Every company must assert itself in its environment. The contextual challenges have a decisive influence on (necessary) culture development and must therefore be included in the Culture Journey. We consider the external environment in the spheres of economy, technology, social affairs and ecology. The “internal world” of the system in focus (purpose, values, strategy, structures and processes) defines additional guidelines for culture development. If the system in focus is a strategic business area or a functional area, the guidelines of the superordinate internal world (the overall organization) must also be incorporated into culture development.
At the beginning of the half-day workshops, the key findings from the "Culture Today" report are presented to create a common jumping-off point. This is followed by a discussion and visualization of the cultural implications arising from the external and internal contextual challenges, particularly the strategy. Once the participants have a clear picture of today's culture and the strategic requirements, patterns that support and hinder today's culture can be identified. The future culture can then be defined: Cultural strengths that should be maintained and cultivated in the future are derived from the supporting cultural patterns. Culture directions that provide orientation and direction for culture development are derived from the hindering cultural patterns.
Reflecting on the cultural patterns that support and hinder us brings together the past, present and future. The question is: "Which patterns of our current culture support us in mastering the future challenges, and which ones hinder us?". This consideration leads (once again) to an in-depth analysis of today's culture and forms the basis for the future culture.
Specifically: A cultural peculiarity often observed in traditional companies is that the company or the people have built up an infinite wealth of experience and knowledge in the past and use both "reflexively" when solving problems. Whether this is a supporting or hindering cultural pattern, or perhaps even both, depends primarily on the strategy. If the company wants to defend or expand its market share in an existing market, knowledge and experience (in the existing business) are certainly an asset. If, on the other hand, the company wants to break new ground and is exposed to strong pressure to innovate, knowledge and experience can have a counterproductive effect, as they can limit the scope for new solutions.
The culture target image is derived from the current cultural patterns that support and hinder the company and includes the identified cultural strengths and developed culture directions. The cultural strengths must be maintained and expanded, as they already support the company in overcoming future challenges. The culture directions describe which new cultural patterns need to be developed to be successful in the future.
Specifically, if today's culture in a market with complex customer needs is characterized by silo thinking, cross-divisional thinking and action will become a must. This is the only way to develop holistic solutions that match the customer's purchasing criteria. In our experience, it is advisable to focus on three culture directions or colors and to clarify which positive effects you want to achieve in the culture for each direction, as in the example. Each culture directions contains two to three such fields of action.
The report contains a consolidated list of the cultural patterns that support and hinder future challenges. The cultural strengths and culture directions derived from this describe the desired culture of the future. It also contains initial ideas for implementing the fields of action for each direction and impressions from the Future Culture workshops in the form of quotes, photos and videos.
