Measuring Culture
At the Spitzer Center, our primary measurement tool is called the Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI), licensed from Human Synergistics. The OCI, also known as the Circumplex, is a well-validated tool used by thousands of companies around the world. Culture is like an invisible force that people try to adapt to, and the Circumplex makes that force visible and breaks it down it down into very tangible patterns.
This tool has been used for more than 30 years, which means it predates the Four Levels of Happiness® model used in the Journey to Excellence. While there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence between the Four Levels and the Circumplex, there are very strong correlations.
The Circumplex evaluates 12 styles of behavior in two broad categories.
- There are four Constructive styles, which align closely with typical Level 3 behaviors.
- There are eight Defensive styles. Four are categorized as Aggressive-defensive, and four are Passive-defensive (see the diagram). These defensive styles are common in organizations with Level 2 cultures.
Before we discuss our Journey to Excellence programs with clients, we recommend they do a benchmark survey with this tool to assess their current culture and determine if change is needed. In addition to this broad benchmark survey, we also recommend a smaller leadership survey where the goals is to identify the organization’s ideal culture. This allows leaders to compare the actual benchmark results with their desired culture and identify specific gaps.
If you decide the Spitzer Center curriculum is the right tool for closing the gaps, we’ll go back a year to 18 months after you’ve implemented the curriculum and do the same measurements again. The follow-up survey will show how much the “green” (passive-aggressive) and “red” (aggressive-defensive) behaviors have waned, and the “blue,” constructive, Level 3 behaviors have increased.
We have seen many organizations successfully choose to become less defensive and more constructive – less Level 2 and more Level 3. There is a wealth of research showing that more constructive, Level 3 organizations perform better in terms of revenue, profit, talent retention, and other concrete measurements of success.
Two examples of Circumplex output (below). The one on the left depicts feedback on an ideal culture, while the one on the right shows employee feedback on the actual culture.
