I wonder: Have you considered what organizations need to know about their cultures? My thinking has evolved regarding organizations and the ‘what’ that they need to pay attention to when they think of their organizational culture including the following questions:
1-Do they have the knowledge, experience, and dedication to measuring if their espoused core values (usually on a wall) are alive and well, and if not ‘how’ do they measure the degree of visibility/invisibility of their lived core values?
2- Do they see this opportunity to analyze the current lived experiences of these core values to create a cross-organizational comparison, where one group, one team, one department in the organization may have the capacity to teach one another, without even knowing that this is something required or even desired by others?
3- Has your organization created a ‘statement of our current culture, clearly naming their critical governing ideas and considerations aligned with their intended future desired state?
4- Have they the internal capacity and knowledge to define, describe, and measure the ‘level of health or ill-health of their organization, (people, process or purpose) and then how to take the necessary steps to improve their organization’s current culture?
5- Do they have the metrics that define their current culture of ‘felt and lived experiences to engage and create a mutual learning environment (for staff and leadership) to engage their sense of belonging and their sense of well-being? and
6- (most importantly) Has the organization understood the relationship of their current culture (lived expression or felt experiences of staff to clients, customers, or patients) reflecting their core values and how this context directly, either positively or negatively, influences or impacts its ‘Service Brand’ in its community?
I believe that these elements among others might be the ‘eye opener’ to their blind spots, which I believe are often hidden so deep within their organization’s ecosystem, similar to an iceberg metaphor, where the important information and assumptions are left invisible or hidden that no one can see or can act! This is the state when the organization is “not walking their talk”.
One last question to consider:
Is your organization willing to craft their Desired ‘Culture Statement’ based on their desired cultural context?
