Short Version
Every culture answers five questions about success, behavior, care, competition, and identity. A culture assessment reveals where groups answer those questions differently, before change arrives and puts those differences to the test. Where the answers align, people hold steady under pressure. Where they split, change cracks first.
Why culture matters most before change arrives
Culture gaps often reach leaders as operational problems, not cultural questions that need answers. A strategy rollout stalls in one region while turnover rises in another. Leaders reinforce conflicting priorities. Customers receive inconsistent service depending on who serves them. Results are visible. The competing definitions of success, and answers to the the questions around culture shaping results, are harder to see.
In a low-hire, low-fire labor market, the next quarter's demands will largely fall to the people already on your team. Growth, disruption, leadership transitions, restructuring, and new technologies will be handled largely by the people already on your payroll. But a stable workforce doesn't mean stable work: responsibilities, decisions, technology, and performance expectations can change faster than the names on the team.
That raises an important question: when change arrives, will your people respond from a shared understanding of success, or from competing definitions that pull the organization in different directions?
Most leaders find a culture gap only after it has become visible in the numbers.
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Departments and locations operate differently. Are they working towards different goals?
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Leaders are slow to adopt a change. What do they believe the change will reinforce — or put at risk?
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Customers receive a different experience depending on who serves them. What does each group believe good service requires?
We worked with a regional hub of Feeding America that was already there. Turnover was up. Staff were disengaged. An earlier employee engagement survey had uncovered plenty of problems, but none were specific enough to tell leaders where to begin.
We guided them through our CultureMap process, using a culture assessment to compare how groups defined success and how they believed it should be achieved. It revealed where groups were working from fundamentally different assumptions about success. Once leaders could see which groups differed, and on which cultural questions, they knew where to start.
Here is how the CultureMap process uses a culture assessment to reveal differences between groups, connects those gaps to business problems, and helps leaders turn the findings into action.
What does the culture assessment process reveal about your organization?
Is the culture you have the culture you think you have? Most leadership teams assume they know. A company culture assessment provides evidence.
Culture is your organization’s definition of success and its shared understanding of how success should be achieved (that second part often goes overlooked). We built our culture assessment process around one central idea: every culture answers five questions, whether or not anyone asks them out loud.
- How do we, as a group, define success?
- How do we behave?
- How do we care for people?
- How do we compete?
- What makes us uniquely us?
Our CultureMap assessment measures 23 cultural values organized around these five fundamental questions. Participants describe both the culture they experience today and the culture they believe the organization needs for the future. The distance between those answers helps set the direction for action.
The first question does more work than it might appear. Before anyone rates the cultural values, we ask participants to describe success in their own words. Taken together, those answers quickly show whether people are aiming at the same destination. When they are not, the divide often follows group lines.
How is a culture assessment different from an engagement survey?
Engagement surveys generally measure the employees experience. An organizational culture assessment captures the values and beliefs about success that shape how people make decisions, establish priorities, and work together. What people believe success requires shapes the decisions they make and the experiences they create for employees and customers.
Culture has layers, as the onion model below illustrates. At the center are beliefs about success and how to achieve it. Those beliefs shape everyday decisions and behaviors, which become the experiences employees and customers can see and feel.
Employees can be equally engaged while holding very different ideas about success, service, accountability, leadership, or how the organization should compete. An intentional process for assessing and acting on culture highlights both shared understanding and differences in direction that leaders may not know exist.
The Feeding America hub’s earlier engagement survey contained real and useful data. What it did not reveal was which groups held different assumptions or where leaders should begin.
Do we work for the same company?
When organizations grow, expand into new locations, restructure, introduce new leadership, or roll out a new strategy, cultural differences between groups become more visible.
In our work with Feeding America and manufacturing organizations, we have uncovered a common distinction between the “carpet” and the “concrete.”
At the food bank:
- The concrete was the people who handled the food, loaded the trucks, and made the deliveries.
- The carpet was the people who ran programs, worked with the communities they served, and kept the books.
In manufacturing, as you might expect, concrete is the flooring of the manufacturing operation, while carpet grounds sales, administrative, and other business functions.
Both groups at the food bank cared about the mission. However, each held its own idea of what success looked like and how the organization should achieve it.
The CultureMap process put that difference on the page, group by group. Small-group conversations followed, giving each side an opportunity to explain the day-to-day actions required to fulfill the mission. Two versions of the organization became one shared picture. Leaders could begin closing the gaps because they could finally see and discuss them.
