A rigorous, research-backed organizational culture assessment tool that discovers your company's authentic core values through AI-powered desk research and structured employee interviews.
Most organizational culture assessments rely on self-reported surveys where employees pick values from a list. The results are predictable, biased, and rarely actionable. This tool takes a fundamentally different approach — one grounded in decades of academic research and field-tested consulting methodologies.
Traditional culture assessment tools ask employees "which values matter to you?" — and get aspirational answers that look good on a poster. This tool discovers values from evidence: what the company actually does, how employees describe real experiences, and where the gaps are between rhetoric and reality.
The methodology combines:
- Public-source analysis (desk research) to map espoused values
- AI-conducted behavioral interviews to surface lived values
- Quantitative cross-referencing to identify say-do gaps
The result is not a list of feel-good words. It's a data-backed organizational culture assessment with evidence trails, gap analysis, and actionable insights.
Our approach to organizational culture assessment is built on the foundational work of the most respected voices in organizational science and management consulting. We don't invent values — we discover them.
Collins & Porras — Built to Last (1994) The cornerstone of our methodology. Collins and Porras studied 18 visionary companies over 60+ years and concluded that core values cannot be created; they must be discovered. A company typically has 3–5 core values that remain stable across decades, regardless of market conditions. Our entire process is built around this principle: surface what's already true, don't fabricate what sounds nice.
Edgar Schein — Three Layers of Culture Schein's model distinguishes between artifacts (visible culture), espoused values (what leadership says), and basic assumptions (what actually drives behavior). Most culture assessments only touch the espoused layer. Our three-phase approach is specifically designed to penetrate to the basic assumptions layer by triangulating public signals, employee narratives, and quantitative scoring.
Cameron & Quinn — Competing Values Framework (CVF) The OCAI framework maps organizations across two axes: flexibility vs. control, and internal vs. external focus. Our 50-value taxonomy is organized into 6 value families that capture similar cultural dimensions with far greater granularity — enabling precise, actionable findings rather than broad archetypes.
Our methodology draws on patterns validated by the world's leading management consultancies:
| Firm | Framework | What We Learned |
|---|---|---|
| McKinsey & Company | Organizational Health Index (OHI) — 8M+ respondents across 2,500+ organizations | Quantitative scoring across behavioral dimensions produces more reliable culture maps than qualitative-only approaches |
| Bain & Company | Winning Culture Diagnostic | Values must translate into observable behaviors — a value you can't see in action isn't real |
| Deloitte | CulturePath | Combining quantitative surveys with qualitative interviews surfaces culture risk indicators that neither method catches alone |
| BCG | Purpose & Values Framework | Values must connect to an operational purpose — otherwise they're decorative |
| Barrett Values Centre | Seven Levels of Consciousness — used by 6,000+ organizations globally | Simple, indirect questions produce more authentic responses than direct value-ranking exercises |
We synthesized these approaches into a process that is both rigorous and practical — designed to run in days, not months, while producing consultant-grade insights.
AI analyzes the company's entire public footprint to build a preliminary values hypothesis:
- Company website — mission, careers page, about section, tone of voice
- Social media — LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter/X — what the company celebrates
- Review platforms — Glassdoor, Sortlist, Clutch, Google Reviews (employee + client perspectives)
- Press & interviews — how leadership talks about the company publicly
- Job postings — the language in job ads reveals what the company actually selects for
Every signal is mapped against our 50-value taxonomy organized into 6 families (Foundation, Connection, Performance, Growth, Purpose, Impact). Each value is scored 0–5 based on evidence strength.
Output: A scored values profile with evidence trails, value family distribution, and preliminary say-do gap flags.
Structured, AI-conducted interviews with a representative cross-section of the organization:
| Stakeholder Group | Purpose | Sample |
|---|---|---|
| Founders / CEO | Personal values that seed the culture | All |
| Senior leadership | Values they reinforce or undermine daily | All or 50% |
| Middle management | How values translate into daily practice | 30–50% |
| Tenured ICs (2+ years) | What's real vs. what's on the wall | 20–30% |
| Recent hires (< 1 year) | Fresh perspective on actual experience | 15–20% |
Interview questions are adapted based on Phase 1 findings — probing high-signal values, exploring gaps, and surfacing hidden values. Questions are behavioral and indirect (e.g., "Tell me about a decision your team made that you're proud of"), not "Do you value innovation?"
The semi-transparent approach ensures authentic responses: employees know we're exploring culture, but not the specific scoring taxonomy.
