Every year, virtually all midsize to large companies organize immersive culture summits for senior leaders to promote well-being and mental health and improve performance. As culture pioneers, these professionals share their personal triumphs and challenges, learning from each other about various ways to bring about a transformational change in organizational culture.

However, these annual gatherings are worth the effort only when corporate leaders can assign a measurable value to something as intangible and fluid as organizational culture. Usually, these summits turn out to be a series of presentations that deluge leadership teams with data without any tangible metrics that fundamentally measure the change in behaviors, workplace performance, and culture.

Imagine all the opportunities leaders could unlock if they have access to key, actionable metrics that track return on culture.

The Culture Think Tank (CTT) makes this a reality with its easy-to-use, research-grade, metrics-based solutions.

By harnessing the power of performance analytics, CTT drives return on culture and improves workplace well-being and performance. Following a micro-learning approach, the company delivers culture and wellbeing solutions that combine metrics, deterministic action plans, and leader feedback to create a real impact on culture and performance. These solutions have proved exceptionally effective in improving workplace performance by an average of 28.6 percent in just 90 days.

“What separates us is our ability to provide clients with the metrics they need to monitor, measure, and strategically invest in their people while enabling them to align with HR learning and development initiatives,” says William Lindstrom, President and CEO at CTT. The company empowers HR leaders with real-time insights to understand the actions needed to achieve their culture goals, invigorate workplace performance, and grow and sustain their culture throughout the year.

The Beginning Chapters

Established in 2015, CTT had its beginnings set much earlier when Lindstrom realized that there were no culture and well-being indicators available to accurately measure return on investment in workplaces and workforces. Driven by a passion for developing metrics to help leaders create and sustain strong, positive company cultures, Lindstrom began developing the first analytic model in 2008.

Seven years later, he collaborated with Rob Neilsen and Toni Clubb from All American Leadership to carry out their very first research survey on culture.
In 2019, when COVID hit, CTT’s team developed a comprehensive and effective culture assessment survey with 40 questions. Realizing the detrimental impact of the pandemic on employees’ mental health, CTT started building metric-based solutions to assess company culture and augment it with a well-being index. To make the process faster and lighter, the team created a more concise survey in 2021 with just three questions to determine an organization’s culture score and well-being index.

After conducting an anonymous, three-question poll, which executives can answer in just a couple of minutes, CTT runs thousands of computations to create a culture score, anxiety rating, and well-being index. With the metrics, the company discovers the leadership behaviors with the greatest likelihood of making a difference in 30 days and creates a deterministic action plan to instill those behaviors. Unlike many companies that offer culture assessment programs on an annual basis, which often fail to ensure continual development, CTT provides customers with actionable metrics each month to keep them on the path of perpetual development.

CTT has partnered with Salesforce to utilize their best-in-class analytics platform to analyze thousands of data points in real-time and run statistical probabilities. With an easy-to-use, interactive dashboard powered by Tableau, the company equips clients with a holistic view of the metrics and allows them to easily communicate the actions to be taken to the other team members.

Making a Mark with Winning Solutions

CTT recently introduced a first-of-its-kind anxiety rating into its suite by partnering with Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton, New York.

Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling authors. The duo has authored multiple books, including Anxiety at Work, Leading with Gratitude, and All In, which hold significant potential in moving the needle on company culture.

“Gostick and Elton have been incredible partners, trusting our team enough to lend their work, allowing us to leverage best practices and turn them into a metric rating,” notes Lindstrom. By drawing inspiration from the authors’ thoughts and their book, Anxiety at Work, CTT measures an organization’s anxiety concentration and anxiety rating through its Culture Five solution.

The anxiety concentration is the measure of toxicity in an organization, which is indirectly proportional to the corporate culture and employee well-being scores; as the amount of toxicity increases, the other scores plummet. By measuring anxiety concentration, CTT enables executives and HR professionals to understand and anticipate the needs of their workforce and proactively manage their culture.

“A strong focus on quantifying culture, well-being, and anxiety with well-defined actions is what positions our solution as the holy grail of metrics today,” says Lindstrom.
To augment the overall culture metrics with specific action-based plans, CTT team identifies and recommends the best practices found in the best-sellers by Gostick and Elton, enabling leaders to reinforce them quickly and effectively.

Scripting Exemplary Customer
Success Stories

Backed by cutting-edge solutions, CTT has stood the test of time and built a strong reputation in the industry, helping numerous clients achieve their culture goals. CTT was pivotal in supporting the success of Walmart Canada, which was looking to make its learning and development programs more actionable for its executive teams. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the client was under acute pressure to balance mental health and workplace well-being challenges at an accelerated rate while continuing to serve customers.

To help identify and pinpoint the areas of greatest need, Walmart Canada partnered with CTT to pilot its Culture Five solution and new anxiety rating metric. CTT worked with the client’s top 85 executives, helping them quantify their Culture Score and anxiety level and identify actions and development areas to prioritize. CTT team precisely aligned the client’s learning and development investments and directed them to focus on the factors hindering the overall performance and culture. As a result, the client could measure the return on learning, reduce the anxiety rating, and significantly improve their ability to execute decisions.

A Melting Pot of Talent

At the heart of CTT’s excellence is the caliber of its team and a culture entrenched in innovation. The company is backed by highly-talented internal solution engineers—Grant Long, Mike Courtney, and Jess Hargrove—who provide senior leaders with research-level insights and action plans derived from predictive performance analytics models.

Delise Simmons, Chief Culture Officer at CTT, brings her deep-rooted knowledge and experience as a leader in the people department. Her passion for improving workplace culture and well-being is a major driving force behind the success of CTT. At the same time, Jim Courtney, Founder/Limited Partner at CTT, brings decades of experience working with domestic and international companies to build organizations, helping with the required funding.

The blend of Lindstrom’s ingrained knowledge in metrics and analytics, Clubb’s and Neilsen’s culture and leadership development expertise, Courtney’s thought leadership, and Simmons’s extensive industry experience has been integral to CTT’s success over the years.

Geared toward a Successful Future

Currently working with other recognized thought leaders and best-selling authors, CTT is incorporating ideas from their works into its platform. The company’s dexterity in adopting proven best practices from thought leaders and mapping them to its approach to identify and articulate actions at any given time makes it the partner of choice for clients.

Steering ahead, CTT team is excited to roll out a new mobile application to streamline the process of collecting metrics for clients. With this platform-agnostic application, executives and HR leaders can capture metrics in real-time from any mobile device while ensuring complete anonymity.

With a steadfast commitment to making its technology highly affordable and easy to deploy, CTT continues to empower corporate leaders with the metrics they need to ace their culture game.