Assessment & Culture

Accurately predicting which executives will succeed in a senior leadership role and which will not is critical, but challenging for most organizations. Traditional assessment approaches weren’t designed to predict whether an individual has the ability to stretch beyond his or her current capabilities to grow successfully into a new job and change along with it and the organization. In a recent report, Spencer Stuart explores the characteristics of the most effective executive assessments.

The attitudes of employees are strongly correlated to the culture of an organization. Many people have tried to define the word culture, with some difficulty. Culture is an invisible, constantly changing force.

Richard Metheny’s, practice leader of Leadership Solutions at Witt/Kieffer, article “Can You Outsmart a Behavioral Assessment?” was published in CFO Magazine. This article discusses the benefits of comprehensive behavioral assessments.

Companies have become increasingly focused on culture. The bad news is that many culture-changing initiatives still fall short of their intended purpose. The problem Senn Delaney finds is that culture is driven from the top down. Yet most executives are unable to define their company’s culture and much less figure out how to transfer it throughout the organization.

It is widely understood that culture can impede or facilitate performance, and that poor cultural fit is one of the most common reasons why newly hired executives fail. Spencer Stuart finds that despite the growing appreciation for culture, few executives can describe their company’s culture, what drives their culture or whether the current culture supports or works against their business plan.

One lever of performance that rarely appears on a board’s agenda is culture. Spencer Stuart finds very few boards put equal focus on culture as they do strategy, risk or CEO succession planning. Culture has the power to make or break business strategy and even the most experienced executive. Boards can enhance their understanding of culture to improve company culture and foster long-term shareholder value.

In a recent report IIC Partners identifies best practices for retaining future generations of leadership, the challenges of managing multiple generations within the same workforce and the need for CHROs to refresh organizational cultures.