WHAT ARE THE FIVE Ss?

We are living in an age of acceleration. The population is shifting, rapidly building towards a new majority. A majority that is described in terms of plurality. One that rebukes the best practices of multiculturalism in favor of a more poly- cultural society.

Thus, it is in the interest of every company to examine how prepared its employees truly are. Every organization should be asking the question, “Is my workplace and go-to-market approach new marketplace ready?”

AN INDUSTRY REVIEWED

At REFRAME: The [Brand], we spent six years gathering data and assessing the new marketplace readiness of more than 60 organizations. Our goal? To establish an industry benchmark, an enterprise cultural maturation score. To arrive at this enterprise cultural maturation score, we conducted an assessment of each organization’s Structure, Segments, Strategy, Systems and Solutions. We ranked each on our qualitative cultural maturation scale. What we discovered was disappointing.

We found that the average company scored 2.8 out of 5 on our maturation scale. You can view the full findings in our Total Market Industry Report. The short story? The average organization is leveraging practices established in the 1960’s. This means the average workplace is two full generations culturally behind the new marketplace(c). That’s quite a gap!

A NEW APPROACH

Our findings were disappointing, but not impossible to course correct. To make the journey easier for brands of all shapes and sizes, we’ve created an educational and actionable approach. This approach, rooted in our research, leverages a common maturation model to aid each unique organization in establishing their own benchmark. It allows each workplace to discover their very own cultural maturation score.

To help you to better understand this approach, we’re sharing a high-level overview of the Reframe: The Brand Total Market Enterprise(™) Maturation Model. It’s the same process we used to assess the companies in our study. By understanding the five levels of maturation, we can begin to #closethegap together today.

THE 5 ASSESSMENT POINTS

Any good scale requires consistent areas for measurement, or assessment points. For the purposes of our cultural maturity scale, we assessed the five areas mentioned above: Structure, Segments, Strategy, Systems, and Solutions. We call these “The 5 S’s.” The chart below serves as an outline for how we define each of these terms:

UNDERSTANDING THE CULTURAL MATURITY PHASES

Each of the 5 S’s is then ranked on a maturity level ranging from one (low) to five (mastery). This is how we arrive at a 25 point assessment and an average assessment score from one (forming) to five (mastery) across the 5 S’s.

Now that you understand the base of our Cultural Maturity Model, you’re ready to begin to understand how to assess where your organization falls on each of the assessment points (5 S’s), or more simply put, how to find your very own cultural maturity score.

Please continue to follow our series (released weekly) to learn more about the 5 Stages of Cultural Maturity so you too can best assess your organization. Or, skip ahead by getting the full report and/or engaging with one of our experts at contact@getreframe.com