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Values and Culture Analysis
The Scaled Comparison - A Tool to Focus on Your Organization's Culture and Values
Values and Culture Analysis with the Scaled Comparison is a customized values survey. It can clarify your present values, and build a consensus among your organization's top executives for values realignment that can secure your future.
 Clarifying the value system and breathing
life into it are the greatest contributions
a leader can make. Moreover, that's what
the top people in the excellent companies
seem to worry about most.
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Peters & Waterman
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If you already have a clear picture of you values and need to know if the rank and file in the organization understand and are applying those values, we have another values tool for this.
Here are two of the ways you can look at values:
- Strategic Values - Strategic Values are the shared beliefs concerning the long-term direction and end results of the organization. A strategic value defines how an organization views itself or wishes to be perceived by its customers or clients. These shared beliefs guide on-going activities and decisions. Organizations have relatively few strategic values.
- Tactical Values - Tactical values are the day-to-day ways we conduct ourselves to achieve the end goals (the Strategic Values). They are models, behaviors, and ways of operating. Tactical values define the "means" to get to the desired "ends." There are always more tactical values than strategic values for there are more ways to get somewhere than places to go.
The above components exist in organizations whether they are effective or ineffective. Whether they are industry leaders or on the brink of bankruptcy, they have strategic values that chart their course and tactical values that guide their policies and procedures. The more effective organizations are more clear about their values than the ineffective, but all organizations have and are governed by these same processes.
Where to Start?
Start where you are. If there is a Mission Statement framed and hanging on the wall, that is a good place to look for Strategic Values. Statements of Mission and Vision are relatively easy to develop, but they don't do the whole job. If you have a mission statement, it's because some people took the time to agree on statements about what the organization stands for. It may be a good place to start. On the other hand, if your statement looks like it was written by aliens from another planet and bears no relationship to the current organization, then maybe Strategic Values is where you need to begin.
But in most cases, the mission statement is fine. The real problem is translating the values expressed in the mission into day-to-day working behaviors. That's when it makes sense to start with Tactical Values, the values that actually guide our decision-making, priorities, and policies in the workplace.
Why the Scaled Comparison over other methods?
- You get a consensus, not an average - A consensus is what you would expect to emerge from face-to-face interactions between disagreeing people trying to reach a workable solution that is acceptable to everyone. You don’t reach a consensus with a simple numerical average of checkmarks.
- You get priorities, not preferences - Surveys that use “agree/disagree” scales will not give you a consensus on priorities for action. They won’t tell you what trade-offs people will support, nor the trade-offs they will oppose.
- Participation - The Scaled Comparison allows many more people to participate in the analysis of values, and can even track the subgroup opinions within the total sample.
- Small subgroups - Most surveying techniques require that groups or subgroups have at least 20 to 30 subjects in them. With the Scaled Comparison, subgroups as small as 10 or 15 people may be studied. This permits the delineation of values in and between small, but important decision-making groups.
- Large numbers of values - Conventional methods become cumbersome if they attempt to study more than a handful of key values, especially from more than a single perspective. With no significant increase in resondent time or effort, 30 or more different values can be studied using the Scaled Comparison.
- A "custom" study at an "off-the-shelf" price -You get a study that uses exactly the questions and values you want, worded exactly the way you want them, at or below the cost of someone else's preprinted form.
- Multiple survey questions - The study of values is greatly enhanced by asking more than the simple "What's Important?" question. With the Scaled Comparison you can go beyond a single question to study 1) values in the past, 2) values necessary in the future, 3) strategic values, 4) tactical values, and so on.
- Complete control of manipulation - The Scaled Comparison protects the organization against errors in the results due to
- intentional manipulation
- inconsistent judgments
- misunderstood instructions or concepts
 This tool is available and deployable online.
Show me what Values Analysis looks like.
If you are interested, you can contact us and tell us about your needs and situation. You can also click here to learn more about how we work together on a project like this.
How do I get more information?
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