Organizational Culture Matrix

Emotional Safety and Intellectual Challenge

Here’s my Organizational Culture Matrix. I created this based on my experience building MỞ team online over the past 3.5 years, and being a part of many organizations that fall into every category in this matrix.

(This is applicable to organizations that value learning and consider their team their extended family. If this is not your goal, skip it.)

When it comes to an ideal learning environment, you can outline as many factors that affect it as you want, they will all fall into either of these 2 needs: emotional safety and intellectual challenge.

These 2 needs are the foundation of this matrix, helping you understand where your organization currently is, and where you want to take it (ideally somewhere safe and challenging). Here are the 4 quadrants:

• Safe and Challenging: This is the best place for learning. People here feel safe to take risks, explore new ideas, question the status quo, and challenge each other. Together, they push each other to grow at a sustainable rate. Here, people are respected, and ideas are challenged.

• Safe and Pampered: This is where spoiled kids are raised. People here always feel like they are the smartest people in the room (because they are rarely challenged). They are arrogant pricks that no one outside of the organization likes. Here, people and ideas are pampered (overly protected).

• Unsafe and Pampered: This is the most confusing place to be. People here usually have a leader/parent who is very unstable. 1 day he loves you, the other he insults you. You are not challenged intellectually either. Here, people are confused, and ideas are boring.

• Unsafe and Challenging: This is the toxic environment. People here are constantly challenged. They might learn a lot, but the consequences of making a mistake are too big to feel safe. People here know that they won’t be protected if their ideas or execution are bad. They tend to wonder if there’s a “better” environment out there. (Better here means the same level of learning, but a higher level of emotional safety.) The answer is usually yes.

When people assess a new organization, the 2 questions people will ask (besides compensation) are: “Do I feel safe in this space?” and “How much am I challenged (learning) here?”

Here’s the secret: Most people won’t even ask the second question if their answer to the first question is “No”. In other words, we don’t want to be challenged if we don’t feel a certain level of safety.

The line between a “challenge” and an “attack”, is drawn by the level of emotional safety one feels.

My advice is: Always make people feel safe first, before attempting to challenge/change them.

This advice not only applies to organizational culture, but also to broader topics like education, parenting, change-making, or anything that involves talking to humans...

People won’t listen to what you have to say, if they don’t feel like they’re safe.