Customer satisfaction registers bottom-line results!

Pulte Home Corporation, one of the United State's largest home building companies with annual corporate revenues of $3.7 billion, recently used the Denison Organizational Culture (DOC) survey as a predictor of customer satisfaction and financial performance. As you can see in the profiles, Pulte's top five markets in customer satisfaction have a much stronger culture profile than the bottom five markets.

The average difference in customer satisfaction between the top 5 and bottom 5 markets averages 24 percent. The correlations between Pulte's culture scores and the satisfaction of their customers was significant for all twelve indexes, ranging from .4 to .7

Pulte Homes registered record earnings for 1999, up 29% from the previous year.

e-Leadership at Ford
We recently designed and implemented a Skills Assessment 360 for Leadership for the New Economy, an innovative new program for high potential leaders at Ford Motor Company. Moving at Internet speed ourselves, we completed the initial project, including concept mapping and design of an online data collection system for data and feedback, in just 6 weeks!

Online Surveys
Most individuals and organizations have moved towards taking the Denison Surveys online, either over the Internet or corporate Intranet In many cases, we have helped automate our survey as well as other internal surveys. Not only is online automation more cost-effective, it is much faster, efficient, and in sync with trends in e-business.

Albertson's Sees Culture as Leverage to Leadership

Albertson's, the United State's third-largest grocery chain, recently held a 3-day senior leadership conference. Albertson's intention was to set the strategic direction for the company and to reclaim their position as the company that "changes rules in retailing." Albertson's prides itself on neighborhood marketing and customer responsiveness. It used the Denison Organizational Culture Survey (DOCS) as an instrument to assess strengths and identify opportunities for improvement.

According to Bill Neale who conducted the survey and spoke at the conference, Albertson's sees culture as the leverage for sales growth and profitability, and has decided to use the DOCS as way to drive mission and involvement throughout their 8 managerial regions. Albertson's will use the DOCS as a way of identifying high and low performing stores to provide a target for all stores to use to improve overall performance.

Major Telco Combines Simulation with Culture
Discovery Learning finds that simulations often drive home the message of the Denison Surveys. A large telecommunications company launched a global change initiative focusing on customer service. In a session with the company, Chris Musselwhite, president of Discovery Learning, coupled the use of the Denison Organizational Culture Survey (DOCS) with his company's Paper Planes Inc., (PPI) simulation.

The goal of the simulation is to sell as many planes as possible under conditions that meet changing customer requirements while managing costs. A facilitator plays the role of the customer. Soon after the game started, participants began complaining about the customer's demands and rigidity. During the debrief, accusations against the customer continued. The participants were then presented with their culture data addressing their customer focus. One executive responded by saying, "We just did this. The culture is us!" The lesson struck home and through subsequent runs of the simulation, the group gradually gained a better understanding of changes they must make to improve their customer service... and impact their bottom line.

Discovery Learning is a leading distributor of the Denison surveys. Discovery Learning conducts several Denison Train the Trainer workshops each year. For next year's dates, visit www.discoverylearning.com.

Diagnosing Organizational Cultures: Validating a Model and Method
Daniel Denison, Hee-Jae Cho, Joana Young
We just completed a new comprehensive validity study of the organizational culture model. Our study tested the model and measures using data from 36,542 individuals in 94 different organizations and found strong support for the relationship of the model to a variety of organizational performance measures. You may find this paper to be a great reference piece for researchers and decision-makers who want to make certain that they are choosing a valid instrument. This paper is now under review for journal publication.

Organizational Culture:
Can it be a Key Lever for Driving Organizational Change?
This new book chapter, authored by Dan Denison, focuses on using culture to drive the change process. Contained in the chapter are three case studies featuring American and European financial service and manufacturing companies. The chapter also includes an overview of the model and measures and is very useful in explaining Denison's approach to diagnosis and change.

To appear in: S. Cartwright and C. Cooper. 2000. The Handbook of Organizational Culture. London: John Wiley & Sons.

Dan Denison has been working with Aston Promentor in Copenhagen, Denmark to train their consultants on the model and the survey. Aston Promentor, our largest distributor in Europe with more than 1400 consultants, is a rapidly growing consulting firm specializing in change management. For more about Aston, please visit www.astonitgroup.com.

John Baldoni, a key member of our network of consultants, is publishing a book on leadership this December. 180 Ways to Walk the Leadership Talk offers guidelines and insights into how we can practice leadership in the workplace. Walk the Leadership Talk is available at www.walkthetalk.com or by calling 1-888-822-9255. This handy book serves as a terrific thank you gift for participants attending one of your training sessions.

Caroline Fisher, Ph.D. has developed Pathways to Performance, Moving Your Denison Culture Data from Diagnosis to Action for use in conjunction with the DOCS. Pathways provides tools for implementing change initiatives related to all twelve of the survey attributes. Many consultants have found Pathways an essential step to improving organizational performance in the wake of a Denison diagnosis.

Caroline also is conducting her second workshop on the Denison Surveys for the Consultant Institute, which is presented by Linkage, a leading management development resource firm. The workshop will be held December 3-7 at the Renaissance Orlando Resort. For more information call 781-862-3157 or write Caroline at CarolineFisher@compuserve.com