Assessing Company Culture

This article explores the following questions:

1.              How to assess your organization's culture

2.              How to measure organizational culture

3.              What indicators to monitor the corporate culture

Before transforming a culture, it is often enough to start by observing it.
An essential principle to remember: a system changes as soon as it looks at itself. When team members take the time to observe how they work, communicate, and be together, the simple act of being aware of what's going on already triggers a transformative movement.

Naming what works or what blocks is not a cold diagnosis: it is the first act that makes the collective evolve.

10 questions

Talk as a team about "what is the culture of your team or your organization"?

1.              What do we really value here?

2.              What do we tolerate... even if it's embarrassing?

3.              How are decisions actually made?

4.              How do we react to mistakes?

5.              How do we talk (or not) about tensions?

6.              What emotions dominate on a daily basis?

7.              What is the difference between the official discourse and real life?

8.              How are new ideas received?

9.              What stories are told about the company?

10.           How do newcomers feel when they arrive?

If you wish to go further, I provide a complete cultural assessment questionnaire: https://fr.surveymonkey.com/r/XZK3YB5

This questionnaire is designed to help you analyze the dynamics of your organization in more detail. It explores lived values, key behaviours, decision-making modes, collective rituals and factors that promote — or hinder — performance.

For an even more precise questionnaire, entirely adapted to your context or your team, I invite you to contact me.

I also offer a personalized debriefing to transform your results into concrete courses of action.

A 30-minute exchange can already bring a lot of clarity and open up new options.

Cultural audit (advised in the context of M&A)

Cultural due diligence or cultural audit is necessary in some cases. It is a key tool in major transformation projects, such as mergers and acquisitions. In this case, the audit makes it possible to assess the compatibility of organizational cultures and to anticipate integration risks.

Its objective is to identify divergences, areas of tension and levers of convergence as early as possible, because cultural misalignment is among the main causes of the failure of strategic initiatives.

 The approach includes defining objectives adapted to the context of the transaction, collecting information (company data and questionnaires), and then analyzing these materials to identify trends and risks.

Conducting safe space discussions with employees at different levels helps learn which behaviors are most affected by the current culture, either positively or negatively

The audit concludes with a report with recommendations and is extended after the transaction through regular monitoring (surveys, feedback) to secure the integration.

Contact me for a method adapted to your organization and your project

Always remain pragmatic

Qualitative approaches capture the more subtle and implicit aspects of culture

For example, one method is to observe current behaviors and compare them to desired behaviors to achieve strategic goals. In some cases, this is to focus on a few key behavioral changes rather than attempting a complete overhaul

Linking to performance indicators

Finally, the measurement of culture must be linked to concrete results. It is essential to positively correlate four main areas:

1. Business performance : Improving key performance indicators (KPIs), such as sales or customer satisfaction.

2. Critical behaviors : The adoption of the desired new behaviors at several levels of the organization.

3. Milestones : Achievement of specific transformational objectives, such as the successful implementation of a new policy.

4. Underlying mindsets : Tracking changing attitudes via employee survey results, although this is often the last metric to change.

Culture measurement is a dynamic process that combines quantitative tools for structured diagnosis, surveys to probe perceptions, qualitative analysis to understand behavioral nuances, and constant monitoring of performance indicators to validate the impact of changes.

In conclusion: no decor, no extra soul

Culture is therefore not a nice "sideline", an extra soul that is evoked in HR seminars.

Because if a culture that is not taken into account can destroy value, an integrated and aligned culture can become a formidable lever for cohesion, innovation and performance.

So the real question is not whether culture is important, but how to decide "  how to choose to work with culture in your projects."