Measuring What Matters: A Guide to Auditing Your Culture
To understand how effective your culture is, you need to measure it. That’s easier than you think…
Chances are you’ve never heard of Googlegeist…
No, it’s not a poltergeist wandering the halls of Google.
Googlegeist is an annual survey given to all Google employees that measures employee engagement, satisfaction, and opinions on various aspects of the company. It covers a wide range of topics, including the company’s culture.
The German word geist translates to ghost or spirit, as in zeitgeist being the spirit of something.
The objective of the Googlegeist is to gather the spirit of Google. With feedback from employees, Googlegeist helps leaders:
Identify areas for improvement. Google analysts use the data to pinpoint areas where it needs to make changes to improve employee satisfaction and engagement.
Track trends over time, Google leaders monitor how employee sentiment changes over time and identify any emerging issues.
Make data-driven decisions. Googlegeist provides data that can be used to inform decisions about various aspects of the company, such as compensation, benefits, and management training.
Promote transparency and open communication: The survey also gives employees a channel to share honest feedback, which can help to foster a more transparent and open communication culture within the company.
Google has been using employee surveys since the early 2000’s, pretty good given the company was formed in 1998. But they are not alone. Other companies with strong emphasis on culture as a competitive advantage, such as Microsoft, Apple, and Netflix, do something similar. Why?
Because culture matters. And because measurement enables you to track and improve your culture.
I know, you already measure a lot: financials, marketing, product usage, sales and operations. But why would you not measure the most important thing in your organization: how effective you are at working as a team?
Culture can seem like a difficult thing to define, let alone measure, but there are several ways that organizations can assess their culture and track changes over time. Here are a few options:
Employee surveys: One of the most common ways to measure culture is to survey employees about their perceptions of the organization's values, norms, and practices. These surveys can be administered anonymously to encourage honest feedback and can include both quantitative and qualitative questions.
Performance metrics: Organizational culture can be measured through performance metrics, such as employee turnover, absenteeism, productivity, and employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). Changes in these metrics can indicate trends you may be missing.
Observation and interviews: Leaders and managers can also assess culture through observation and interviews with employees at all levels of the organization. These conversations can provide insights into how employees perceive the organization's culture and where there may be areas for improvement.
Cultural artifacts: Explore existing cultural artifacts, such as mission statements, symbols, and physical spaces, can also be analyzed to assess the organization's culture. For example, a mission statement that emphasizes innovation and risk-taking may suggest a culture that values creativity and experimentation.
External recognition: Finally, look at external recognition, such as awards and rewards. What does your organization reward? Observing how you provide validation and recognition for your organization's efforts can tell you a lot about the state of your culture.
Here’s an easy place to start; just observe and take note.
A wise sage (Yogi Berra, the American baseball player and humorist) once said, “You can observe a lot by just watching.”
There’s a lot of wisdom in those words. Here are a few ideas to start with observation:
Observe the behavior of employees. As you do, ask yourself, what values and principles do employees demonstrate in their day-to-day work? What do they prioritize, and how do they interact with each other?
Compare and contrast those behaviors with your written values statement. Your organizational values are the agreed upon and prioritized set of beliefs and guiding principles of an organization (read this article if you want a refresher). As you do so, score your values on a scale of 1-5 of how well they are kept by the behaviors you see (a little warning here that as a leader you may be seeing the best behavior of your employees).
Importantly, identify what behaviors you see tell you about individuals’ core beliefs. What do those behaviors show about what they believe about the company, leadership, and customers. If you want a refresher on core believes, go to my previous post on the topic.
Lastly observe by asking. In 1:1’s, interviews, meetings, ask for people’s input. Ask about how they’d rank certain values, how well they are upheld, and what they approve of or would like to change in your culture. Be open minded, listen, and take notes to discuss with your leadership team.
You may also find helpful insight on your culture by looking at external cultural artifacts such as:
How your team talks about the company. How and when values or other culture discussions are brought up by leaders and employees. Are they discussed in all hands meetings, used in 1:1’s, reviews and coaching sessions, job interviews?
How you describe your organization. Look at your website, presentations, LinkedIn profile, and job descriptions. Not only read the words, analyze the tone. Look particularly at job descriptions and see how you are describing yourself to new candidates.