The quantitative engine that transforms qualitative data into actionable insights:
- Response scoring — Each interview answer is mapped to taxonomy values with confidence weights
- Cross-phase comparison — Phase 1 (espoused) scores are compared against Phase 2 (lived) scores
- Gap analysis — Values with significant Phase 1 ↔ Phase 2 divergence are flagged as say-do gaps
- Clustering — Statistical clustering identifies the 3–5 core values with highest cross-phase consistency
- Report generation — Professional values report with visualizations, evidence, and strategic recommendations
Our proprietary taxonomy covers 50 organizational values across 6 families:
| Family | Focus | Example Values |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | Stability & Security | Financial Prudence, Reliability, Discipline, Pragmatism |
| Connection | Relationships & Belonging | Trust, Empathy, Teamwork, Communication, Belonging |
| Performance | Achievement & Excellence | Excellence, Accountability, Ambition, Quality, Speed |
| Growth | Learning & Adaptability | Continuous Learning, Innovation, Curiosity, Resilience |
| Purpose | Meaning & Integrity | Integrity, Authenticity, Transparency, Autonomy |
| Impact | Contribution & Service | Customer Obsession, Social Responsibility, Craftsmanship, Courage |
Each value has a precise definition and scoring rubric, ensuring consistency across phases and assessors.
This organizational culture assessment runs as a skill inside Claude Cowork by Anthropic. A skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file (instructions + methodology) and supporting reference files. Once installed, Claude automatically picks it up — no configuration needed.
- Claude Desktop with Cowork mode enabled (requires Claude Pro, Team, or Enterprise)
- An Odevio account + MCP connection (required for Phase 2 employee interviews)
The cleanest way to install. Add this repository as a plugin marketplace in Claude, then install with one command.
- Open Claude Desktop and go to Settings → Plugins → Marketplaces
- Add this repository:
/plugin marketplace add deuse-platform/company-values-discovery - Install the skill:
/plugin install company-values-discovery@deuse-platform-company-values-discovery - Verify it loaded — ask Claude: "What skills do you have available?"
Installs the skill globally so it's available in every Cowork session.
- Clone this repo anywhere on your machine:
git clone https://github.com/deuse-platform/company-values-discovery.git
- Copy into your personal Claude skills directory:
cp -r company-values-discovery ~/.claude/skills/company-values-discovery - Restart Claude Desktop or open a new Cowork session. The skill is automatically detected.
Installs the skill for one specific project only. Useful if you want to version it alongside your project.
- Inside your project folder, create the skills directory if it doesn't exist:
mkdir -p .claude/skills
- Clone directly into it:
git clone https://github.com/deuse-platform/company-values-discovery.git .claude/skills/company-values-discovery
- Open the project folder in Claude Cowork. The skill is automatically detected.
Phase 2 uses Odevio to conduct AI-powered employee interviews. You need to connect the Odevio MCP server:
- In Claude Desktop, go to Settings → MCP Servers
- Add the Odevio MCP connector
- Authenticate with your Odevio account
Phase 1 (desk research) works without Odevio — you can run it immediately after installing the skill.
Once installed, open any project folder in Cowork and tell Claude what you want to do:
"Run Phase 1 desk research for [Company Name]"
"Set up the employee interviews for [Company Name]"
"Generate the values report for [Company Name]"
Claude will guide you through each phase, ask for any missing information, and produce all outputs in an odevio-company-value-discovery/ folder inside your current workspace.
- HR Directors & CHROs running organizational culture assessments as part of transformation initiatives
- Management consultants who need a scalable, evidence-based culture diagnostic tool
- Founders & CEOs who want to understand their company's actual culture — not just the one on the wall
- M&A teams conducting cultural due diligence before acquisitions
- Organizational development professionals designing culture alignment programs
How is this different from a simple employee survey? Surveys ask people to self-report values, which produces socially desirable answers. This tool triangulates public evidence, behavioral interview data, and quantitative scoring to discover values from what people do, not what they say.
How long does the full assessment take? Phase 1 runs in under an hour (fully automated). Phase 2 depends on scheduling interviews (typically 1–2 weeks). Phase 3 computation takes minutes once responses are in.
What's the minimum company size? The methodology works best with 15+ employees. Below that, the founder's personal values typically are the company values — which Phase 1 alone can surface effectively.
Is the interview data confidential? Yes. Individual responses are never attributed. The scoring and reporting operates on aggregated, anonymized data only.
- Collins, J. & Porras, J. (1994). Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. Harper Business.
- Schein, E. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass.
- Cameron, K. & Quinn, R. (2011). Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
- McKinsey & Company. Organizational Health Index (OHI).
- Barrett, R. (2013). The Values-Driven Organization. Routledge.
MIT — see LICENSE for details.
Built by Deuse — Digital Consulting, Brussels