I hope everyone is doing well. I interviewed the plant manager for
one of our pet food treat plants for Ekvall’s dimensions of a creative
climate assessment worksheet. I can say I was not surprised by his
answers to any of the ten dimensions. However, I did find out some
valuable information for various aspects that need to be worked on
to improve the company’s culture. Honestly, I am going to use this
assessment for interviewing other individuals, and teams within our
organization to help identify areas of our culture that need to be
worked on, so we can build a better supportive, and creative culture.
If I had to add additional dimensions to the assessment I would add
conditions and leadership. The reason I would add these dimensions
is that the conditions an employee are subjected to help contribute
to the culture. If they do not feel safe, appreciated, or supported
they will not be willing to contribute to or drive the culture. The
reason I chose leadership is that it is a factor that drives a creative
and supportive culture. Leaders can make or break a culture. At the
company I am employed with, we have one-on-one interviews, and
leadership is a valuable question that we use to collect qualitative
data to understand our leadership's impact on the culture.
I honestly didn’t find a dimension that was hard to evaluate. Being
that I interviewed a plant manager, I feel it was easy for him to
provide the information needed. However, I feel if I interviewed an
employee or supervisor there may be challenges obtaining the
information for some of the dimensions. I have learned throughout
my years of being a leader that everyone views a culture differently,
and for an organization to truly understand if it is providing a
creative culture, it must obtain the perspectives from all its
employees. They must also understand that people's perspectives are
driven by emotions, and they change day to day, thus making it hard
to pinpoint issues that do not support a creative or supportive
culture.
Since I am the VP of Operations for our organization, I do have a
good understanding of our culture. Like all cultures, it needs work
and must adapt to changes within the working environment, and
external aspects such as various cultures and beliefs. After
completing the assessment, I can say I was surprised by the low
score in dimension trust and openness. I know it takes a lot of time
and effort to build trust within a culture, and we do have a lot of
junior leaders without the training and experience needed to
establish this trust. These leaders are still in a reactive leadership
stage and need to be trained, so they can transition into creative
leaders, which is something we are working on.
I was happy to see that one of the highest scores of 3 was in the
dimension freedom. I am proud to say that we are a continuous
improvement culture that supports and provides freedom to our
employees. We push them to find improvements in every aspect of
the organization and voice their ideas, thoughts, and opinions, so we
can improve. However, the plant manager and I were tough on the
ratings, and we gave the idea time a one since we do not have a
slotted time for it. This caused us to give freedom a lower score
because without providing an environment where ideas are
discussed, and able to be bounced off everyone’s thoughts, we do
not feel we are truly providing the freedom we should. The plant
manager and I are discussing a way to implement either a weekly or
bi-weekly meeting to do this, and I am excited to see what the
outcome will be.
