Culture Archetypes
Measuring Culture
Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Culture can be measured systematically to provide actionable insight for designing and delivering change.
The Competing Value Framework provides a structured way to understand cultural tendencies and predict typical behaviours.
We have updated the concept to include Irrational Change thinking.
The Competing Values Framework
The framework uses two dimensions which form four cultural quadrants:
Dimensions
1. Flexibility ↔ Stability: Degree of adaptability vs. predictability.
Internal ↔ External Focus: Focus on internal cohesion vs. external competitiveness.
Archetypes (Quadrants)
Collaborate (Clan): High Flexibility, High Internal. Relationship‑driven, trust‑based, teamwork‑oriented.
Create (Adhocracy): High Flexibility, High External: Innovation, experimentation, risk‑taking, future‑oriented.
Control (Hierarchy): High Stability, High Internal: Process‑driven, structured, efficient, predictable.
Compete (Market): High Stability, High External: Results‑oriented, competitive, target‑and goal driven.
Important principle: A balanced profile is not optimal; distinctive strengths create competitive advantage.
Archetype Features
Collaborate
Leadership: Mentors, coaches, parental.
Upside: Fast movement when trust is high; flexible.
Downside: Decision‑making can be slow without trust.
Threat: Exclusion or erosion of values
Time horizon: Values the past & legacy.
Create
Leadership: Entrepreneurs, risk‑takers, vision‑driven.
Upside: Innovation, problem‑solving, opportunity creation.
Downside: Low efficiency, potential distraction or duplication.
Threat: Governance
Time horizon: Future‑focused.
Control
Leadership: Structured, predictable, efficiency‑focused.
Upside: Clarity, consistency, reliable delivery.
Downside: Bureaucratic, slow to change, disempowering.
Threat: ambiguity
Time horizon: Long‑term stability.
Compete
Leadership: Hard‑driving, action‑oriented, competitive.
Upside: Strong results, high performance focus.
Downside: “How” results are achieved may suffer; exclusion risk.
Threat: process slowing progress
Time horizon: Short‑term, “now” focused.
Assessing Culture
We assess six themes, each with four statements, representing each archetype.
The user should indicate relative strengths for each archetype within each theme, or give descriptive evidence to enable strength to be determined accurately.
Themes
(Each theme contains one statement per archetype.)
Archetype Experience: Relationships matter (Collaborate); dynamic & risk‑taking (Create); smooth & process‑oriented (Control); results & competitiveness (Compete).
Leadership Style: Mentor/coach; innovator; process leader; results‑driver.
How We Work: Teamwork/consensus; freedom/risk taking; predictability/rigour; action/competition.
Ethos: Trust & loyalty; leading edge & risk taking; process & clarity; achievement & results.
Strategic Focus: People & inclusion; new opportunities & experimentation; stable efficiency; targets & competitiveness.
Measures of Success: People capability; innovation; efficiency & low cost; market share & results
Measure
Calculate the strength of each archetype in each theme. Either by allocating points, share 100 points across four statements, or through assessing rich text for evidence. If points are allocated, a gap of 15 or more is significant and hard to close.
Outputs
Results are plotted on a 2×2 graph to show dominant quadrants.
Can assess both current culture and future‑required culture, to identify gaps.
Gap Assessment
A gap between current and needed culture indicates misalignment that may threaten change success.
Only two things change culure:
A genuine crisis: which is rare but can cause an organisation to reconsider its beliefs and behaviours to survive
Leadership: Leaders changing their beliefs, how they behave, what they measure, where they invest their time, and who they reward in their teams.
Options for Addressing Gaps
Change the Initiative: Adapt it to fit your current culture. Lower risk, easier adoption.
Change the Culture: Requires top‑down behavioural shifts; difficult and often requires leadership replacement (up to 80%).
Stop the Initiative: If alignment is impossible, value won’t be achieved.
Cultural Fit & Leadership Implications
General guidance
Culture change happens through crisis or leadership behaviour, nothing else.
Bringing in a disruptive external leader typically fails without trust and cultural respect.
Individual disruptors in teams usually get normalised or expelled within 18 months.
Large misalignments between create vs control, or collaborate vs compete, often create predictable tensions.
Different functions may have different cultural biases (e.g., finance = control; innovation = create).
Extreme Measures
If culture threatens survival, more radical steps may be needed:
Replacement of the leadership population (more than 80%), especially those with control over value inflows, or strategic assets.
Relocation with selective retention: to reset and restart the culture
Outsourcing, but only after fixing context and culture, not as a workaround.
Key insight: You cannot beat culture; leaders get the outcomes they deserve.
