Welcome to CultureOverviews

CultureOverviews invites users to

• Grow awareness of how organizational culture is understood and talked about

• Notice how these ways of thinking shape everyday cultural behaviors

• Engage others in dialogue and design small experiments for change

These 6 cards enable users to explore organizational culture at a zoomed­-out level. Each card shows a different way that culture can show up in an organization. None of these are inherently right or wrong; they simply represent patterns you may recognize in yourself, your team, or your wider system.

To explore the deck, you can follow the Simple Exercise provided, scan the QR code for additional exercises, or create your own ways of working with the cards.

Understanding the labels 

Each card includes a label (for example, Expert or Achiever). You may choose to ignore these labels, use them as shorthand in conversation (“I’m holding the Achiever card”), or explore them more deeply as part of the theory that underpins the deck.

The labels refer to Torbert and Herdman-Barker’s adult (or vertical) development framework, which describes seven distinct worldviews – or action logics – through which people interpret and respond to the world: Opportunist, Diplomat, Expert, Achiever, Redefining, Transforming, and Alchemical*.

Each worldview builds on the previous one, offering increasingly complex and flexible ways of making sense of situations and acting within them over time You can find out more about the theory by scanning the QR code.

These cards are designed to take an overview of the organizational culture. To get more nuanced insights into organizational culture, CultureOverviews can also be used in tandem with the other decks in CultureViews.

Why is there no Alchemical card?

There is currently no Alchemical card. The reason for this is that some organizations might have Alchemical moments in their culture, but we are unaware of any organization more generally having an Alchemical culture. We’re keeping this a live inquiry and welcome ongoing feedback from practitioners.