Kulturwandel by Metakomm

Culture change

Corporate culture is an important success factor in companies. It has a strong influence on the thinking, acting and behavior of everyone, e.g. how people work together in the company, how decisions are made, which topics receive attention, how success is defined or, for example, how quickly and flexibly the organization acts. If the company is to develop further, the corporate culture will and must also change. If companies do not work on the appropriate cultural change in change processes, the best and most intelligent reorganizations will probably not be internalized by the employees.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast!” – Peter Drucker put it in a nutshell.

However, cultural change cannot be ordered from above. Values ​​cannot be introduced. Nobody can decide on the behavior of authorized persons either. Culture changes during a development process.
In order to enable the desired cultural change, management must change the framework conditions that influence how employees think, act and behave.

If, for example, a company has a traditional understanding of leadership, in which almost every decision is approved from above, and if this company wants to loosen hierarchies in the future and enable teams to take on more personal responsibility, the managers must learn to delegate responsibility, get permission to do so and have positive experiences with the changed team leadership collect. Only then does handing off responsibility become a regularity, then the norm, and at some point part of the new company culture that nobody notices as something new anymore.

We accompany companies in management change, support them in setting the framework, qualify managers for their new roles. We work at all levels of the company and organization, the management, the executives, employees, as well as in all group sizes, 1:1, from working in small groups up to larger teams, to working with the entire company.

Culture Analysis and Change Readiness Assessment

How can the culture of a company or a culture be described? We observe different levels in the companies that we support in cultural change.

We look at the visible side, the alleged artefacts: how do you behave with each other? How do the obligations relate to each other? How tight or soft are specifications, are working hours are being controlled? How do meetings go? etc.

In the cooperation we then experience the underlying level of values ​​and norms: according to which standards of behavior is the company acting?
If we are new to a company, these can also be ascertained through interviews with individuals.

The third, even deeper level, that of the basic assumptions of an organization, often only becomes apparent during a prolonged cooperation. In the change work we implement, we have no direct, only an indirect influence here.

We reflect these observations, as well as the results of surveys or interviews, to our clients, give them our impression of change readiness, i.e. the willingness to change experienced, and advise them on the possibilities and necessities of cultural change for their company’s desired goals.

Agile Transformation

Due to the changes in society and on the market, most companies are currently facing the challenge that they want to develop further and have to move in the direction of faster processes and reaction times to customer and market requirements and faster development of innovative new ideas and products.
To do this, the organization often has to be changed in its form and structure, e.g. hierarchies reduced, reporting channels shortened, cross-functional teams and work with increasing personal responsibility.

We advise companies and organizers in the realignment and accompany them at different altitudes: as a whole, in areas, individual teams and individuals on their path. Levels that we consider in agile transformation and on which we advise are:

  • Vision, Mission and Purpose – Where do you want to go? For whatever reasons? How do you communicate your vision?
  • Architecture & Design – How is your company positioned? How should it develop further? What are structures and processes? Which frameworks do you work with?
  • Behavior – how is it managed? How to interact? How do the acquisition and executives act and behave?
  • Mindset – What is the inner and outer attitude? Which values ​​and principles are lived? Which thinking and action logics exist in the company?
  • Values ​​and basic assumptions – which ones are important in the company? Which ones should become more important in the transformation? What is the common understanding?

Vision, Mission and Purpose

Culture change does not happen without a purpose behind it. Change needs a fixed point, be it a vision, a description of the company’s purpose, a clear corporate strategy and people who act as role models.
Visions are positive images of the future that give us an idea of ​​who we will be in 3 or 5 years, for example. Which corporate culture exists then in the company? What will we have achieved?

Visions generate positive emotions and are therefore the driving force and an important basis in the change process.

The purpose describes the precise sense that the company serves in the world. He answers the question, for whom and for what we do what we do.
By that, employees, especially the younger generations, experience meaning at work.

The mission is exactly the “how” of action in companies, how the vision is to be achieved and the purpose is to be made possible.

We support companies and teams in jointly developing their vision, mission, purpose and strategies, describing them in a nutshell, rolling them out in corporate communications and in daily management work and addressing them regularly and with motivation.

Leadership development for cultural change

Leaders who accompany cultural change are agile, flexible and capable of transformation. They understand the processes and dynamics in cultural change, act in a goal-oriented manner and promote the further development of their teams through permanent team development. Leadership means framework design, especially in change processes.
For us, especially the aspect of development is important in cultural change. Learning allows us to accumulate a lot of knowledge on an intellectual level. This does not necessarily have to result in development. In cultural change, values, norms, mindsets and behaviors change. This cannot be internalized by learning (by heart) alone. All activities in a cultural change go through a further development of their world of values ​​as the basis for all actions and behavior.

We are happy to prepare managers for the tasks and support them in the process with training, workshops, coaching and advice.

Work on values

Values ​​can be described as building blocks of corporate culture.
Our values ​​determine our actions without us being aware of them. They tell us whether something is good or bad, whether we accept or reject something, how we should or should not behave in situations.

Working with and on values ​​is a good starting point for the cultural transformation of a company. Values ​​are often named in company mission statements, they are often a matter of course in presentations. However, what is actually meant by a certain value, how it is lived in the company and if it is only “said” but is not internalized, can be very helpful to work out in workshops with a manager and/or employees.

Example: A company urgently wants to promote innovation. The corporate mission statement speaks of open communication, courage and transparency. However, if mistakes actually happen, this is directly identified as problematic on the one hand, and on the other hand a search is usually made immediately for someone who is “to blame”. A discussion about values ​​and how they are actually lived can be eye-opening and stimulate new ways towards a constructive error culture and feedback behavior.

We would be happy to work with you on your values ​​as the basis for your cultural change and develop them further with you using specific methods. Feel free to contact us.

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