What kind of cultural style is prevalent in your organization and in your team?
In our research and work on organizational culture we are always looking for interesting views that can help us enhance our thinking on how to approach this in our analysis - which of course is focused on adding behavioural science to reach better outcomes.
The cultural styles in the image are taken from a HBR piece called "The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture by Boris Groysberg and colleagues written in 2018.
This approach from the authors tends to also reflect the Competing values framework, but in their own variation.
The cultural styles are
Caring Purpose Learning Enjoyment Results Authority Safety Order
These styles can be mapped based on two dimensions:
1) People Interactions - This dimension ranges from independent to interdependent. Cultures that lean toward independence value autonomy, individual action, and competition, whereas those that lean toward interdependence emphasize teamwork, collaboration, and collective success.
2) Response to Change - This dimension ranges from a focus on stability to flexibility. Cultures that prioritize stability emphasize consistency, predictability, and maintaining the status quo, while those that favor flexibility focus on innovation, adaptability, and openness to change.
No organization or team is specifically only one type of style - thought they may be more dominant in one style over the others. It is important to recognize this, and to account for it.
Our own cultural assessment tool at Aim For Behavior has many other dimensions because we need to go deeper - which means we add a behavioral science focus to our work with some further behavioral analysis done in all stages - but we are greatful for previous research and evidence that has helped us think about and create it.
What do you think about the cultural styles - can you recognize some in your organization and in your team?
P.S - to look at and work on culture we need to use many tools and methods, and move from only individual change to a system change - if we try to only change and focus our solutions on the individuals without accounting for the system and structures the results will not be as expected - be sure you know what you can and can't influence.