Culture Hub

The Culture Hub is responsible for company-wide culture development; it...

• ensures that culture development meets the new strategic requirements
• forms the interface between top management, leaders and employees
• plans, controls and monitors all culture activities
• ensures convergence between the current organization (structures, processes, management behavior) and the desired future culture
• communicates cultural issues via all relevant channels
• promotes communication about culture within the company
• advises leaders and employees on cultural issues

The culture hub sees itself as a "reflection of the company" and consists of around five to seven members. The internal project management for the Culture Journey usually takes over the leadership of the culture hub.

Channels

We use the following channels to bring the new culture into the company:

• Leadership Community: Leaders must be won over to establish the desired culture (through their behavior) in the company and thus act as role models.
• Employee Journey: The systems, processes and tools of the HR Cycle must be aligned with and used for the desired future behavior.
• Empowerment: Leaders and employees must be empowered through specific formats to demonstrate the right behavior. Seminars, workshops, mentoring, coaching and sparring programs can be used for this purpose.
• Collaboration Framework: Good persuasion and empowerment alone are not enough. In order for people to demonstrate the desired behavior, existing structures and processes must be questioned and adapted. Example: Courage and determination on the one hand and endless approval chains on the other do not go together.
• Communications: Culture development is virtually impossible without good communication. Corporate communications and meeting structures must be designed in such a way that they promote a discussion about culture and cultural directions.
• Multiplicators: People within the company are empowered to act as supporters for scaling culture development.

Culture Sponsors

We recommend nominating one person as a sponsor for each culture direction. These people should have a good standing in the company and are often representatives of top management. The sponsors provide the culture hub with impetus for culture development and are available at events, for example. The matching of sponsors to the culture directions can be strength- or deficit-oriented. We recommend the deficit-oriented approach, as it also "forces" the protagonists to take development steps.

Culture Multipliers

To better anchor the desired future culture, we recommend empowering other leaders and employees to act as multipliers. The aim of empowering this group of people is to enable them to conduct workshops and events on culture development in line with the culture directions and thus make a significant contribution to scaling.

Culture Monitoring

We take Peter Drucker's saying "What gets measured gets done" seriously when it comes to culture development. Although everyone in the company is sensitive to whether and where the culture is developing, it is advisable to visualize and assess developments from time to time to derive further measures. We recommend a combination of quantitative and qualitative elements, e.g., you must always allow sufficient time to discuss developments qualitatively against the background of measurement data and exchange positive and negative examples.

Culture KPIs

Is it possible to measure culture development? Not easy, but possible! We recommend defining meaningful key performance indicators against the backdrop of culture directions. We can draw on a wealth of experience here, but you must rethink this for every culture journey. In addition, it also depends on a) whether you have data from the past and b) whether you have the appropriate measurement options.

Specifically: If you want to promote cross-divisional thinking and acting, the internal mobility rate, for example, can provide information about the development.