OPI model™
Cultivate your culture
Your company culture could be your untapped competitive advantage. From the way your people act, to the systems they use, to how they take purposeful actions - it all influences your success. So let’s influence your culture.
Why changing culture is a challenge
It’s not enough to make commitments and run an internal campaign. Changing your culture takes a company-wide transformation.
Let’s look at an example.
When the pandemic forced employees to work from home, many employers made claims like “flexibility is now part of our culture”. But their actions didn’t support this:
Some companies didn’t adapt their operating systems by providing work laptops.
Many leaders later undermined the cultural change by asking employees to return to the office.
This shows that for a culture to stick and endure, it needs to influence everything you say and do as a company. It should be felt in your operating systems, purpose, values, and individual behaviors.
Introducing our OPI model™
Our OPI model™ is designed to refresh and improve a company culture, long-term. It brings together the three key areas:
Operating systems, like organizational structure, decision-making processes and governance.
Purpose and values, like your purpose statement, DE&I strategy and sustainability policy.
Individual behaviors, such as colleague expectations, skills and role modeling.
By mapping out these three areas, we can see how and where to make improvements.
- Purpose definition and articulation
- Values and beliefs definition and articulation (DEI, sustainability, etc)
- Expectations
- Leadership
- Behavior definitions and activation
- Role modeling
- Skills
- Formal and informal language
- Spoken and non-verbal language
- Organizational structure
- Job descriptions
- Reporting
- Training
- Decision-making process
- Compensation models
- Governance processes
- Performance reviews
OPI model™ case study
Creating a volunteering culture at PepsiCo
PepsiCo approached us to help their colleagues around the world find, start and join local volunteering projects. Here’s how we used our OPI model™ criteria to change their culture.
Purpose and values
We began by researching the company purpose and values, and taking guidance from their Pep+ strategy and PepsiCo Way values.
Operating systems
These insights and directions led us to create the ‘One Smile at a Time’ initiative. With an accessible, multi-language and mobile-first platform, the program helped employees at every level find volunteering opportunities in their communities.
Individual behaviors
To help inspire action across the company, PepsiCo’s leaders, including CEO Ramon Laguarta, joined several volunteering events.
Results
To date, One Smile at a Time has increased volunteering by 120%
Read our founder’s thoughts on culture
Culture is the competitive advantage of our time
Melissa Buch
Founder & CEO