Trusted Culture · Culture Assessment

Reveal cultural patterns.
Understand their impact.

Our culture assessments reveal how culture is actually experienced in day-to-day work and which recurring patterns shape collaboration, decisions, and change.

This creates a shared, robust view of the current situation. It reveals where the desired and lived culture align, where they diverge, and what impact this has on teams and the organization.

Discuss a culture assessment Explore the approach ↓

Bento composition representing reflection, cultural patterns, and shared calibration

The starting point

Culture beyond the mission statement

Stated values express the aspiration. Lived patterns of behavior reveal the culture.

Values, leadership principles, and cultural principles may be clearly articulated. Whether they truly provide direction, however, is determined in everyday work – in decisions, routines, collaboration, and the way tensions and change are handled.

The same cultural aspiration can be experienced very differently across areas, levels of hierarchy, or under pressure. What provides reliable guidance in one part of the organization may remain implicit, depend on particular individuals, or not be applied at all elsewhere.

A culture assessment therefore does not label a culture as simply good or bad. It reveals, with nuance, which patterns are at work today, what they enable, and where they limit trust, collaboration, or the capacity for change.

The frame of reference

The three impact qualities of a Trusted Culture

A culture is experienced as credible when shared principles are not merely stated. They must be understood, upheld consistently across areas and situations, and provide practical guidance in everyday work.

Explicit

Are shared principles, expectations, and standards of behavior clearly articulated and understood? Is there a shared understanding of what they mean for leadership and collaboration – or is culture driven primarily by unspoken assumptions?

Consistent

Are the shared principles experienced consistently across teams, functions, and levels of hierarchy? Do they still hold under time pressure, in conflict, and when difficult decisions must be made – or does their application depend on particular individuals and situations?

Applied

Do cultural principles shape concrete decisions, conversations, and tensions? Are they translated into observable behavior – or do they remain abstract and disconnected from everyday work?

Areas of assessment

Where culture becomes visible in everyday work

Leadership and decisions

How are decisions actually made and supported? Which unspoken standards influence them? How consistently do leaders convey shared expectations through their own actions?

Collaboration and accountability

Which patterns foster reliability and cross-functional collaboration? Where is accountability clearly assumed – and where is it avoided, passed on, or informally redistributed?

Communication and conflict

How openly can different perspectives, mistakes, and tensions be addressed? Where do existing communication patterns support clarification – and where do they lead to defensiveness, withdrawal, or unnecessary friction?

Learning and change

How does the organization respond to uncertainty, feedback, and new demands? Which patterns enable learning and adaptation – and which cause familiar behaviors to persist?

The approach

From individual perceptions to a shared cultural landscape

Bring different perspectives together systematically.

A robust picture of culture cannot be formed from a single perspective. The central question, scope, and assessment formats are therefore tailored to the organization and its specific need for insight.

01
Clarify the mandate and frame of reference
At the outset, we clarify the reason for the assessment, the insights sought, its organizational scope, and how the findings will be used. Existing values, cultural principles, and leadership principles – where available – form the frame of reference.
02
Capture perspectives and lived experience
Relevant perspectives from different areas, functions, and levels of hierarchy are included systematically. The focus is not on individual assessments, but on recurring perceptions, behaviors, and patterns of impact.
03
Analyze patterns and gaps
The perspectives gathered are consolidated into a nuanced overall picture. This reveals shared patterns, differences between groups, and potential gaps between the stated aspiration and lived reality.
Alongside tensions, the assessment explicitly considers cultural strengths that already support direction, trust, and collaboration.
04
Interpret the findings together
The findings are not simply delivered as a report. In a structured dialogue, the relevant patterns, their impact, and the questions they raise are interpreted together.
This creates clarity about what should be preserved, strengthened, or developed further in a focused way.

Continuous Calibration

An assessment does not change culture by itself. It makes focused development possible.

The key is not to treat cultural impact as something that can be clarified once and for all. Leaders regularly reflect on how their behavior and decisions are experienced and realign their actions with the shared cultural principles.

CALIBRATE can support the subsequent transfer into practice. Company-specific culture content, practical leadership resources, and individually selected mind triggers keep relevant principles and development areas present in day-to-day leadership.

Discover CALIBRATE

The right starting point

Three culture services.
The development need determines the approach.

01Current service

Culture Assessment

Reveal cultural patterns, strengths, and tensions, and create a sound basis for further decisions.

Culture Development

Define the desired culture explicitly and translate it into concrete, observable principles of behavior.

Discover Culture Development

Change Process

Test new patterns of behavior in everyday practice, reflect on their impact, and embed them across teams, functions, and levels of hierarchy.

Discover Change Process

Personal contact

Create clarity about the culture people actually experience.

In an initial conversation, we clarify the central question, organizational scope, relevant perspectives and how the findings will be used. This provides the basis for an assessment design tailored to the organization and its actual need for insight.

Leader with a notebook on a rooftop terrace