objectives. They realize it requires continual attention or they risk drifting into one of the other quadrants with all the attendant problems.

Want to learn how your organization stacks up? Click here to send us an email and we will send you a link to our Culture Index survey. There is no cost for an introductory assessment.