Most organizations have their own version of the carpet and the concrete:
- Front of house and back of house in a restaurant
- Sales and customer support
- Senior leadership and leaders operating in the field
- Corporate teams and frontline employees
- Geographically distinct regions
- Long-tenured employees and people hired during a period of rapid growth
The customer, client, or patient waits at the end of these divides. Whoever answers the phone, plates the order, solves the problem, or makes the delivery is the culture, as far as the customer can tell.
How an organization answers How do we care for people? also reaches well beyond the customer. It includes employees, partners, and the communities the organization serves.
It is the same logic behind an employee experience map: examine the organization from where each group stands.
How do culture gaps become business problems?
Culture is the operating system behind the results an organization is trying to achieve. When groups hold different answers to the five questions about results, behavior, care, competition, and identity, those differences show up in business outcomes long before anyone calls them culture.
A culture assessment helps leaders detect misalignment before it appears as increased turnover, inconsistent customer experiences, stalled initiatives, or uneven performance.
Culture gaps commonly affect:
- Customer experience consistency. Locations or groups may interpret service expectations differently.
- Employee retention. The experience employees were promised may not match the environment they encounter.
- Strategy execution. Groups may support the same strategy while making very different decisions about how to implement it.
- Leader effectiveness. Leaders may reinforce conflicting priorities or send mixed messages about what matters.
- Recognition and accountability. Employees may receive inconsistent signals about which actions and results are valued.
- Employee value proposition alignment. Departments or locations may provide meaningfully different employee experiences.
These problems arrive as a turnover number, a complaint log, or a rollout that stalled in one region. Few people call them culture at that point. By then, the gap has had time to become embedded in how people work. A culture assessment finds it while it is still a conversation leaders can influence.
How does culture affect change readiness?
Most of us are more confident when we know the strategy. But strategy only becomes real through culture. The five questions show whether your culture is prepared to carry a strategy or likely to work against it.
That is what we mean when we say culture provides guardrails.
A culture assessment cannot predict next year’s conditions. It can show whether your people are likely to respond to those conditions from a shared understanding of success.
- Where alignment is strong, a group is more likely to hold its shape. A new strategy, new leader, acquisition, technology rollout, or difficult year arrives, and people already share an understanding of what success looks like. They can adjust together.
- Where gaps are wide, change is more likely to expose the fracture. A culture assessment shows which groups differ and on which of the five questions, before the change puts those differences to the test.
Research supports this relationship, with one important condition. A study of large technology firms found that organizations whose people broadly agreed on their cultural norms and held a strong norm for adaptability performed better three years later than organizations with less agreement, less emphasis on adaptability, or both.
Agreement on its own can harden into routine when conditions change. Agreement within a culture that values adaptability is better equipped to hold.
The most useful guardrails are shared answers that include how the organization will adjust when circumstances change. They should also leave room for meaningful differences. The carpet and the concrete could remain different groups doing different work. What they needed was a shared answer to what success looked like.
Shared values can hold a group steady. Shared backgrounds alone can make people blind to the same risks and possibilities.
Nobody chooses next year’s conditions. Leaders can choose to understand how their people are prepared to meet them. That is where the ability to build certainty begins. It is also why we keep coming back to closing the gaps on culture.
If your organization is preparing for rapid growth, a leadership transition, restructuring, an acquisition, or a new strategic direction, this is often when a culture assessment provides the greatest value. It helps leaders see where alignment already exists and where additional conversation is needed before execution begins.
Signs you may need a culture assessment
Sometimes leaders turn to seeking to understand their cultures after a crisis. But many organizations begin exploring a culture assessment after a persistently visible business problem appears. Of course, those problems often start as cultural misalignment long before they show up in business metrics.
You may benefit from a culture assessment if:
- Different locations, or departments, deliver noticeably different customer experiences.
- Change initiatives gain traction in some groups but stall in others.
- Leaders describe success or strategic priorities differently.
- Turnover varies significantly between departments, locations, or regions.
- Employees receive inconsistent messages about accountability and recognition.
- Your organization is preparing for rapid growth, restructuring, an acquisition, or a leadership transition.
- Employees support the mission but disagree about how to achieve it.
- Leadership believes the culture is clear, but employees describe very different day-to-day experiences.
A culture assessment helps identify where those differences exist and whether they represent healthy variation or barriers to execution.
Can you compare culture store by store, department by department?
It is often the first question a multi-unit operator asks: can we put one store next to another and see which culture is healthier?
Locations can be compared once the groups are large enough to interpret responsibly. A district or region can often provide a useful picture. A single store may not have enough participants for a reliable interpretation of its own.
