The National Weather Service: A Culture of Prediction?

Every organization has a unique culture or way of doing things. The National Weather Service (NWS) is no exception. As part of the effort to evolve the NWS to become a “customer centric” organization, focusing on supporting partner decision making related to protecting lives and property, the NWS Office of Organizational Excellence (OOE) is considering the role that the NWS’s organizational culture might play in realizing this evolution. In particular, the NWS both routinely and as one time efforts collects datasets that characterize its culture including the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and, more recently, the Organizational Health Index and the Organizational Culture Index. OOE has combined these data sets with qualitative characterizations of organizational culture to identify constructive aspects of existing culture to build upon and find areas that need to be improved in order to support the evolution of the NWS.

This presentation will provide a review of research done on NWS organizational culture as well as results from engagement with NWS leaders and staff. This talk will also describe ongoing and new efforts in the NWS to better leverage the role that organizational culture plays in strategic thinking.