English Language · English

Read the given passage carefully and answer the question that follows. I said earlier that culture can be a vague, amorphous term. That's why we worked so carefully to define the culture we wanted. And it's why we measure everything. When it comes to humans, data is not perfect, but we can't monitor what we can't measure. So, we routinely survey employees to take their pulse. After three years of intensive focus on culture-building, we began to see some encouraging results. Employees told us they felt the company was heading in the right direction. They felt we were making the right choices for long-term success, and they saw different groups across the company working together more. This was exactly what we were hoping for. But we also saw some trends that were not as encouraging. When asked whether their vice president, or group leader, was prioritising talent movement and development, the results were worse than they'd been before our culture-building project began. Even the most optimistic workers will become discouraged if they are not being developed. I had set a clear mission and envisioned an empowering culture. Employees and senior leaders were on board, but we had a missing link - middle management. Select the most appropriate option in which the word 'pulse' has been used as it means in the passage.