The OCAI Assessment has been completed; all participants have received their personal profiles, and a report has been compiled with the collective results. Now is the time to start using the outcome of the survey. The cultural assessment is often the first intervention in corporate culture. It makes people aware of “how we do things around here” and prompts expectations of change...

Diagnose and change organizational culture

The assessment is the beginning of a change process. The OCAI provides a general, visual and quantitative overview of current and preferred culture. But the precise meanings, details, behaviors and indicators have to be customized to your organization. Also, the transition from one organizational culture to another should be made to measure and to be “owned” by your stakeholders. If you want change to stick, there’s no outside recipe. You can utilize “outsiders” and advice to stir the change, but the insiders are the ones who actually have to change. It’s their energy, their views, their daily behavior that need to change more or less. That’s often a delicate process because all individuals have to make their personal changes, and do this collectively, in the same direction around the same time. The good news is, that it can be done. The OCAI method is a tool to ensure some of the factors for this successful change to happen.

From beliefs to behavior

So we have our profiles and we need to elaborate further. The classic way was to use interviews for qualitative information on corporate culture. However, those are very time consuming and difficult to compare. Following the OCAI method gives you a quicker and more structured way to gather qualitative information and involve your organization.

In an OCAI workshop, all participants meet and discuss the outcome. The purpose is to reach consensus on current and preferred cultures, to specify them and chunk down from values to daily behavior. Because culture concepts and theories are nice, but we have to work practically and convince our account managers, sales guys, front desk staff and back office workers to contribute to this change. It has to be tangible. Then we invent a change program to accomplish this. The OCAI Work Kit will supply you with a manual, workshop schedules, exercises and presentation slides to go through this process.

Inform, involve, engage, energize!

But why is this process so important? Why would you bother to engage as many participants as possible? This is one of the advantages of the OCAI process. It is involving and helps to build employee engagement. By following the workshop structure, it’s feasible. The reason that consensus and true agreement are so important is that many change processes get stuck somewhere. The wheels simply come off. There are several reasons why this happens. Think about resistance and sabotage. People may not agree with some measures that were implemented top down. Another reason could be weariness: people are so busy and they started off well, but they simply need more perseverance to see this change through. And that’s hard when you get tired and you’re busy. In those cases, energy is needed to pull the carriage out of the mud and get going again.

Time saved for success

When you’ve spent maybe a little more time and effort at the beginning of your change process, you’re able to prevent this from happening and you’re simply better prepared. Time spent in advance is time saved in the end. What’s more: it sometimes is the difference between the 70% failure rate of change and successful change that sticks.

In the “bottom up” process of reaching consensus about current and preferred culture and understanding it thoroughly, you win more than just the hearts and minds of your staff. In this process you’re able to build trust and to detect second thoughts, objections and doubts and solve those. This will reduce the chance of sabotage and enhance commitment, even enthusiasm and engagement. You will also gain new information from all levels, giving you the chance to come up with a better plan, that’s checked and rechecked from all sides and positions. The plans that survive have a good chance of coming true.

So, following the change process with OCAI workshops, you get:

• Qualitative, customized information like in interviews and a real understanding of culture by all participants
• Information from all sides, positions and perspectives and hence, better and more creative measures to implement
• Commitment and readiness to change (provided that you seriously work around/through objections)
• Engagement and ownership

This is why this process can’t be missed. It ensures some of the necessary conditions for successful, sustainable change.

Work with them in workshops

But is it feasible? Yes, it can be done. Generally there are two separate ways to organize the OCAI workshops: the entire organization does the workshops in their own teams/departments or the workshops are held with volunteers from all levels.

The first is to roll out from the top down, starting with the top executives, the managerial staff, followed by all the other teams and departments. All teams down to the shop floor can take part in the OCAI workshop, each program adapted to their level. From values to behavior, everyone works out the culture and its change program within the overall reference framework, developed by the top executives.

The second possibility is to work with people who volunteer for the workshops. In this case, the participants come from every level and department of the organization. They will formulate a change plan, and then become the ambassadors of change within the organization. In large organizations, this means several workshop days with different groups and combining all the results. It’s your way to start the change and make sure that it’s going to happen!

The OCAI workshop(s)

Getting to work with your OCAI results and utilizing culture:

• Current culture: foundations (specified examples of current identity, tacit beliefs, assumptions, meanings, capacities, behavior, environment and outcomes)
• Exploring the future: what trends do we see coming, what’s happening, what’s our purpose and target?
• Knowing this, do we agree on the preferred culture?
• Preferred culture: evaluation; should we adapt the profile to be fit for the future?
• Work out the preferred culture (specified examples of future identity, tacit beliefs, assumptions, meanings, capacities, behavior, environment and tangible outcomes)
• Plan of change: How will we evolve to the new culture?
• Identify actions, blockages and solutions
• Plan of implementation: make choices and prioritize
• Finally: find illustrative stories to support the change