OUR SERVICES
Corporate Culture Development
CORPORATE CULTURE DEVELOPMENT...
Its impact and relevance, both internally and externally, are often underestimated: corporate culture. It is always there – whether deliberately shaped or left to itself. People who step up to lead, and thereby take on responsibility, shape the leadership culture as it is actually lived. At the same time, legends, experiences, rumors, hunches, and much more – and above all, people’s daily experience among their colleagues – shape the leadership culture as it is perceived. Often, the things that are not done or not said have a much stronger influence on a company’s culture of leadership and collaboration. Executive leadership is called upon to provide orientation and support here, and thus to secure lasting success. We offer you many years of cross-industry experience in developing the culture of collaboration and leadership that people actually experience.
Focus: Leadership Culture
Because leadership involves people’s habits as well as their resistance, expectations, vulnerabilities, and past experiences, leadership culture, in our experience, always changes only slowly – and therefore needs direction and staying power. In our work, we often encounter companies that cannot develop the agility they need with their leadership team during phases of growth, crisis, or change in general, because the leadership culture that actually exists does not support it. This is where investing with foresight pays off.
Focus: Quality and Visibility
Investors, customers, partners, talent, and the media look far more critically at a company’s intended and actual culture today. The documented aspects count, too: What are the company’s mission statement, values, and understanding of leadership – and how are they derived and communicated? What corporate goals and steering mechanisms are in place? What values does executive leadership convey and live by? What are the leadership team’s habits? What unwritten leadership principles exist? How do development and recognition work? What kind of culture exists around success and failure? Who joins, stays in, and leaves the leadership team – and why?
Focus: Business Relevance
As work processes become increasingly diversified and complex, it is also essential to protect the company from damage caused by shortcomings in leadership. A growing number of recent examples in German and international business show how severe the damage to reputation, balance sheet, and share price can be when there is no sound leadership culture of responsibility and shared accountability. Compliance – adherence to laws, policies, and codes of conduct – is firmly anchored in a healthy leadership culture and is therefore visible in how employees act. It usually has a more lasting effect than even the strictest rules of an elaborately drafted corporate governance code or company policy. We support you and your leadership team in setting an example, living up to this responsibility, and further developing a sound leadership culture.
Focus: The Multigenerational Workforce
Four or more generations already work side by side and together in companies today – and the number is growing. The many attempts to classify the generations (Baby Boomers, Gen X, Y, Z …) by their characteristics and needs are increasingly giving way to the realization that the supposed boundaries are fluid, and that characteristics and needs no longer depend primarily on age or gender, but on the individual and their life situation – and keep changing. For companies and leaders, the opportunity and the challenge lie in giving this diversity a framework that makes business sense, and in bringing together different life paths, ways of thinking, work patterns, experiences, and strengths in the best possible way. In our work, we have come to know and supported many successful concepts – and we are happy to share this experience with you.
Focus: Attracting Talent
Top talent looks for challenges at companies that offer opportunities and prospects above all for shaping and developing their personal lives. As part of a corporate and leadership culture, this very concretely includes the question of how – by which system and through which processes – development takes place. Far ahead of earning potential, what ranks highest on the attractiveness scale is the company’s image, an attractive and flexible work environment, the quality of leadership, and development prospects.
In Concrete Terms
Important questions for your own review include: Which top talents join the company – and stay? How good is the hiring and onboarding process? What success stories of talent development does the company have? What does the company promise – and what does it deliver? How transparent is the system for development, recognition, and compensation? How are goal-setting, milestone reviews, and performance reviews handled? What criteria apply to potential assessments and job grading? How diverse is the leadership team – how is diversity managed? How are top leaders specifically developed? What leadership development programs exist internally and externally? How do managers and HR support development measures? How do top executives engage in mentoring and peer coaching? What options are there for finding and shaping a healthy work-life balance? How is leadership competence developed across generations – what prospects do employees aged 50+ and 60+ have? What responsibility do the company and its leaders take on in society? How much room is there for lateral thinkers and innovators? What culture of separation is lived – when the company lets people go, or when people leave? What kind of communication culture is cultivated around leadership issues?
Drawing on experience from many different companies and perspectives, we offer our services along the questions above – in designing and implementing development processes as well as in further developing existing programs and approaches. We are familiar with a wide range of scenarios – whether in the fast-growing service or software industries, the rapidly changing energy or IT sectors, or the particular features of for-profit and nonprofit organizations and social services institutions.
As a first step, we are happy to visit your company and discuss your current situation with you in comparison with how other companies approach it. From this, we develop a proposal for concrete next steps.