Check out job review boards like Glassdoor. Sometimes even Reddit will have threads about certain organizations, depending on how large or well-known the company is. Reading anonymous reviews from current and former employees will give you more insight — with the caveat that not every nameless review is accurate. You will oftentimes find comments that point to leadership, expectations, workload, strategy, and growth opportunities, or lack thereof.
Social media digging. Review what you share as an organization. Look at what your employees on LinkedIn or Twitter. Posts and responses can reveal a great deal about your organization’s core values and beliefs.
Building the Right Audit Process
Those are easy and inexpensive ways to examine your culture. If you’re looking for more, here are simple steps can provide build a plan to regularly audit and create insights into your organization's culture:
Identify areas to audit: First, decide what you want to track. This might include areas such as communication, leadership, teamwork, turnover, hiring, diversity and inclusion, or employee engagement.
Choose audit methods: There are several methods that you can use to audit your culture, such as employee surveys, interviews, focus groups, and observations. Choose the methods that best fit for what you want to measure and how you will use the data. An eNPS score with two questions is a simple one that you can track over time.
Analyze the data: Collect and analyze the data from your audit methods to identify strengths and weaknesses in your organization's culture. Look for patterns and themes that emerge from the data.
Develop a plan for improvement: Use the results of your audit to develop a plan for improving your culture. This might involve creating new policies and procedures, investing in employee training and development, or making changes to your company's leadership structure.
Come back to beliefs. Remember, at the end of the day, you want to get back to understanding core beliefs and how to positively influence them.
Remember, don’t get too caught up in something overly complex. Much of your understanding of how effective your culture is can come from simple observation and discussion among your leadership team.
Auditing is about spending the time and effort discovering what your existing culture is like to use the opportunity to improve it. It’s an important step in building a strong and positive organizational culture. By taking a thoughtful and systematic approach, you can identify areas where your culture can be improved and make changes that will benefit your employees and your organization as a whole.
Next week we are going to cover how to create anchors for your culture to help embed it in your organization..
Until next time, lead with purpose.
Will
Things to consider.
Here are two sets of questions for you this week. The first is for your leadership team to discuss how to best implement regular measurement of your culture. The second is a short list of questions to regularly get your team’s perspective culture in meetings and 1:1’s.
Questions for your leadership team on implementing culture audits:
What metrics should we track regularly to measure our cultural health? How can we ensure these metrics provide meaningful insights?
How often should we conduct formal cultural assessments, and what format would be most effective for our organization?
Who should be responsible for collecting and analyzing cultural data? How can we ensure confidentiality and encourage honest feedback?
What process should we establish for turning cultural insights into actionable improvements?
How can we integrate cultural assessment into our existing management practices and meetings?
What role should external benchmarking play in our cultural assessment? Which organizations should we compare ourselves to?
How can we ensure our cultural audit process itself reflects our values?
What resources would we need to implement and maintain a regular cultural audit program?
What metrics should we track regularly to measure our cultural health? How can we ensure these metrics provide meaningful insights?
How often should we conduct formal cultural assessments, and what format would be most effective for our organization?
Who should be responsible for collecting and analyzing cultural data? How can we ensure confidentiality and encourage honest feedback?
What process should we establish for turning cultural insights into actionable improvements?
How can we integrate cultural assessment into our existing management practices and meetings?
What role should external benchmarking play in our cultural assessment? Which organizations should we compare ourselves to?
How can we ensure our cultural audit process itself reflects our values?
What resources would we need to implement and maintain a regular cultural audit program?
Questions to discuss culture with your team in meetings and 1:1’s:
How well do our daily behaviors align with our stated company values? Please provide specific examples.
How consistently does the leadership team demonstrate our cultural values? What actions could leaders take to better model our desired culture?
How empowered do you feel to make decisions that align with our cultural values? What barriers, if any, prevent you from fully living our values?
Rate our organization's transparency and open communication? What one change would most improve communication in our company?
How well do our recognition and reward systems support our desired culture? What behaviors should we be recognizing more?
Rate how effectively we onboard new employees into our culture? What cultural aspects should we better emphasize during onboarding?
How inclusive and welcoming is our culture? What specific actions could make our environment more inclusive?
Rate how well our physical/virtual workspace supports our culture? What changes would better reflect our values?
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