The mirror your clients have been missing all along.
The Situational Outlook Questionnaire measures, in twenty minutes, whether the climate around a team allows for new and useful work — and sets the answer against benchmarks from organisations proven to be innovative, and organisations that are demonstrably stagnating. In this three-day online programme, you'll learn to administer the instrument yourself, interpret it, and turn it into the conversation your clients haven't had yet.
Every serious organisation you work with already runs an employee or satisfaction survey. All of them have folders full of dashboards going back years. And yet the same leaders keep coming back with the same complaint: we know how people feel, we don't know why nothing moves.
That gap is no coincidence. Employee surveys ask whether people are satisfied — the temperature in the room. They don't ask whether that room is arranged so a new idea survives its first meeting. That's a different question, and it's the question the SOQ answers: whether there's enough oxygen for new and useful work, measured across nine dimensions and set against organisations proven to be innovative.
A team can be entirely satisfied and, at the same time, have unlearned how to bring in a new idea. The satisfaction survey doesn't flag that. The climate diagnosis does. — Observation from a recent EMEA debrief
Eight dimensions are positive: the higher the score, the more the climate supports new and useful work. One, Conflict, is the sole inverse dimension — there, a low score is the desired result.
Whether people experience the work as meaningful, or as something to get through.
Whether people can shape how they work, or are locked into a set path.
Whether honest information can travel — including the news a leader would rather not hear.
Whether there's room to think about how the work could be better.
Whether the atmosphere allows the lightness from which unusual ideas emerge.
The one dimension where low is good: high personal friction blocks substantive debate.
Whether new ideas are heard and followed up on, or quietly disappear.
Whether substantive disagreement is welcome, or smoothed over.
Whether trying something untested is rewarded, or punished with extra control.
Developed by Göran Ekvall (Swedish Council for Personnel Administration, 1950s–70s) and Scott Isaksen, across eleven successive versions since 1981. The current version, SOQ VII, is normed on 3,491 respondents from 52 organisations, collected between 2009 and 2012 across six languages. Cronbach's alpha sits between .79 and .90 on all nine dimensions; a factor analysis confirms the nine-factor structure and explains 62.8% of variance. Independently reviewed in the Buros Mental Measurements Yearbook (18th ed., 2010) and included in Eurocontrol's Change & Transition Tools Compendium (Annex A, 2010) as a recommended diagnostic instrument.
It's a self-report instrument, not a culture measure: discriminant validity studies against established measures of personality and thinking style show that climate and personality are empirically distinct (only 2 of the 40 to 54 correlations examined were significant). A score is a snapshot — demonstrating change after an intervention requires a re-measurement six to twelve months later, not a repeated administration in the short term. And where an earlier version showed weaker reliability on Trust & Openness (α = .69), the current version has improved that to .79 — exactly the caveat independent reviewers raised at the time.
Aside from the psychometric quality of the measurement instrument itself, there's a broader body of research showing why the underlying variable — whether organisational climate and culture are deliberately managed or not — matters commercially over the longer term.
The most frequently cited example is the long-term study by Kotter and Heskett (Harvard Business School, 1992), which compared the financial performance, over an eleven-year period (1977–1988), of companies that deliberately and systematically managed their context against companies that left it to chance.
| Indicator (1977–1988) | Deliberately managed | Left to chance |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue growth | 682% | 166% |
| Stock price growth | 901% | 74% |
| Net income growth | 756% | 1% |
These figures aren't tied to the SOQ — they're independent confirmation of the broader claim the instrument builds on. Comparable research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (Global Innovation & Growth Survey) identifies a climate for creativity as one of three critical capabilities — alongside inclusive leadership and a deliberately designed innovation process — that distinguishes organisations that consistently manage to innovate from those that don't.
The SOQ is the instrument that makes that previously abstract variable — the conditions in which people work — measurable, benchmarkable, and therefore manageable. — SOQ Technical Dossier, O₂C² Consulting
The goal of the certification isn't for you to install a method. The goal is for you to give your clients language for what they're already experiencing, and a starting point to change it. You practise that during the cohort, on each other — not afterwards, on your first client.
You take the SOQ yourself before day one — twenty minutes, anonymous. The certification starts with your own climate profile, not with theory.
How you set a spider diagram with nine dimensions, scaled 0–300, against the benchmarks of innovative and stagnating organisations — and how you analyse the three open-ended questions every participant answers.
Not a workshop — a working session. You practise naming which conditions sit below the line, which mask each other, and which dimension is quietly undermining the others.
When and how to deploy a re-measurement, six to twelve months later, as objective proof that a programme has worked.
Live breakouts on every cohort day. One master facilitator guides the group; you close with a coaching hour before your first paid assignment.
who want to add an objective, scientifically validated instrument to their offering, alongside what they already do.
who want to go beyond the annual employee survey that changes no behaviour.
looking for language for what a team already senses but can't name itself.
who need an objective baseline before a change or merger programme.
who want climate data alongside the individual 360° development conversation.
