Engagement — the Culture Quandary

How to avoid a costly culture bypass...

In my last article I promised a specific, illustrative example for the pervasive confusion around how when orgs only measure engagement they fail to realize they are only measuring work climate/not work culture— it’s not the same thing. It isn’t wrong to measure engagement; it’s just incredibly incomplete at best and incompetent at worst. A culture bypass increases the likelihood of misdiagnosing, mistreating and failing to optimize organizational health.

Here a textbook example:

For ~3 years, they made “steady but slow” progress towards a full digital transformation. Despite high engagement scores and reported “high confidence” in the leadership team… the SLT was growing more frustrated and confused by how much faster competitors were making the same AI/digital shift. “What’s wrong with our culture — why can’t we go faster?”

During that three year time period, a substantial amount of effort and money was invested in operating model “fixes” to overcome organizational level quality and external adaptability outcome issues (e.g., agile, lean startup, digital skills training, scenario planning training, creative work spaces, tech replacements and a complete or restructure).

The organization was well equipped but nothing seemed to reduce friction or increase transformation velocity to help meet the expectations of their customers let alone the board.

The SLT concluded that “our people are just resistant to change; they lack the courage to try new things; they lack vision and scenario planning skills; they are unwilling to make decisions and accept accountability in the face of uncertainty.”

This seems to be a familiar storyline for misdiagnosis; this is in fact, not an inexplicable culture quandary — this is a textbook culture bypass.

When they finally engaged in a culture strategy that looked beyond their version of the culture bypass (i.e., just measuring engagement/climate), they were able to see with much greater precision what behavioral…