Culture

ABCD-model

Every organization has a culture. You can map culture using the ABCD-model, which includes two axes. The vertical axis indicates whether an organizational culture is explorative or controlling. The horizontal axis demonstrates whether a culture is characterized by an internal focus or rather by an external focus.

The ABCD-model consists of four parts that each contain a cultural characteristic. The A stands for Analytical, the B for Belonging, the C for Creative and the D for Decisiveness. Each organization is a mix of the four. By measuring the culture we determine the culture in your organization at a particular moment in time.

When an organization wants to change, it will first develop a vision in which the higher goal, audacious goal, core values and core qualities come together. Then a strategy will be formulated and a change process will follow.

Core values provide direction to an organizational culture

The core values in particular provide direction towards the desired culture. As with the existing culture, the desired culture can be mapped out. It may turn out that the organization needs to be more externally focused, and become more explorative. That means that creativity must become an important part of the new organizational culture. Perhaps there should be much more emphasis on controlling and the internal organization. In that case the organizational culture requires more emphasis on analysis. And so on.

Implementing the desired organizational culture

Culture is more than behaviour alone. Culture refers to six themes in an organization that can be named. With these six themes culture can be steered and changed. The themes are:

1. Meaning – everyone lives out the organizational vision.
2. Confirmation – visibly from day-to-day, for example through exemplary behaviour.
3. Review – the way in which people and teams review each other is part of the culture.
4. Steering – processes and goals are connected with desired behaviour.
5. Experience – communication, working environment, celebratory moments, training courses: there are plenty of situations in which experiential aspects are added that lead to positive feelings in co-workers.
6. Skill development – becoming really good at something determines the mentality in an organization through practise, focus and training courses.

Tools

As part of the consultancy process, we use the following instruments when analyzing and evaluating organizational culture:

• ABCD Culture Scan (after Cameron & Quinn, 2006)
• Breakthrough Monitor

Our instruments are deployed in a web environment, and developed and managed in-house. View an example here.