Organizational culture is easily explained in this model, but a adapting it for behavior and the drivers will get you better outcomes.
So how can we add value and use this model to help us understand our organizational culture today and tomorrow?
Schein's model tell us that there are three areas to look at:
1.
Artifacts
Think of these as the formal and informal structures within the organization - policies, processes, the layout of the office, the systems and the routines like how we conduct meetings etc...
If you are working on culture - you need to make sure you are looking at these and understand what kind of behaviours they are moving people towards. -( i'll come back later in the post to explain why it matters.)
2.
The values
What we are really after here are the behaviours that make up the values, what are the things that people are doing or not doing in the organization and how do they relate to the values that the organization is set by - these behaviors should be driving the culture which should be driving strategic outcomes.
This is where more focus on behavior and behavioral science can help - there is quite a bit of work that needs to go here
3. The assumptions: - This is basically where you do your behavioral gap analysis of the culture you want vs the culture you have - and understand the areas where you need to develop interventions. - a behavioural model can really help here.
Schein model is good, but of course it is a simplification and needs to be adapted to fit the behaviours it is meant to enable - and as it is said, all models are wrong, but some models are useful :)
This model should have a representation of the system and to make sure that you account for the interactions between the different areas.
For example - you can tell people that they have autonomy and trust, yet you need to track everything they do - as per your policy - this means that as much as you can tell someone something, they artifact you created is telling them something different - that tension is not going to enable the behaviours you were expecting.
There are of course many other steps and factors to include, but this post itself is also a simplification - but hopefully useful to help you think about your organisations culture.
Image credit
MIT Sloan