9 - Workplace Wellbeing Recap

How good of a culture fit are you with what you’re planning next?

You are thinking about what’s next, you might be moving laterally or up or a totally new job.

How do you uncover if you are a culture fit for your next position or organization you are going to? We will revisit Schein’s analysis of organizational culture:

1. Artifacts:  You know where you want to go? What are those things you see when you walk into the organization?  There is a feel in the office.  What is it you want? Write it down, this is what you are looking for.
2. Espoused Values:  What is written, mission, vision, values, strategic plans? This is often the easiest to find on websites or in the office.
3. Underlying assumptions:  This is what really is going on in the organization. What do you want them to be in your next organization?  You have to uncover them. Formed by people being together for a period of time and solving a problem, this gets passed along. Build questions about what you want to uncover?  For example; tell me about the last time someone left, why did they leave?

Write down what you want,  you need to get face to face with people in your organization. Does the audio match the video. It is worth the work to uncover these areas to find out if you are a good fit.

Do you know your organizational culture well enough to make a change?

In Edgar Schein’s book “Organizational Culture and Leadership” he proposed that organization culture can be analyzed on three levels.

1. Artifacts - what do you physically see and feel when you check out an office space or business?
2. Espoused values - what is the ideal mission, policy and expectation of behavior? 
3. Underlying assumption - the expectations that are assumed but not necessarily talked about.       

 If you are an executive exploring a new company or organization walking through the history of that company looking at the above can become very insightful and helpful to making a cultural impact.