To turn culture aspiration into reality you need to actively manage your culture, just as you do your other business operations. In this
If you know building the right culture is important for your future business successes, then you know that you need leaders who will contribute to that culture by ‘walking the talk’. You want your existing leaders to display the values and behaviours that matter to you, and new leaders you hire to do the same. This will accelerate your culture change process.
Hiring and developing your leaders based on potential culture contribution is so important when you are attempting to enhance or evolve your culture. However, in our experience, organisations often struggle with finding the tools and support they need to measure these effectively and to later offer developmental coaching if needed. At Walking the Talk, we believe we have the answer.
The Taylor Assessment is a tool that measures the likely contribution that any leader, whether a new candidate or existing employee, is going to make to your culture and working environment. This is not about measuring perceived culture ‘fit’ to the current culture, but about assessing what the person will help to build, develop, and the legacy they will leave.
It is the only tool of its kind on the market which has been developed by cuture experts. It is borne from the experience, research, and data Walking the Talk has built up over more than 25 years, spanning all types of organisational cultures. We combined this with the recruitment and assessment expertise of our parent company ZRG. Over the years, we have encountered and worked with the full range of behaviours, values, and mindsets match the types of organisational cultures which guarantee success. We have mapped these to six cultural ‘archetypes’ we have created.
Our tool is most useful in response to organisations who are either looking to build new characteristics into their culture to deliver their strategic goals (for example, more customer centricity) or those who cherish their culture and want to protect it, particularly if they are growing fast.
Developing, selecting and promoting leaders is a key lever for accelerating culture change. Using our culture-based assessment process gives a scientific basis to this process, and will add to the accuracy with which you can identify great talent, and help others to close the gap between their natural preferences and your target culture.
The tool is also great to access a team’s profile, helping a team to understand their natural strengths and any gaps, measuring this against a target culture that they themselves set.
Recruitment must help to build the culture you want and be completely aligned to your target culture. When candidates on your slate have completed the assessment, we can help you compare and contrast different candidates, and make this a key input into your final decision. We also provide interview questions, specifically linked to each anchor behaviour in our assessment, so you can further probe any areas you have concerns about.
As a result of our work over decades specialising in this field, we have mountains of evidence that hiring and developing the right leaders for the culture you want is critical. Get it right, and these individuals will act as beacons guiding and pulling the organisation forward. Get it wrong, and they will hold change back. It’s that simple, and that hard. Until now.
You can’t determine culture contribution without proper measurement, and the Taylor Assessment is the best tool on the market to help you bring in the people you need for the culture you want. We're excited to work with organisations in a new way to identify and develop the behaviours that will most support your desired culture, and in doing so enable you to achieve your business goals.
For insights on culture view our selection of case studies, ebooks, reports and white papers or contact us to learn how we can transform your culture.