The consultants and coaches who hesitate longest before SOQ certification almost always name the same concern. Not the investment. Not the days. Selling it. They picture themselves walking into a client and trying to convince a sceptical buyer to commission a climate measurement — and they conclude, reasonably, that they're not that kind of consultant.
We hear this often enough to answer it directly: there is no pitch. The nine dimensions, the benchmarks, the validation — none of it comes up in the first conversation. The instrument stays invisible until the leader asks for it.
You don't need to sell the SOQ. The conversation that leads a client to commission a baseline measurement isn't a sales conversation. It's a diagnostic conversation — and the work you've already been doing for years has trained you to lead it. — How the first paid assignment actually feels
Clear numbers, because consultants and coaches deserve that. The qualification costs €3,250, all-in — including a €875 credit toward SOQ questionnaires, usable immediately on your first client assignments. No subscription, no annual renewal fees.
| Item | Detail | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| SOQ Certification | 3-day online cohort (23–25 Nov 2026), all-in — kit, coaching hour, manual, community | €3,250 |
| Questionnaire credit | A €875 credit toward SOQ questionnaires, included in the certification price | included |
| Practitioner platform | Lifetime access to administration, scoring and benchmark composites | included |
| Renewal | Practitioner certificate, valid three years, renewable | €0 |
| Rate per administration | Applies once your €875 questionnaire credit has been used up | scaled |
| Volume scale | Rate per administration scales down automatically as your volume grows | automatic |
A single diagnosis for a mid-sized team — measurement, leader debrief, half-day session — typically invoices above your full qualification investment. With the built-in €875 questionnaire credit, you can deploy that first assignment immediately, with no extra cost for the administrations themselves. Most practitioners in our community earn back the qualification within two paid assignments.
Price excl. VAT. A refund is possible up to fourteen days before the start of this cohort; a free transfer to a later cohort is possible at any point before day one.
"I'd been doing climate work for years. A few days later I had the instrument and the language I'd been improvising around until then."
— Practitioner, EMEA cohort"We'd run three employee surveys in two years. The SOQ debrief was the first time the conversation shifted from how people feel to what we're doing that makes them feel that way."
— EMEA practitioner, after first useThe most credible way to know whether the SOQ belongs in your offering is to let it work on you first. There's no obligation and no payment.
Book a free SOQ sampler. Sixty minutes, live, with a qualified practitioner. You leave with your own climate profile and a debrief of it against the innovative and stagnating benchmarks.
Book a samplerBook a twenty-minute introductory call. We'll tell you whether this cohort is right for you, and what your first ninety days as a Qualified SOQ Practitioner realistically look like. No deck. No pitch.
Book a callThe mirror your clients have been missing all along.
The Situational Outlook Questionnaire measures, in twenty minutes, whether the climate around a team allows for new and useful work — and sets the answer against benchmarks from organisations proven to be innovative, and organisations that are demonstrably stagnating. In this three-day online programme, you'll learn to administer the instrument yourself, interpret it, and turn it into the conversation your clients haven't had yet.
Every serious organisation you work with already runs an employee or satisfaction survey. All of them have folders full of dashboards going back years. And yet the same leaders keep coming back with the same complaint: we know how people feel, we don't know why nothing moves.
That gap is no coincidence. Employee surveys ask whether people are satisfied — the temperature in the room. They don't ask whether that room is arranged so a new idea survives its first meeting. That's a different question, and it's the question the SOQ answers: whether there's enough oxygen for new and useful work, measured across nine dimensions and set against organisations proven to be innovative.
A team can be entirely satisfied and, at the same time, have unlearned how to bring in a new idea. The satisfaction survey doesn't flag that. The climate diagnosis does. — Observation from a recent EMEA debrief
Eight dimensions are positive: the higher the score, the more the climate supports new and useful work. One, Conflict, is the sole inverse dimension — there, a low score is the desired result.
Whether people experience the work as meaningful, or as something to get through.
Whether people can shape how they work, or are locked into a set path.
Whether honest information can travel — including the news a leader would rather not hear.
Whether there's room to think about how the work could be better.
Whether the atmosphere allows the lightness from which unusual ideas emerge.
The one dimension where low is good: high personal friction blocks substantive debate.
Whether new ideas are heard and followed up on, or quietly disappear.
Whether substantive disagreement is welcome, or smoothed over.
Whether trying something untested is rewarded, or punished with extra control.
Developed by Göran Ekvall (Swedish Council for Personnel Administration, 1950s–70s) and Scott Isaksen, across eleven successive versions since 1981. The current version, SOQ VII, is normed on 3,491 respondents from 52 organisations, collected between 2009 and 2012 across six languages. Cronbach's alpha sits between .79 and .90 on all nine dimensions; a factor analysis confirms the nine-factor structure and explains 62.8% of variance. Independently reviewed in the Buros Mental Measurements Yearbook (18th ed., 2010) and included in Eurocontrol's Change & Transition Tools Compendium (Annex A, 2010) as a recommended diagnostic instrument.
