Leadership & Culture

Organizational culture can determine whether an organization succeeds or fails. Cultural change can make your organization more competitive, innovative, and prepared for the future. The first question is often what organizational culture actually means.

Our working definition makes organizational culture tangible. It is the way we do things here. This includes how leaders lead, how people treat each other and themselves, how decisions are made, how efficiently and effectively people collaborate across silos, and how open they are to new ideas and risk.

Leadership culture includes the understanding of leadership, its underlying values, norms, and attitudes, and how leaders behave toward each other, employees, and external audiences. Imagine Steve Jobs in a gray pinstripe suit and tightly tied tie, or a bank executive in a turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers. Clothing can reflect underlying leadership values. The broader question is whether leadership is defined as authoritarian or collaborative. Aligning leadership culture with the desired organizational culture is crucial to cultural change and can be supported through effective leadership development.

Many organizational decision-makers want to shape their culture actively. Large, established organizations can often benefit from moving from risk avoidance toward renewal and from individualism toward greater collective responsibility. This cultural shift helps organizations enter new markets faster, respond more flexibly to customer needs, improve efficiency, and build employee satisfaction, capability, and commitment.

Some organizations struggle to change culture through a management mindset alone. They focus on processes, measurable goals, instructions, and structural changes. Others have yet to recognize that something as intangible as culture can be influenced in a structured way.

Do any of these thoughts about organizational culture sound familiar?

• "Corporate culture? That's everything and nothing - very intangible."
• "I know it's important, but I haven't quite grasped the concept yet."
•  "How can you really influence corporate culture?"
• "To really change our corporate culture, we would have to change our people."

Often, outdated beliefs and convictions also stand in the way of organizational culture change:

• "People can't change."
• "You're either a born leader or you're not"

Such outdated attitudes often result in employees being denied real further development and personal cultural change. There is neither empirical nor psychological support for these thought patterns. Many characteristics, including personality traits, are not completely innate and certainly not immutable. With sufficient willpower, professional corporate culture consulting and collegial support, momentous changes are possible on both a personal and organizational level.

During a culture change process, there are various aspects that a company can and should manage. In particular, a clear, emotionally appealing image of the target culture should be developed jointly, right at the beginning.

However, real cultural change only occurs if a critical mass of people subsequently work on their individual behavioral and thought patterns and support each other in the process. In our practice, these 4 success factors have proved themselves to be valuable:

To consciously develop corporate culture, we work with our clients in an intensive transformational relationship. Within the framework of corporate culture consulting, we set up a joint program that works with targeted measures, e.g.:

• Culture diagnostics
• Leadership development and staff development for key teams
•  Special large group events with "moments of truth"
• Change leader training
• Training, deployment and support of a cultural ambassador network
• Individual shadowing and coaching for intensive work on personal change

One of the hallmarks of a good innovation culture is that ...... people dare to express and contribute their own ideas. This is promoted by an atmosphere of psychological safety... employees understand that making mistakes is not only allowed but also encouraged. These mistakes are seen as valuable learning opportunities, leading to growth and improvement... employees at all levels of the organization actively interact with their environment, including the market, customers, and competitors, and organically delve into innovative concepts beyond conventional limits... there is time and space to break out of the operational daily routine and to shape it in a liberated way... everyone exchanges ideas beyond their own area of expertise... learning and experimentation are challenged and encouraged... corporate strategy, challenges and opportunities are discussed transparently, and suitable innovations are then developed to meet these challenges.

• ... people feel able to share their own ideas. An atmosphere of psychological safety supports this.
• ... employees know that useful mistakes are welcome when they happen early, are new, and lead to important learning.
• ... people at every level engage with their wider environment, including markets, customers, and competitors, and look beyond their immediate responsibilities.
• ... people have time and space to step outside day-to-day operations and explore new possibilities.
• ... everyone exchanges ideas beyond their own specialist area.
• ... learning and experimentation are expected and supported.
• ... strategy, challenges, and opportunities are discussed openly so that relevant innovations can be developed.

We help you create an effective innovation culture. Our experience in cultural development shows how organizational cultures can evolve deliberately. Innovation cultures need intrapreneurship. We help leaders and employees learn to think and act entrepreneurially. This generates more and better ideas and includes testing them in a focused, structured, economically sensible way, then implementing the promising ones. We use approaches such as agile coaching, cultural analysis, defining a target culture, experiential training, innovation workshops, exchanges with other organizations, talks, failure-sharing events, and on-the-job support. These help organizations become more entrepreneurial and measurably more innovative.

Alongside developing entrepreneurial cultures, we use practical experience and methodological expertise to build the backbone of an innovative organization. This means structures, processes, and spaces that make it easier to develop, test, and implement ideas.

Structures
As experienced organizational designers, we help you find a customer-centered organizational model. Our experience in agile coaching, agile backbone consulting, scaled environments, organizational structuring, and building new business units helps us strengthen cross-functional working, specialist expertise, adaptability, and speed. Together, we find the right organizational model and keep developing it.

Processes
Every innovation begins with an idea. Yet many ideas get lost, ignored, archived, incorrectly prioritized, or tested too late or inadequately, and are never implemented. We help you create a dynamic, fast idea-management process that increases the number of ideas and shortens the time from idea to market-ready product or service. This includes allocating resources, budgets, and people appropriately. We draw on agility, design thinking, and change methods to find processes that help your organization generate and pursue ideas.

Spaces
Physical space influences the quality, speed, and creativity of work. We designed our own office, Timmerland, around New Work principles and do the same for clients’ offices and campuses. Find out more through Timmermann Architecture & Design and New Ways of Working. We help you create working environments that support innovation through interior design, architecture, and new ways of working.