Read your culture at source in thirty days.
Nine in ten executives say culture adds value to the firm, and most say theirs needs improving (Graham, Grennan, Harvey and Rajgopal, Journal of Financial Economics, 2022 (opens in new tab)). Few take a reading, because measuring has been slow and expensive. Sariio reads a culture from one survey, about 12 minutes per person: what the culture is made of, where the leadership team and each site sit, and how ready the organisation is for the change ahead.
A map, in Sariio, is a reading of how a person prefers to work; a cultureMAP is every person's map on the same six dimensions. Shown here: one dimension, with the collective centre marked. Explore the live sample
Where your culture is ready for change.
Is this culture ready for the change you have in mind? Bold, agile and quick to try, or steadier, more careful and led by the evidence? Which sites carry the ambition the leadership team describes, and which are still waiting to be convinced? A chief people officer asks questions like these when shaping an organisation towards a longer-term goal, and each one is answerable from the same survey.
Six dimensions of the culture, taken together, form a heat map: where the organisation runs hot, where it runs cool, and how each hot spot and cool spot translates into an accelerator or a barrier for the change ahead. Some cultures commit to a new direction quickly and lose interest before the work is finished; others take a long time to commit and then see the work through. The heat map shows which yours is, site by site, so the leadership team knows where the change is pushing at an open door and where the first month of effort belongs.
Culture is the collective language and behaviour of an organisation, and behaviour follows preference. Because the six dimensions describe preference, the language the leadership team uses about the culture and the behaviour the organisation rewards can be set against the same six dimensions, so what is said and what is done point the same way. The heat map also shows where the dimensions already enable values-led behaviour: a stated value that sits where the preferences run warm is carried by the culture without effort, and a value that sits where the preferences run cool will need leadership and practice to hold. Both are worth knowing before the values go on the wall.
The bearing the group sets before work begins: how trust and the shape of plans come together.
How the group plans and chooses: proven routes or open options, certainty or room to move.
How trust and agreement operate: who is brought in, and how firmly people commit once they are.
What the group produces through people: how care, standards and delivery show up in the work.
How plans become delivery: thoroughness, pace and completion, and what counts as finished.
How the group moves: bias to act or to be sure, decisiveness and follow-through under pressure.
Values, evidenced
Most organisations publish values. Sariio reads each stated value against the same six fields, because a value is a description of behaviour and behaviour follows preference. Integrity reads through Commitment and Direction; innovation through Direction and Approach; customer focus through Impact and Process. Each value then lands in one of three classes, in language a leadership team can circulate without anyone feeling accused.
Carried naturally
The preferences of the people sit where the value needs them. The culture supplies the value without effort, and the reading shows the style in which the value is expressed.
Carried by practice
The value is real, and the culture holds that value in place through leadership and process rather than preference. The reading shows what those practices are compensating for, so they are protected rather than assumed.
Not a preference matter
Some values, integrity among them, are matters of character rather than preference. Sariio says so and declines to score them. That refusal is what makes the other two classes credible.
Where two values pull a field in opposite directions, quality against innovation for example, the reading shows the trade-off rather than choosing a side. Source for the gap between stated and lived values: Sull, Turconi and Sull, MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020 (opens in new tab).
From the reading to a workplan
A reading on its own is a mirror. The workplan is built on John Kotter's eight accelerators of change, the most used change model in business, with each accelerator read against the two or three dimensions that bear on that accelerator, each carrying a temperature computed from the same data. The temperature is computed by a fixed rule; Sariio AI writes the reading around the number rather than choosing the number.
A sample readiness reading. Five temperatures: Frozen, Thawing, Warming, Heating, Red Hot.
What the workplan contains
Three readings, one plan. The six dimensions say what the culture is made of and where each site differs from the leadership team. The values reading says which stated values the culture carries and which the practices have to hold. The readiness reading says which accelerators the culture is already inclined towards and which will need the first month of effort.
The plan sequences the change around that evidence: start where the temperature is Red Hot so the early wins are visible, put the first month of effort where the reading is Frozen, protect the practices that carry the values, and set the leadership team a 30, 60 and 90-day rhythm of return visits. Each quarter the culture is re-read and the temperatures move, so the plan is steered by the evidence rather than by the calendar.
The eight accelerators: Kotter, Accelerate, 2014 (opens in new tab). How Sariio reads them: Mirror, Map and Compass.
Thirty days, from first survey to findings
The reading runs alongside the day job. Nothing to install and no payment card required for the platform.
- Week one
Everyone takes the survey
About 12 minutes each, on any device. Each person receives a myMAP first, and the reading belongs to that person before anyone else sees a thing.
- Weeks two and three
The maps build
The cultureMAP forms as answers arrive. The leadership team and each site are placed side by side, and managers are onboarded to the maps of the people they manage.
- Week four
The findings session
David walks the leadership team through the reading: what the culture is made of, how ready the organisation is for the change ahead, and a clear recommendation.
- Afterwards
The reading remains live
The maps remain on the platform for hiring, onboarding and coaching, and the culture is re-read each quarter so the leadership team sees movement, not a snapshot.
The culture reading: what the fee includes
- Everyone in scope with a map, on the platform for thirty days, every map type included
- A cultureMAP with Sariio AI commentary across six dimensions
- The leadership team read beside each site, function or cohort
- The change readiness reading: eight accelerators, five temperatures
- Two sessions with David: scoping at the start and the findings session at the end
- A written summary the leadership team can circulate
Priced for the organisation, in a conversation.
The fee depends on how many people are in scope and how much of David's time the leadership team wants. A fraction of what conventional culture consulting charges for a discovery phase, and quicker.
After the reading, the platform continues at a monthly fee per person, with no contract and months ten to twelve free. The rates are on the pricing page.
Book a thirty-minute call (opens in new tab)What the research says culture is worth
If culture matters this much, why do we measure it so rarely?
The full argument, with every source linked: what the market keeps underpricing, what a court finds when a culture goes wrong, what the numbers say when a culture goes right, and the three barriers that kept measurement a luxury good.
Read the articlePractices and operations that have run on Sariio
The earlier generation of Sariio became the working tool of the firm's consultants across sixteen countries, translated into eleven languages besides English.
The same survey in use since 2009 across EMEA, the United States and Asia Pacific, with a drop-out rate reduced by more than 35 per cent since adopting the survey.
A live outsourced sales pilot held to the numbers in 2026, and South Africa's first impact-sourcing organisation using preference maps to bring evidence of fit to first-time workers. The case studies
Book a call
Thirty minutes, a live cultureMAP on screen, and a conversation about what a reading of your organisation shows.
Prefer to write first? Send us a message. Running a contact centre? Sariio for BPO & CX. Advising clients? Sariio for partners.