Spotlight

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 HighReliability 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

Culture Assessment &

Alignment Process (CAAP)
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.

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.

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.

Figure 1: Example comparison of culture to

HRO benchmark

2. Define the target culture

Delivering results

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.

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

Figure 1: Comparison of current vs.

target culture

Wilson Perumal & Company Inc.

Two Galleria Tower
13355 Noel Road, Suite 1100

www.wilsonperumal.com