Organizational Culture Assessment - It's about people.
Most leaders can describe the culture they want. Far fewer have a clear and objective view of the culture their employees actually experience.
Organizational culture is revealed through everyday behaviours, decisions, relationships, routines, and assumptions. Our Organizational Culture Assessment helps leaders understand what is really happening beneath the surface so they can make better organizational decisions.
Cohesive Strategy Group conducts in-depth organizational culture assessments that help leaders understand how work truly gets done, where the organization is aligned, and where cultural tensions may be limiting performance.
What Is an Organizational Culture Assessment?
An organizational culture assessment is a structured examination of the behaviours, beliefs, assumptions, systems, and working relationships that shape an organization.
Our assessment provides leadership with an objective view of the culture that exists today, not simply the culture the organization aspires to create.
We explore three interconnected levels of culture:
Artifacts
Artifacts are the visible and observable elements of an organization. They include:
- The physical workplace
- Meeting structures and routines
- Communication practices
- Employee attire and workspace design
- Recognition systems
- Stories, traditions, and organizational language
- Policies, processes, and formal documents
Artifacts provide important clues about what the organization prioritizes and how people are expected to behave.
Espoused Values
Espoused values describe what the organization says it believes.
These may be communicated through the organization's:
- Vision
- Mission
- Corporate values
- Leadership principles
- Strategy
- Employee commitments
- Customer promises
We examine whether these stated values are consistently reflected in leadership decisions, organizational systems, and employees' everyday experiences.
Underlying Assumptions
Underlying assumptions are the deeply held, often unspoken beliefs that guide how people think, behave, and respond.
They become the organization's unwritten rules:
- How decisions are really made
- Whether it is safe to challenge leadership
- What happens when someone makes a mistake
- Which behaviours are rewarded or discouraged
- How conflict is managed
- Who has influence
- What people must do to succeed
These assumptions often explain why an organization behaves differently from what its formal values suggest.
When Is a Culture Assessment Valuable?
An organizational culture assessment may be particularly valuable when:
- Leadership senses that something is wrong but cannot clearly identify the cause
- Employee survey results do not explain what is happening beneath the surface
- Trust or communication has deteriorated
- Employee turn-over is high
- Departments or leadership levels are working in silos or slabs
- The organization is preparing for a new strategy
- A new leader is entering the organization
- The organization is experiencing rapid growth or significant change
- A merger, acquisition, or integration is underway
- Strategy implementation has stalled
- Leadership wants an objective view before making major organizational decisions
- Stated values are not consistently reflected in behaviour
The assessment can be completed as a standalone engagement or incorporated into a broader leadership, culture, and strategy engagement.
We Illuminate Cultural Tensions and Contradictions
What an organization says and what employees experience are not always the same.
An organization may describe itself as collaborative while departments operate in silos. It may promote accountability while difficult issues are routinely avoided. Leaders may call the workplace a family while employees do not feel psychologically safe enough to speak honestly.
These contradictions create confusion, frustration, and mistrust. Over time, they can weaken leadership effectiveness, employee commitment, decision-making, customer experience, and strategy execution.
Our role is to make these patterns visible so leadership can understand what is happening beneath the surface.
An organization may claim to empower employees while requiring every meaningful decision to be approved by senior leadership.
What We Examine
Every organizational culture assessment is tailored to the organization and its circumstances. Depending on the engagement, we may examine:
- Leadership behaviours and management practices
- Decision-making and accountability
- Alignment between stated values and lived experience
- Trust and psychological safety
- Communication patterns
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Organizational silos, slabs, and hierarchical barriers
- Conflict and issue resolution
- Employee voice and participation
- Customer orientation
- Attitudes toward change
- Cultural strengths that should be protected
- Cultural barriers that may be limiting performance
The purpose is not to label the culture as good or bad. It is to understand whether the existing culture supports the organization's leadership aspirations, strategic direction, and operational needs.
Our Organizational Culture Assessment Process
1. Leadership Discovery
We begin by speaking with senior leaders to understand:
- The organization's history and context
- Leadership aspirations
- Current challenges
- Strategic priorities
- Areas of concern
- What leadership wants to understand more clearly
This establishes the context for the assessment without assuming that leadership's perspective represents the entire organization.
2. Confidential Employee Interviews
We conduct confidential interviews with employees across functions, levels, roles, and areas of the organization.
These conversations help us identify recurring experiences, beliefs, tensions, and assumptions. Individual comments are protected, and findings are presented as collective themes rather than attributed statements.
3. Observation
Our assessment draws on principles of organizational ethnography, combining interviews, observation, document review, and organizational analysis to understand how employees actually experience the organization.
Observation helps us compare how the organization describes itself with what occurs in everyday practice.
4. Document and Environment Review
We may review materials such as:
- Vision, mission, and values statements
- Strategy and implementation plan
- Organization charts
- Policies and procedures
- Internal communications
- Meeting materials
- Employee resources
- Customer-facing materials
- Workplace design and physical surroundings
Together, these sources provide evidence of what the organization formally and informally reinforces.
5. Analysis and Synthesis
We analyze the information to identify:
- Recurring cultural themes
- Areas of alignment
- Contradictions between words and actions
- Organizational anxieties and tensions
- Leadership and employee perspective gaps
- Cultural strengths
- Barriers to organizational effectiveness
- Opportunities for meaningful change
6. Leadership Debrief and Recommendations
We present the findings to leadership through a structured and candid discussion.
The objective is not simply to describe the culture. It is to help leaders understand why current patterns exist, how those patterns affect the organization, and where leadership attention can have the greatest impact.
What You Receive
Following the assessment, leadership receives:
- A clear picture of the culture employees actually experience
- The most significant cultural strengths to protect
- Key themes, patterns, and observations
- Organizational contradictions limiting performance
- Practical recommendations for leadership action
- Prioritized opportunities for improvement
- A facilitated executive discussion
The findings can provide the foundation for leadership development, strategic planning, organizational change, restructuring, succession planning, integration, or a broader culture transformation initiative.
Culture Cannot Be Understood Through Surveys Alone
Surveys measure opinions. They rarely explain the organizational assumptions, behaviours, and relationships that created those opinions.
Culture is discovered by listening carefully, observing how the organization operates, and understanding how people experience their work every day.
Cohesive Strategy Group helps leaders see their organization more clearly, understand the cultural forces affecting performance, and make better-informed decisions about its future.
What Happens Next?
A strong culture does not begin with new words. It begins with an honest understanding of the culture that already exists.
An assessment is not the end of the process. It provides leadership with the evidence needed to strengthen culture, improve leadership practices, refine strategy, redesign structures, or build a practical implementation plan.
Let's begin with a conversation about your organization, what you are observing, and what you need to understand.