Culture Alignment Framework — a uniquely powerful tool for aligning strategy and culture

An organization's culture can support or undermine its business strategy. We help clients assess the alignment of culture and strategy, establish a target culture and evaluate the degree to which executives are likely to fit with, adapt to and shape culture.

Our framework for assessing culture is rooted in the insight that each organization and each individual must address the inherent tension between two critical dimensions of organizational dynamics:

• Attitude toward people, from independence to interdependence
• Attitude toward change, from flexibility to stability

Applying this fundamental insight, we have identified eight primary and universal styles, which can be used to diagnose highly complex and diverse behavioral patterns in a culture and understand how an individual executive is likely to align with that culture. Because the model uses the same language to characterize culture and individual styles, assessment of cultural alignment is straightforward and actionable.