Organizational Culture and Team Assessments

We believe that a thriving organizational culture is the foundation of high performance, innovation, and sustainable success. Just as each individual has a unique DNA that defines their competencies, an organization’s "cultural DNA" shapes its overall effectiveness. This cultural DNA comprises the individual and collective assumptions, beliefs and values of its employees, which ultimately define how the organization operates. Our comprehensive Organizational Culture and Team Assessments help you decode this DNA and empower your organization to cultivate a cohesive, aligned, and high-performing culture that drives extraordinary results.

Whether you're looking to improve collaboration, enhance leadership effectiveness or resolve team challenges, our assessments leverage best-in-practice, evidence-based methods to deliver real, measurable impact.

The Benefits of Organizational Health

In the words of Patrick Lencioni, "The single, greatest advantage any company can achieve is organizational health." To maximize results, organizations must be both smart and healthy. While smart organizations excel in strategy, finance, and marketing, healthy organizations foster a culture that leverages these strengths. Our assessments help create an environment that minimizes politics and confusion, enhances morale and productivity, and reduces turnover.

Signs of a Healthy Organization:

• Minimal Politics: Less internal conflict and more unity.
• Minimal Confusion: Clear goals and strategies that everyone understands.
• High Morale: Engaged and motivated employees.
• High Productivity: Efficient and effective teamwork.
• Low Turnover: Retaining top talent and reducing recruitment costs.

• Enhanced Communication: Break down silos, foster open dialogue and create a culture where communication flows freely.
• Stronger Team Cohesion: Build trust and alignment, enabling your teams to work together more effectively toward shared goals.
• Increased Accountability: Establish a culture of accountability, where team members hold themselves and each other to high standards.
• Improved Performance: Drive engagement, productivity and innovation by fostering a healthy, high-performing organizational culture.
• Sustainable Growth: Equip your leaders and teams with the skills and tools they need to navigate change and achieve long-term success.

Understanding Organizational Culture

According to the renowned MIT professor Edgar H. Schein, organizational culture can be understood through three layers:

1. Artifacts: Artifacts are the most visible expressions of an organization’s culture – the easily identifiable aspects that everyone can see. These include elements like dress codes, office layout, job titles, communication styles, and the visual branding seen on posters or company communications. While these artifacts offer a glimpse into your organization’s cultural landscape, they only scratch the surface. Insight: Analyzing artifacts can provide some initial understanding, but they don’t reveal the true essence of your culture. Similarly, simply altering these visible elements might create a sense of change, but it won’t drive meaningful or sustainable cultural transformation.
2. Espoused Values: Espoused values represent what your organization claims to believe and practice. These are the values and principles you see in mission statements, employee charters, corporate newsletters, and the behaviors you actively promote. They serve as the organization’s "official story" about how things should be done. Insight: Espoused values offer a deeper look into your organization’s culture than artifacts. Adjusting these values can initiate some level of change, but unless they’re truly embodied by the organization, their impact remains limited. Without alignment between stated values and daily behaviors, they can appear as mere words on a wall.
3. Basic Assumptions: The underlying beliefs are the most powerful and authentic indicators of your organization's culture. They represent the deeply ingrained assumptions, perceptions and beliefs that genuinely guide how employees interact, make decisions and define success. This is where the real essence of your culture lives. Insight: These underlying beliefs are the most potent levers for achieving real cultural transformation. However, they are also the most challenging to influence because they require a shift in mindset, behaviors and long-standing habits. This is where the real work of cultural change happens, and when addressed effectively, it’s where the most profound and lasting impact is made. For instance, while your organization might publicly promote remote work as part of its espoused values, the underlying belief might be that visibility in the office is what truly gets you recognized and rewarded. This disconnect often determines whether a culture change effort will succeed or fail.

Ultimately, Schein’s Culture Model helps us uncover the layers that form the foundation of your organization’s culture and aligning them with your strategic goals to foster a cohesive, high-performing environment.

Our Approach: Integrating Proven Principles with Cutting-Edge Methodologies

I. Proven Organizational Health Frameworks

Our approach is grounded in frameworks designed to build healthy, cohesive and high-performing teams. We address the following critical areas to strengthen your organizational culture:

1. Building Trust: Establishing a foundation of vulnerability-based trust, where team members feel safe to be open, honest, and transparent with each other. This trust is the cornerstone of any cohesive team and encourages genuine relationships that enable effective collaboration.
2. Clarity and Cascading Ccommunication: Create a clear and concise playbook for your organization that defines core values, purpose, strategic priorities, and goals. Overcommunicate this clarity to ensure that every team member understands and aligns with the organization's vision and mission; reinforce critical messages, ensuring consistent communication throughout the organization.
3. Embracing Healthy Conflict: Encouraging constructive and unfiltered debate around ideas and issues, rather than avoiding difficult conversations. Healthy conflict ensures that different perspectives are voiced, preventing artificial harmony and promoting innovation and problem-solving.
4. Fostering Commitment: Aligning team members around shared goals and decisions, even if there is initial disagreement. By fostering clarity and buy-in, teams can move forward with unified commitment, ensuring that every member is fully invested in the organization's direction.
5. Ensuring Accountability: Promoting a culture of accountability where team members hold themselves and each other responsible for behaviors, actions, and performance. This step is crucial for maintaining high standards and ensuring that agreed-upon goals and expectations are met.
6. Focusing on Results: Prioritizing collective results over individual agendas, ensuring that the team stays focused on achieving shared objectives. This results-oriented mindset drives overall organizational performance, innovation and success.

By integrating these principles, we help teams overcome dysfunctions, improve communication, and develop a strong sense of alignment and shared purpose. This unified approach ensures that your organization not only becomes smarter but also healthier, achieving sustainable growth and extraordinary results.

II. Proprietary Evidence-Based Methodologies

Our process is grounded in evidence-based methodologies, ensuring a comprehensive and accurate assessment of your organization's culture and team dynamics. We utilize:

• The AdvantEdge Peak Performance Model™: A proprietary model that evaluates leadership effectiveness, team collaboration, and overall organizational health, identifying areas for improvement and growth.
• Leadership Mastery Model™: This model assesses leadership capabilities, emotional intelligence and decision-making skills, providing actionable insights to enhance leadership performance.
• Conflict to Confluence Model™: Our unique approach to transforming team conflict into opportunities for collaboration and innovation, enabling teams to turn differing perspectives into collective strength.

III. Comprehensive Assessment Tools

We use a variety of assessment tools tailored to your organization’s needs, including:

• Surveys and Questionnaires: Customized to capture insights on team dynamics, communication, leadership effectiveness, and cultural alignment.
• 360-Degree Feedback: Gathers perspectives from all levels of your organization to provide a holistic view of leadership and team performance.
• Behavioral Observations: Analyzes real-time interactions to identify patterns and areas for improvement.
• Focus Groups and Interviews: Engages employees to gain deeper insights into the organization's culture, values, and team dynamics.

Take the first step towards building a healthy, high-performing and innovative organization. Contact us today to schedule a consultation and learn how our Organizational Culture and Team Assessments can help your organization excel.