Wilson Perumal & Company Inc.

Two Galleria Tower 13355 Noel Road, Suite 1100 www.wilsonperumal.com

Why assess your culture? Overview:

Culture is a key driver of safe, reliable, and sustainable performance

The ability to measure culture is essential to managing it

WP&C has developed a superior method for measuring and benchmarking culture against High-Reliability Organizations (HRO)

Leaders are waking up to the fact that transforming their organizations culture may be their greatest lever for improving safety, sustainability, reliability, and profitability. Unfortunately, many leaders dont know where to start. In particular, they dont know how they will measure culture or the impact of their actions to improve it. And as the saying goes, if you cant measure it, you cant manage it!

The problem with surveys The most common method for assessing culture is the survey. Unfortunately, leaders are often suspicious of this data, and rightfully so. Most surveys ask participants to rate aspects of their culture on some scale (i.e. sometimes, always, never). Leaders know that people have tendencies that cause them to answer these questions in a certain way. For instance, people rarely want to answer with always or never, and so there is little differentiation in scores. Focus groups and interviews are another common technique, but they also have issues. The biases of the interviewer and the way they ask questions may influence

the findings. Finally, while these approaches are useful for developing insights, they are unable to produce sound quantitative data.

A better way to assess culture To address these shortcomings, WP&C has developed its Culture Assessment and Alignment Process (CAAP). CAAP delivers both the sound quantitative data and deep insights leaders are looking for while overcoming the failings of surveys and interviews. The CAAP Process helps leaders achieve three objectives.

1. Baseline the current culture The first step of the CAAP process provides leaders with data and insights into how employees describe the current culture. CAAP provides a baseline that future progress can be measured against.

2. Define the target culture Next, participants describe the target culture. This helps leaders understand what employees want the culture to be like, the degree of alignment, and the size of the gap between current and target.

Figure 1: Comparison of current vs.

target culture

3. Benchmark against HRO culture WP&C has conducted CAAP workshops with HRO organizations like the U.S. Nuclear Submarine Force. This allows us to provide organizations with a third view that our competitors cant. Not only can we help you measure your current culture, and define your desired culture, but we can help you see how that stacks up to the culture of an HRO.

Figure 1: Example comparison of culture to

HRO benchmark

Delivering results WP&C has a track record of helping companies transform their culture to reduce incidents by +70%, and improve profitability by +$200MM, in less than a year. Our CAAP process is the first step in developing a plan for transforming organizational culture. Once you have established the baseline and defined your target culture, we will help embed it in every level of your organization through our Values Integration Translation Alignment & Learning tool (VITAL). Finally, we will ensure your cultural transformation is sustainable by integrating it into every aspect of your management system. Do you need help assessing your culture? Contact us at contact@wilsonperumal.com

Culture Assessment & Alignment Process (CAAP) Spotlight