The reason why most new initiatives or programs don’t work is because they fail to change culture or are not aligned with it. Culture must be appropriately balanced, and in alignment with the strategy. Knowing the shape of the culture as it is, versus what it should be, is essential before attempting to resolve problems of employee engagement, leader behaviors, or team effectiveness.
The Conflicting Values Model
To assess culture, we use Cameron & Quinn’s Organization Culture Assessment instrument, as introduced in their book, Diagnosing and Changing Organization Culture(Addison Wesley, 1999). It is based on the Competing Values Framework that defines culture as the way organizations resolve the tension between flexibility and control on the one hand, and internal versus external focus on the other. The instrument consists of only six questions, where leaders distribute 100 points among 4 choices each, for the culture as it is today, versus how it should be. The instrument and the analytics are illustrated in Flash Demos.
The value of the assessment is as much in the variance of responses among the leaders as the average result, which will graphically illustrate the degree to which the organization needs to shift, and where the conflicting views are greatest.
Leadership teams are the organization’s cultural trustees. The Conflicting Values Model integrates well with Treacy & Wiersema’s concept of market leadership strategy (The Discipline of Market Leaders, Addison Wesley, 1990) in determining the most ideal cultural profile. This is where we begin the work of building high-impact leadership teams |
