Cultural Benchmark

In the current environment that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA), companies are experiencing cultural shifts. This has been exacerbated by the global pandemic. For companies open to change, this presents an opportunity. Daniel Denison and his team have over a period of decades, developed a tool, that measures specific cultural dimensions or traits and link these to performance.

The tool provides valuable context to review how well an organization is setup with respects to what it is really trying to do:

• It provides measurements in terms of how well the mission of the organization is defined and how well this mission is understood.
• It looks at how flexible and responsive the organization is to its business environment. Adaptable organizations can turn the demands on the organization into action. Are your people highly committed to their work and do they feel empowered and engaged?
• The measurement of involvement assesses the extent to which people at all levels feel that they have input into the decisions that affect their work and that their work is directly connected to the goals of the organization.
• Finally, the level of consistency in an organization is reflected by the fact that there is a clear way of conducting business, a clear set of dos and don’ts, a productive way of incorporating different points of view. Organizations are most effective when they are consistent and well-integrated.

In addition to the measurements in the areas of mission, adaptability, involvement, and consistency, the model enables you to explore trade-offs between adaptation to the external environment and internal consistency as well as the trade-off between mission and involvement.