Assessing the Health of Your Culture

Co-Authored by Marc Umscheid, CMO, Chief Outsiders and Kristin Anderson, Partner, LeadQuest Consulting

In our first two blogs (Part one and Part two) on the subject of corporate culture, we have been making the case for the importance of a serious, top-down effort to ensure your company is united around a single vision -- and that your corporate culture is working for you, not against you. We’ve seen how such a CEO-led commitment can lead to riches beyond your wildest dreams (or, at least, measurably better performance), and we’ve heard directly from one CEO who grappled with the effects of a toxic culture before his personal involvement – and a committed effort -- restored balance across his organization.

Now that you have considered your role in the fortification of your company’s culture, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get to work. To help get started, we wanted to give you a self-assessment that you can personally administer.

We’ve formulated three yes-or-no questions that you can use to diagnose issues with communication, trust, and collaboration at your company – along with some insights that will help you gauge the extent of the cultural discord that may be proliferating among your valuable human resources.

1. Are you confident that internal communications within the company are helping employees to understand the company’s goals and how their work fits into these goals? More to the point, do you believe that your communications create a clear understanding for your staff as to how the company’s goals are aligned to strategy, and specifically, how their goals fit into achieving this strategy? If you cannot answer with certainty, then the answer is no. You believing this is better than it is can deepen the cultural divide beyond what it is as your team expects you to see what they see.
2. Is there demonstrable evidence of trust within your organization? Are you satisfied that teams function harmoniously, and are able to work together to resolve conflicts? Or, as a measure of trust, do you get a sense that their conflicts devolve into a “blame game” quagmire. If the team is spending too much time feeding the problem, it can become impossible to focus on the solution. Also, are your employees skilled at giving feedback, and are they encouraged to do so? Are your managers open to and skilled in the art of receiving, and acting upon it, without their team members being fearful of some sort of negative consequence? You can take the next step in getting a sense of how much trust exists by asking yourself: On a scale of 1- 10 (10 being the highest), how much trust exists up, down, and all around in my organization? If the number is less than 9, the absence of trust most likely is an active player in the erosion of a productive organizational culture.
3. Are your employees committed to a collaborative approach by sharing information that could be beneficial to the success of other members of the team? Or are there  “hoarders” hiding in teams who are intent on taking the credit for team results? Do you and your senior leaders promote a culture where no idea is a bad idea? Or are your employees accustomed to being derided for proposing ideas that your senior leadership doesn’t find useful? In a balanced culture, each team member feels comfortable sharing info within the organization, regardless of hierarchy. Are your managers and leaders “coaches,” or are they simply people that hand out work and/or bad news? Finally, have you noticed a decline in quality of your team/organization’s work product that cannot be attributed to faulty systems or processes? If so, your organization has been collaterally harmed by cultural toxicity, and the time to address it is now.

If you find that you cannot answer yes to all of the above, it’s likely you are not getting the kind of feedback that may be posted on Glassdoor or other public sites instead of coming to you. People may be telling you what you want to hear – and you’re, unintentionally cultivating  “yes people” on your staff. And if you think you know why people are leaving your company, you’ll be surprised to know that a recent Work Institute study examining employee turnover found that 63 percent of the answers change when asked by a third party, or outsider, as to why an employee is choosing to leave the fold. 

In our next blog, we will help you get ready for action. We will provide insight into the kinds of questions you should ask outside consultants to determine if they are the right people to guide and partner with you in your quest to capture the power of an even healthier culture.

About our Authors

See below for Marc's bio.

Kristin Anderson is a partner at KLA Consulting where she provides coaching for “leaders at all levels”, guides executive leadership in the development of their organizations culture of consistent high performance, and facilitates customized leadership retreats. Kristin has more than twenty years of business experience and brings a combination of corporate leadership, facilitation, consulting, and cross-industry expertise. She has held several senior leadership positions establishing a deep knowledge of the challenges of leading organizations during periods of growth and transition.