Would you like to strengthen the performance, learning or collaboration culture in your company? Or is there another goal that is being blocked by the existing corporate culture?
A crucial first step is to recognize that corporate culture is a key determinant of the success or failure of organizational performance, learning or collaboration initiatives. In fact, over 50% of transformation projects fail due to insufficient cultural alignment (source: McKinsey, “Why do most transformations fail?”, 2019).
But how do you actually deal with corporate culture to avoid stumbling blocks?
Step 1: Understand which cultural elements are decisive
Which elements of corporate culture influence your goals the most – and in what way? Big Pictury and CPC AG have jointly developed a valuable tool for this purpose: the Culture Check.
This visual tool shows how the three levels of corporate culture – from visible symbols to invisible assumptions – affect change and strategic initiatives. It provides a basis not only for understanding culture, but also for actively incorporating it into everyday corporate life. In this way, you create the basis for sustainable transformations.
Step 2: Act on the different cultural levels
Once you have applied the Culture Check, you can take targeted measures:
Upper levels of culture: these are relatively easy and quick to influence. Examples include changes in processes, organizational charts or symbols, such as the creation and communication of a big picture for the vision or “change story”.
Basic assumptions: The deeply rooted, invisible cultural elements are more difficult to recognize and change. However, they often determine whether visible changes are successful or remain ineffective.
But be careful: if changes are only made at the upper levels, organizations and their members quickly relapse. In times of great uncertainty, employees fall back on familiar and proven basic assumptions that quickly overwrite what they have learned. Transformations can only be sustainable if all levels are taken into account.
An impulse from Elias Okrent, CPC (header photo)
Interested? Try it out now!
Would you like to try out the Culture Check? You can download the Big Picture as a free PDF and start analyzing your culture right away. You can also download the Culture Check Plus with additional examples and impulses – also free of charge.
We look forward to your questions, suggestions and examples!
