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 CULTURE CREATION CANVAS

How to use this tool for best results

Every company has a culture, whether you realize it or not. Like most things, if you’re not
addressing it in a coordinated and strategic way, than it probably isn’t a very good one.
The Culture Creation Canvas was created as a means to provide a framework from which
to identify, define, and develop your culture based on organizational goals. The
information in this document should help walk you through the process in creating your
company or team culture by working through the individual sections.

I. DEFINITION
Define what culture means to you. What is the culture of a team? What defines it?
It is important to get down your initial ideas, thoughts, and feelings about culture,
as they are likely to change over the course of the exercise. This section gives a
frame of reference from which to work from.  
 
Next move on to the two subsections about good and bad culture. Don’t worry
about complete sentences here; focus on filling them with free thoughts and word
associations – like a stream of consciousness exercise.​ The idea here is to define
  ​
where you are at now. 

II. EXAMPLES
This section is meant to help us further define the things that we like and dislike
about certain company cultures. It’s not important at this point whether or not the
opinions are accurate. What’s important here is what you like and dislike about a
company and why.

A. NAME THE COMPANY

Start by writing the name of the company. If there isn’t enough space, just
choose an abbreviated version that you will be able to identify later. 

B. IDENTIFY ITS CULTURE

Identify whether or not you believe that it has a negative or positive culture.
For brevity’s sake, a simple plus (+) or minus (–) sign will suffice. 
 C. LIST YOUR REASON
List why you feel that way. Boil it down to a few words that represent what
you love or hate about that company’s culture. 

Repeat steps A-C until you have filled up all the rows or you have a sufficient
amount of insight into makes or breaks a team’s culture.

III. INVENTORY
Here you begin to shift gears into a more evaluative mindset. The idea is to
perform a thorough reflection of the strengths and weaknesses of your own team
or company culture.

Be honest with yourself and answer the questions as best you can. The idea is to
evaluate your team in each of the areas listed. For each attribute, assign a value
from zero (0) to five (5); zero being no value, and 5 being completely fulfilled.

A. COMMUNICATION
The first column is the communication column. As you set out to assign
values regarding your team’s communication, ask yourself the following
questions:
1. Do we communicate in a way that is ​ Receptive​of others
feedback and ideas?
2. Do we respond in a way that is ​ Supportive​of one another?
3. Are we ​ Assertive​ when sharing our position?
4. Does my team communicate ​ Without Fear​of reprisal or
retribution?
5. Do we express ourselves with ​ Clarity​
to each other?
B. TEAMWORK
This column seeks to address the way your team works together. As you
assign the appropriate values, ask yourself the following questions: 
1. Do we act in a way that is ​ Ethical​in all of our decisions?
2. Are we ​Adaptable​ to whatever changes may arise?
3. Do we show ​ Enthusiasm​ for the work or project at hand?
4. How ​ Focused​ and dedicated are we to our mission?
5. How ​ Resilient​
are we? How well do we bounce back from
adversity?
 C. LEADERSHIP
This column is about the leadership of your team. This might be your boss,
or your boss’s boss, or even you. As you assign values ask yourself the
following questions: 
1. Are decisions made ​ Decisively​
, leaving no room for doubt or
confusion?
2. Does the leader of this team show ​ Foresight​in the ability to
predict needs and problems before they arise?
3. Are the members of this team given a lot of ​ Freedom​ and
responsibility with opportunities to shine?
4. Is this team led with ​Empathy ​ and understanding?
5. Is the leader quick to show ​ Humility​, never hesitating to admit
wrongs, never taking credit for the work of others, and always
willing to listen?

D. TOTALING
Once you’ve assigned values to each of the attributes, go ahead and total
them out. Once totaled it should give you a fairly good idea of where you
stand, especially in relation to the other categories. It should allow you to
quickly identify your culture issues (should there be any).

IMPORTANT NOTE​ : A score resulting in less than 15 points in any one category, or
55 points in total, could be a sign of pretty serious issues. You may want to take a
serious look at the makeup of your team, or bring in a professional consultant.

IV. APPRAISAL
This section will help you define the best-case scenario of where you want to be
and the worst-case scenario of where you might be. Going through this portion of
the exercise should net you two results: accurately diagnosing the areas that are
dense with problems and discovering potential problems that you had not
thought of before.

