Measuring culture change
You can't tell whether a culture has changed unless you know what it looked and felt like before.
Without this baseline, every result is just a story someone tells - or tries to skew - afterwards. A concrete before-and-after (‘it’s this now, before it was this’) is the only way to show the change caused the improvement, rather than happening alongside it.
What to measure isn't complicated, yet many organisations just default to ‘engagement score’. This is fine, but more specific measures provide deeper insights into where the change is really happening. These include ‘leadership trust’, ‘manager capability’, ‘happiness’ and ‘attrition’.
All of these can be measured, yet they are routinely avoided.
The organisations who dodge measurement are usually the ones least sure the culture change work will land. I insist on it.
We define the outcomes at the start, track them throughout so we can course correct as required, then measure again at the end of each defined time period. The results are almost always positive.
If you don't measure it, you can only hope it happened.
Download my new white paper ‘Making Culture Change Stick’ to find out more about how you can build, change or retain a great place to work at www.colindellis.com/culture-papers
