How to Measure Organizational Culture (Without Relying on Engagement Surveys)

Most organizations have a way of “measuring culture.” And for most, that means a standard employee engagement survey. The problem?

Engagement is the outcome, not the input.

If you're only measuring engagement, you're measuring the symptoms, not the system. You might find out that your people are disengaged—but not why. And without understanding the “why,” you’re stuck treating the surface, not the root.

Psychological Safety: The Cultural Input That Drives Everything Else

Google’s landmark Project Aristotle studied over 180 teams to determine what makes a team effective. They found that the #1 factor wasn’t compensation, credentials, or experience.

It was psychological safety.

Teams that trust each other enough to take risks, share ideas, ask questions, and admit mistakes perform better. They're more innovative. More collaborative. More resilient. And yes, more engaged.

Dr. Amy Edmondson, the researcher who coined the term, defines psychological safety as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.”

When psychological safety is high, people bring their full selves to work. When it’s low, they protect themselves and disengage. That’s why measuring engagement alone misses the mark.  You’re measuring the effect without understanding the cause.

What Should You Measure Instead?

To truly understand your culture and know how to improve it, you need to measure the building blocks of psychological safety. That includes things like:

• How power dynamics are experienced on teams
• How mistakes get handled
• How agreements are made and what happens when they are broken
• How much voice people feel they have in decision-making
• Which behaviors are rewarded and which are punished
• How people deal with conflict, feedback, and change

These are the invisible forces that drive culture. And unlike engagement scores, they’re tangible things you can actually shift.

The Better Way to Measure Culture

At Thought Design, we use tools like the Fearless Organization Scan to help teams assess their psychological safety across four key domains:

1. Willingness to help
2. Attitude toward risk and failure
3. Open conversation
4. Inclusion and diversity of thought

We also use our Team Insights Map, an advanced diagnostic that surfaces the hidden dynamics shaping your team’s performance. It goes far beyond surface-level metrics by analyzing:

• Behavior Mapping – See what your team is actually doing day to day. We identify the behavioral patterns that are helping (or hurting) your outcomes, so you can shift from default to intentional culture.
  
  
• Cultural Subtypes – Understand your team’s unique cultural DNA: Are you operating like a team too busy to think about culture? A perfectionist one? What about an ultra nice one? Knowing your team’s cultural subtype gives you language and insight to work with the culture instead of against it.
  
  
• The PS2 Matrix (Amy Edmondson) – This framework maps your team into one of four zones based on their psychological safety and accountability. Are they stuck in the Apathy Zone? Thriving in the Learning Zone? Or somewhere in between? It’s a powerful way to understand how people feel and function—and what needs to shift.
  
  
• Team-Level Cycles – Every team has patterns. Maybe it’s a blame spiral, over-responsibility, or a culture of silence. These cycles keep teams stuck, and this diagnostic helps you spot them—and break them—so you can build momentum again.
  
  

Because the goal isn’t just to measure - it’s to understand what’s really going on in your culture, and what to do next.

Culture Work is Systems Work

If you want to change your culture, you need better data. Not just scores, but insights. Not just reports, but patterns.  Not just what people are feeling, but what’s creating those feelings in the first place. That’s how you move from reacting to your culture…to reshaping it.

Want to know what’s really going on in your team culture?
Let’s talk about using the Fearless Organization Scan to assess the inputs that matter most.