In a very small group, the response of one or two people can shift the results significantly. A difficult month, a local leadership transition, or a recent operational disruption may also make a small group’s results appear more conclusive than they are.
For that reason, we typically compare groups such as regions, districts, functions, or levels of leadership. These groups are more likely to provide enough information to support a meaningful interpretation, and they are often where the most consequential differences appear.
Is your organization ready for a culture assessment?
Not every organization should run one yet. If leaders aren't prepared to discuss the findings, share them, and act on them, another survey can create more frustration than clarity. Here's how to tell.
What happens after a culture assessment?
The survey is one step in a culture assessment, and it is usually the shortest one. The full process includes discovery, planning, interpretation, communication, and action.
- Discovery. We begin by asking whether culture is the right thing to measure. New leadership, a new strategy, rapid growth, restructuring, or differences between operating groups often prompt the question.
- Planning. We determine which groups should be compared, how results should be reported, and whether interviews or facilitated conversations should run alongside the survey.
- Assessment. The survey step of CultureMap generally runs over two weeks. We provide participation reminders and updates on response rates by group.
- Leadership debrief and communication planning. Culture begins with leaders. We typically start with leadership-team debriefs and prepare a thoughtful rollout of findings to participants.
- Action planning. Together, we examine what may be driving each gap, identify the differences most important to strategy, and determine how leaders can begin closing them.
- Reinforcement. Cultural priorities are incorporated into leadership expectations, communication, recognition, hiring, development, and other systems that shape the employee experience.
Some leadership teams also choose to see individual results and work through their differences together in the room. This can make unspoken assumptions visible and help leaders determine what they want to reinforce consistently across the organization.
For more guidance on turning feedback into focused action, read our guide to acting on employee feedback.
Culture assessment results can also inform hiring and development. They show what the organization needs its people and leaders to reinforce, particularly during periods of growth or change.
It is work we have refined over five decades, and it matters most before change arrives.
What are the biggest differences in your culture?
The Feeding America hub’s problems had been visible all along: turnover, disengagement, and complaints. What changed was the organization’s ability to see which cultural questions those problems were connected to and which groups were experiencing them differently.
Leaders knew where to start, and they started with themselves. They changed how they led, and we worked with the CEO on the strategy for the year ahead.
Next year’s challenges will be met by the people already working for you. A culture assessment helps you understand how they will respond before change puts the answer to the test.
Explore how a culture assessment works →
Cover photo by Remy Gieling on Unsplash
Frequently Asked Questions About Culture Assessments
What does a strong workplace culture look like in service-driven industries like restaurants and healthcare?
In a strong service culture, the people who serve customers and the people who support them share one answer to what success looks like. We often see the split between what our clients call the carpet and the concrete: the office and the frontline. The customer, guest or patient meets whichever answer the person in front of them holds. Where those answers match, service holds steady. Where they split, it changes from one shift or location to the next.
How do you assess company culture?
We ask everyone, and we ask twice. People first describe success here in their own words. Then they rate where the organization is today and where it needs to be. We compare the answers by group: senior leaders, general managers, regions, the office and the frontline. Leadership’s view becomes one line among several, and where it differs from everyone else’s is often the most useful finding. Our CultureMap process runs this from start to finish.
What does a culture assessment measure?
Ours measures 23 cultural values, organized around five questions every culture answers. How do we define success? How do we behave? How do we care for people? How do we compete? What makes us uniquely us? Each value is rated twice, for today and for what the organization needs. The distance between those ratings sets the direction for action. Differences between groups show whose assumptions about success have drifted.
How is a culture assessment different from an employee engagement survey?
An engagement survey tells you how people feel. A culture assessment shows what people believe success requires, and those beliefs drive the decisions they make and the experience customers get. Two groups can be equally engaged and still define success differently. A regional hub of Feeding America we worked with ran an engagement survey first. It found plenty of problems and nothing specific to act on. The culture assessment showed which groups differed, and on which question.
Can a culture assessment compare culture across our company’s locations?
Yes, once groups are large enough to read. Regions, districts, departments, functions and levels of leadership all give a reliable comparison. A single store usually doesn’t. In a small group, one or two people can swing the results, and a hard month can make them look more certain than they are. So we compare the larger groups, which is also where the differences that matter tend to show up.
What happens after a culture assessment?
The survey step takes about two weeks, and it’s the shortest part. After it closes, we debrief the leadership team first, starting with the widest gaps, and plan how to share the findings. Together we work out what drives each gap and which gaps matter most to strategy. Then the priorities go into how leaders lead, recognize and hire, because the findings show what the organization needs its people to be.
