Assessing Your Current Culture

One of the first steps you can take to create a high-performing culture is to assess what is and isn’t working in your current culture.

An assessment of your current culture gives you an understanding of the starting point for your journey toward building a high performance culture. This assessment includes evaluating what your current culture stands for, how people behave, and the incentives you have in place to drive behavior. Defining and explaining your culture can be difficult. It’s an intangible set of behaviors and a general feeling of what it’s like to be part of the organization. Identifying when people are or are not behaving in a manner consistent with your culture is an important element of assessing the culture you have. Let’s look at what goes into one of these cultural assessments. You need to ask yourself several questions.

First, what descriptors best explain your culture? Get answers from senior leaders, managers, and the front line. Are the answers they give consistent? If they’re not, you might have a cultural problem.

Is the organization’s direction clear? Do people know how that direction is tied to the culture you’re trying to build? Are goals and expectations clear? Does culture support reaching those goals?

What communication channels exist for discussing and reinforcing culture? Are you using those channels effectively?

What processes exist to support and reinforce culture? Are those processes effective? What processes or platforms are you missing to be able to drive culture?

What behaviors do people demonstrate that are consistent with the culture? Which behaviors are inconsistent? Are incentives for positive behaviors tied to the culture? Are there consequences for negative behaviors?

Finally, how well do you live the culture every day? Are those moments reinforced? Once you go through this cultural assessment, you’ll have a clearer sense for where you’re starting and where the major gaps are that you need to fill to drive a high performance culture.

Want to learn more about creating a high-performing culture? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start building a high-performing culture. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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