Challenge and Involvement
The degree to which people are emotionally engaged and committed to the work. Innovation requires sustained effort; that effort requires people who are genuinely invested in the outcome.
Climate Assessment
Understand what's helping or hindering innovation in your organization.
The Situational Outlook Questionnaire (SOQ) measures your organization's creative climate across nine research-validated dimensions. The result is a clear, data-driven picture of what's working, what isn't, and where to focus before you invest in changing it.
Schedule a Planning ConversationClimate is invisible until you measure it
When we talk about climate, we're talking about the recurring patterns of behavior that shape how people think, interact, and take risks at work. These patterns are often deeply felt but rarely named. Leaders sense that innovation isn't taking hold, that initiatives lose momentum, that promising ideas disappear before gaining traction. The driver is almost always the same: the organizational norms, structures, and everyday leadership behaviors that either create conditions for creative work or quietly prevent it. All of those factors are measurable.
The SOQ makes climate visible
The Situational Outlook Questionnaire measures the actual lived experience of your teams across nine dimensions of organizational climate. Developed by Goran Ekvall and validated across decades of research, the SOQ gives you reliable data on where your climate supports innovation and where it gets in the way.
What we measure
Nine dimensions of creative climate
Freedom
The independence people have in defining and executing their work. Creative solutions emerge when people have room to explore without requiring approval at every step.
Trust and Openness
The emotional safety to share ideas and take risks. Breakthrough ideas often sound foolish initially. Without trust, they never get said.
Idea Time
The time available to explore possibilities beyond immediate demands. Organizations running at full operational capacity have no slack for new thinking, and innovation requires slack.
Playfulness and Humor
The ease and spontaneity that characterize the workplace. Playfulness signals psychological safety, reduces anxiety about being wrong, and research consistently links it to higher creative output.
Conflict
Interpersonal and emotional tensions (negatively correlated to innovation). When disagreement becomes personal rather than intellectual, it shuts down the risk-taking that innovation requires. This is the dimension you want low.
Idea Support
How new ideas are treated when proposed. Fragile early-stage ideas need room to develop before criticism can improve them; environments that evaluate too quickly kill ideas before they have a chance.
Debate
Lively intellectual disagreement about ideas (positive, unlike Conflict). Constructive debate strengthens ideas and surfaces assumptions. It requires enough trust that people can disagree about the work without it becoming about the people.
Risk-Taking
The tolerance for uncertainty and failure. Innovation is inherently uncertain, and organizations that punish failure get less experimentation and fewer breakthroughs as a result.
The process
From survey to strategy
The Climate Assessment follows a structured process designed to generate actionable insight, not just data.
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Planning and Design
Define assessment scope, customize context, plan communication, and identify stakeholders. You'll receive communication templates and a project timeline.
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Data Collection
Participants complete the 15 to 20 minute SOQ survey online. Individual responses remain confidential; results are reported in aggregate only.
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Analysis and Benchmarking
We analyze climate scores across all nine dimensions, compare to benchmark databases, identify patterns across departments or levels, and develop interpretive frameworks for your specific context.
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Results and Strategy Session
We facilitate sessions with leadership to understand findings, identify priorities, and develop specific action strategies. Then we support meetings at the division and department level as the results are cascaded through the organization.
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Implementation and Support
Action planning tools, follow-up consultation, and reassessment planning to ensure insights drive measurable change.
Scope
Choose your assessment level
The SOQ is a group assessment tool measuring shared environmental characteristics. We help you determine the right scope for your goals and resources.
Organization-Wide
Best for: Organizations committed to building innovation capacity at every level, those experiencing unexplained variation in climate across units, and initiatives requiring a complete organizational picture.
Provides a comprehensive view with the ability to compare units and identify systemic patterns.
Department or Team
Best for: Large organizations that want to start targeted, departments with suspected climate issues, and teams preparing for innovation initiatives.
Act on findings with a focused scope. A good starting point before a broader rollout.
Leadership Team
Best for: Understanding executive team dynamics, preparing leadership for broader culture work, and testing the assessment before wider deployment.
Reveals how the leadership team's climate shapes the environment they create for everyone else.
What you gain
What you'll walk away with
Immediate Deliverables
- Comprehensive climate report with scores across all nine dimensions
- Executive summary for leadership and board communication
- Benchmarking comparisons to relevant organizations
- Raw aggregate data for additional analysis
- Action planning framework and implementation templates
Strategic Insights
- Climate strengths to leverage and protect
- Barriers to address, with prioritization guidance
- Root cause hypotheses linking patterns to structures and practices
- Shared language for discussing environment with your team
- A baseline for measuring climate change over time
How it fits
How the assessment fits your work
Many organizations combine a Climate Assessment with our other services for integrated, sustained results.
Standalone Diagnostic Tool
Use the assessment as a standalone diagnostic to inform internal initiatives and strategic planning. The data belongs to you and can guide decisions regardless of what comes next.
Assessment + Leadership Development
Assess first to diagnose which climate dimensions need attention, then design Leadership Development programming around the specific areas your data identifies. Purpose-built development is more effective than general training.
Assessment + Innovation Workshop
Assess your climate conditions before designing an Innovation Workshop. Teams with low Trust and Openness scores need a different workshop design than teams high in Challenge and Involvement. The data improves the facilitation.
Let's measure your organization's climate
Every Climate Assessment is customized to your organization's size, structure, and strategic context.
Schedule a ConversationWhat happens next: We'll schedule a 30 to 45 minute conversation to understand your organization, discuss scope options, and outline a timeline.