A. POSITIVE ASSOCIATIONS
These are the positive words or phrases you hope people would use to
describe your team and its culture.  
 B. NEGATIVE ASSOCIATIONS
These are the negative attributes that people may or may not, but could
possibly associate with your team or culture.

C. EMOTIONAL
With this row, what would people feel when they think about being a
member of the team or company? What are the positive and negative
associations?

D. FUNCTIONAL
With this row how would people feel while operatin​
g​
as a member of the
team or company? What are the positive and negative associations?

E. SOCIAL
With this row how would people feel in a social situation as part of the
team or company? What are the positive and negative associations?

The key here is to be as honest as possible, so you can identify issues and
brainstorm possible solutions. When finished with this section, compare it with
the “Inventory” section and try to identify points of correlation.

V. APPLICATION
The “Application” section serves to help organize and prioritize what you’ve
learned in order to help you apply it towards seeing effective results.

A. SEE THE NEED

Take a look between the “Inventory” section and the “Appraisal” section and
identify all the problems identified. Which three are at the maximal
intersection of severity and urgency? Ask yourself, “Which three problems
need the most immediate attention?”

B. TAKE ACTION
Once, you have identified the most immediate needs, the next step is to
take action. You are going to come up with three solutions; an immediate
quick fix, a short-term answer, and a more permanent solution for the
future.
1. QUICK-FIX
The Quick Fix is meant to stabilize the situation until more effective
means can be put in place. What can immediately be done to
improve the situation?
 2. SHORT-TERM ANSWER
Short-term answers have a higher level of efficacy. What solution
can come in and stabilize the situation for a few weeks or months
until a large-scale solution can be implemented?
3. PERMANENT SOLUTION
While the Short-term Answer is in place and you learn more about
the deeper issues affecting the team. The Permanent Solution will
evolve over time. For now put your best guess, as that will serve as a
starting point for future brainstorming.

If you can’t complete this section at once continue to revisit and complete it as
time and circumstances permit. For now, you can start by asking yourself, “What
can I do about these right now? Start with simple solutions and work progressively
outward.

VI. RESULTS
This section is the final stage of the “Culture Creation Canvas.” Now that you have
created your plan of action for addressing any culture issues, the next step is to
put a plan in place to measure and track your results to be sure what you’re doing
is having the effect that we want.

A. GOALS
Ask yourself, “What are our culture goals? What measures will you put in
place to be sure that you maintain it? What do you want your culture to
look like once it’s fixed?

B. METRICS
Once the goals are established, you’ll need to define measurable key
results that you can monitor in order to gauge how effective your plan is.
What milestones can you look to as markers on your roadmap to success?

C. ALERTS
Alerts help you to remain watchful that you aren’t backsliding in a negative
direction. What are the markers to look for if culture problems are
reappearing? What are some warning signs of new culture issues?

D. ACTIONS
How will you fix new culture problems if they do arise? Put a plan in place
for the most likely occurrences and a contingency plan in case of
 something unexpected. A good contingency plan is to run through this
exercise again to help you identify the problem and brainstorm solutions.

You are not alone.

Hopefully by now you have defined what good and bad culture means to you. You’ve also
taken an inventory of the strengths and weaknesses of your team and are able to take all
those insights and brainstorm solutions with a plan for implementation and tracking.

We sincerely hope that you find the Culture Creation Canvas to be as helpful as we have
found it to be. If nothing else we want to you remember one thing. You are not alone by
any means in having culture issues. The truth is, whatever you are going through,
someone has probably been through worse.

The Culture Creation Canvas was created for the Culture Summit by MTCA. MTCA is a
creative design agency with strong roots in brand design, marketing, and culture
development. We see branding as the core and soul of a business and culture as a
natural expression of that brand beneath.

If you are interested in working with us on your brand, marketing, and culture
development, please visit ​mtca.co​or email us at ​
us@mtca.co

Also don’t forget to check out the Culture Summit where you can learn to build great
teams that lead to great companies. Learn more at ​http://www.culturesummit.co​ or
email ​
hung@culturesummit.co