It's a self-report instrument, not a culture measure: discriminant validity studies against established measures of personality and thinking style show that climate and personality are empirically distinct (only 2 of the 40 to 54 correlations examined were significant). A score is a snapshot — demonstrating change after an intervention requires a re-measurement six to twelve months later, not a repeated administration in the short term. And where an earlier version showed weaker reliability on Trust & Openness (α = .69), the current version has improved that to .79 — exactly the caveat independent reviewers raised at the time.
Aside from the psychometric quality of the measurement instrument itself, there's a broader body of research showing why the underlying variable — whether organisational climate and culture are deliberately managed or not — matters commercially over the longer term.
The most frequently cited example is the long-term study by Kotter and Heskett (Harvard Business School, 1992), which compared the financial performance, over an eleven-year period (1977–1988), of companies that deliberately and systematically managed their context against companies that left it to chance.
| Indicator (1977–1988) | Deliberately managed | Left to chance |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue growth | 682% | 166% |
| Stock price growth | 901% | 74% |
| Net income growth | 756% | 1% |
These figures aren't tied to the SOQ — they're independent confirmation of the broader claim the instrument builds on. Comparable research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (Global Innovation & Growth Survey) identifies a climate for creativity as one of three critical capabilities — alongside inclusive leadership and a deliberately designed innovation process — that distinguishes organisations that consistently manage to innovate from those that don't.
The SOQ is the instrument that makes that previously abstract variable — the conditions in which people work — measurable, benchmarkable, and therefore manageable. — SOQ Technical Dossier, O₂C² Consulting
The goal of the certification isn't for you to install a method. The goal is for you to give your clients language for what they're already experiencing, and a starting point to change it. You practise that during the cohort, on each other — not afterwards, on your first client.
You take the SOQ yourself before day one — twenty minutes, anonymous. The certification starts with your own climate profile, not with theory.
How you set a spider diagram with nine dimensions, scaled 0–300, against the benchmarks of innovative and stagnating organisations — and how you analyse the three open-ended questions every participant answers.
Not a workshop — a working session. You practise naming which conditions sit below the line, which mask each other, and which dimension is quietly undermining the others.
When and how to deploy a re-measurement, six to twelve months later, as objective proof that a programme has worked.
Live breakouts on every cohort day. One master facilitator guides the group; you close with a coaching hour before your first paid assignment.
who want to add an objective, scientifically validated instrument to their offering, alongside what they already do.
who want to go beyond the annual employee survey that changes no behaviour.
looking for language for what a team already senses but can't name itself.
who need an objective baseline before a change or merger programme.
who want climate data alongside the individual 360° development conversation.
The consultants and coaches who hesitate longest before SOQ certification almost always name the same concern. Not the investment. Not the days. Selling it. They picture themselves walking into a client and trying to convince a sceptical buyer to commission a climate measurement — and they conclude, reasonably, that they're not that kind of consultant.
We hear this often enough to answer it directly: there is no pitch. The nine dimensions, the benchmarks, the validation — none of it comes up in the first conversation. The instrument stays invisible until the leader asks for it.
You don't need to sell the SOQ. The conversation that leads a client to commission a baseline measurement isn't a sales conversation. It's a diagnostic conversation — and the work you've already been doing for years has trained you to lead it. — How the first paid assignment actually feels
Clear numbers, because consultants and coaches deserve that. The qualification costs €3,250, all-in — including a €875 credit toward SOQ questionnaires, usable immediately on your first client assignments. No subscription, no annual renewal fees.
| Item | Detail | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| SOQ Certification | 3-day online cohort (23–25 Nov 2026), all-in — kit, coaching hour, manual, community | €3,250 |
| Questionnaire credit | A €875 credit toward SOQ questionnaires, included in the certification price | included |
| Practitioner platform | Lifetime access to administration, scoring and benchmark composites | included |
| Renewal | Practitioner certificate, valid three years, renewable | €0 |
| Rate per administration | Applies once your €875 questionnaire credit has been used up | scaled |
| Volume scale | Rate per administration scales down automatically as your volume grows | automatic |
A single diagnosis for a mid-sized team — measurement, leader debrief, half-day session — typically invoices above your full qualification investment. With the built-in €875 questionnaire credit, you can deploy that first assignment immediately, with no extra cost for the administrations themselves. Most practitioners in our community earn back the qualification within two paid assignments.
Price excl. VAT. A refund is possible up to fourteen days before the start of this cohort; a free transfer to a later cohort is possible at any point before day one.
"I'd been doing climate work for years. A few days later I had the instrument and the language I'd been improvising around until then."
— Practitioner, EMEA cohort"We'd run three employee surveys in two years. The SOQ debrief was the first time the conversation shifted from how people feel to what we're doing that makes them feel that way."
— EMEA practitioner, after first useThe most credible way to know whether the SOQ belongs in your offering is to let it work on you first. There's no obligation and no payment.
Book a free SOQ sampler. Sixty minutes, live, with a qualified practitioner. You leave with your own climate profile and a debrief of it against the innovative and stagnating benchmarks.
Book a samplerBook a twenty-minute introductory call. We'll tell you whether this cohort is right for you, and what your first ninety days as a Qualified SOQ Practitioner realistically look like. No deck. No pitch.
Book a call