Companies who consider the OCAI to change their culture often ask me for success rates. Apart from OCAI’s thorough research basis and validation, they want to assess up front whether it will be worth the time and money.

Does the OCAI work?

Does the OCAI work? The truthful but rather lame answer is that the OCAI works if you put in the work.

One of our partner consultants summarizes this for her clients before they start. There are three possible outcomes when you use the OCAI to assess your current and preferred culture.

Guest post by Sarah Skidmore

Company culture is a touchy subject for some business owners. And, as a professional coach, if I don’t approach the client within their context, I most certainly will receive a defensive response.

Welcome to this overview of the best-known organizational culture models that we have discussed.It is crucial to understand where you are right now before you develop or change anything. There are roughly two ways to understand and assess the culture:

The anthropological approach gathers data via observation, documents and processes, participation, and interviews. It doesn’t have to be bound by a theory and yields qualitative information - but it could be time-consuming.

Richard Barrett’s evolutionary model of development of personal and organizational values is impressive - as described in his book Building a Values-Driven Organization: A Whole System Approach to Cultural Transformation. The model is based on Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics (levels of consciousness), integrated with Barrett’s own seven levels of consciousness model and Ken Wilber’s four Quadrants.