Applications:
Organizational Development and Management

For today’s organizational leaders and change agents, getting a quick yet deeply meaningful read on organizational culture can mean the difference between two very different outcomes—leveraging what’s best about an organization into real-world success or flailing around for strategies that may or may not reflect its actual capacity or character.

The archetypal approach to organizational development and management helps leaders and change agents achieve success by creating a clear and tangible picture of the patterns that shape organizational behavior and belief systems.  Ultimately, the approach identifies a core storyline, augmented by supporting themes, that captures organizational, group, or team strengths and values; meaning and motivation; balance and focus; and culture and capacity.

From there, it’s possible for leaders to set any direction for the organization with a deep understanding of its most authentic and powerful motivations, purpose, and processes.  As it clarifies its vision and mission, creates a strategic plan, crafts a brand identity, and develops its structure and its leadership, the organization knows it is on the solid ground of an analysis that decreases resistance by working with, not against, what is most real in its culture.

Process and Outcomes

Most organizational development and management processes begin with a quantitative assessment of organizational culture using the Kenexa Cultural Insight™ Survey (KCI™), an online assessment tool that identifies an organization’s archetypes based on the strengths, values, and story-based patterns that shape its potential.  This quantitative assessment is followed up by in-depth qualitative engagement to enrich the findings and translate data into a meaningful course of action.  Together, these quantitative and qualitative culture assessments provide a uniquely comprehensive and efficient approach to integrating any or all of an organization’s strategic and operating decision-making with its best and most authentic assets. These include:

• Branding and marketing that provide a powerful attractor field, linking to strong
  and unconscious motivations in external and internal customers
• Recruitment, retention, and employee engagement efforts that sustain high
  morale and loyalty
• Coordinated leadership, team, and organizational development efforts tailored
  to the organization’s culture, values, and strengths
• Change efforts that succeed because they are working with, not against, the intrinsic 
  (and often unconscious) motivations of the organization and the people in it
• Problem-solving that shifts the energy from counterproductive to positive expressions
  of the same archetype