Overview

In order to illustrate how we use the cultural transformation tools cultural values assessment (CVA) instrument to measure the consciousness of an organization, let us examine a real example. It is a manufacturing company let us call the company Flexite. To simplify matters, we are only going to look at the results for the senior management group (53 individuals) the top team and their direct reports. We usually recommend that organizations begin by mapping the values of the most senior group of managers before they map the values of employees. This is important for two reasons. The senior leadership group must be aware of the scope and depth of the cultural issues, and be willing to do something about them, including committing to their own personal change, before the rest of the employees are involved in a values assessment. If the senior group is not willing to commit to a change in their behaviors, then the culture will not change. In such a situation it would be counterproductive to involve all employees in a cultural values assessment.

We begin the process of carrying out a cultural values assessment by creating customized values templates. The values templates are lists of approximately 80 to 100 values/behaviors. We currently have over 4,000 words and phrases in our database. We use two templates a personal values template, which is used to map the values that are important to employees in their personal lives, and an organizational values template, which is used to map the...