I’ve noticed an interesting pattern among the organizations that have measured their cultures using our culture assessment to date. While every culture is unique, I’m noticing that when it comes to Markers like Agility, Collaboration, and Transparency, many organizations seem to be working hard on what I call the “human” side of those Markers, but they haven’t put quite as much work into developing the systems or processes to support them.

For example, if you look at Collaboration, organizations are scoring more futurist when it comes to things like “teaming up” and “sharing the workload,” but they are much more traditional when it comes to the more process-focused building blocks like “borders, boundaries, and territories” and “cross-functional communication.” I see similar patterns within innovation—we’re all about creativity and inspiration, yet we don’t have processes in place for beta testing, prototyping, or experimentation.

Getting your humans focused on the parts of your culture that will drive success is awesome, but it’s just the first step. You also have to build processes and systems that support the behaviors that everyone has acknowledged are important. Having a ton of collaboration—but only WITHIN individual departments—may not be exactly what you were shooting for.

image credit