Cultural Development
What should become standard practice in your organization?
Organizational culture often reveals itself precisely where it’s no longer openly discussed: how responsibility is assumed, how openly dissent is permitted, how mistakes are handled, or what behavior is valued.
Cultural development helps you understand these established patterns and clarify what should remain and what needs to change. Together, we translate desired values and principles into concrete expectations, behaviors, and practices that provide guidance in everyday life.
Culture cannot simply be imposed. It evolves when people have new experiences and when these experiences align with leadership, organizational frameworks, and what is actually fostered and expected. The existing cid website already emphasizes that, beyond values, norms, and attitudes, culture primarily shapes decisions, actions, and behavior.
Discover where cultural development can begin.
Where do aspirations and lived culture not yet match up?
Bring a specific observation with you. In an informal conversation, we’ll sort through it to identify which cultural expectations or patterns emerge and what’s worth examining more closely.
What cultural development is specifically working on
Not every organization starts with a cultural mission statement. Sometimes the first step is to better understand the existing culture. Sometimes the desired direction is already clear, but it isn’t yet reflected in daily actions.
Understanding the existing culture
How are decisions actually made, collaborations carried out, and conflicts handled? Which expectations have become the norm, and which behaviors are rewarded or discouraged?
We help you make these patterns visible and discussable. This is explicitly not about making a blanket judgment of the existing culture. What matters is identifying which patterns currently support the organization and which no longer meet its needs.
Defining a target culture
Terms like trust, performance, openness, or personal responsibility can mean very different things.
We’ll work with you to clarify what your desired culture should mean in specific situations. How are decisions made? How do people address problems? What responsibilities do managers and employees assume? In this way, abstract values become a tangible point of reference for everyday life.
Translating values into behavior
Values only become effective when people can recognize the behaviors associated with them.
We work with you to develop concrete principles and practices that can guide collaboration. These can include, for example, feedback, knowledge sharing, dealing with mistakes, and decision-making processes.
Bringing different cultures together
In mergers, growth, or the integration of different entities, differing norms and assumptions often clash.
We help to identify differences and commonalities early on and to clarify which cultural elements should be preserved and what will apply jointly in the future. Especially in M&A processes, cultural differences, identity, and unspoken expectations can significantly influence subsequent collaboration.
In this way, culture becomes a concrete development issue
Culture remains elusive as long as discussions focus solely on values. Cultural development becomes more concrete when expectations, behavior, and recurring situations are considered together.
Unspoken expectations become discussable
Organizations often have unspoken expectations. What does leadership owe its employees? How much initiative is expected? How fairly should changes be experienced?
Making such expectations visible allows misunderstandings and disappointments to be addressed earlier.
The desired behavior becomes clearer
“More trust” says little about what people should do differently.
Cultural development translates abstract concepts into concrete behavior. This clarifies how the desired culture can be recognized in everyday work life and where differing perceptions exist.
Contradictions between aspiration and everyday life become apparent
An organization can demand individual responsibility while simultaneously centralizing every important decision. It can emphasize openness while sanctioning critical voices.
Such contradictions weaken cultural messages. Cultural development helps to recognize these contradictions and examine which conditions need to change so that aspiration and experience align more closely.
New forms of collaboration can be tested
Culture doesn’t change through discussion alone. New experiences can challenge ingrained expectations.
Therefore, new practices should first be tested in concrete situations. The resulting experiences reveal what works, where resistance arises, and what the next steps should be.
Cultural change happens through experiences, not through pronouncements
Culture changes when new behaviors are tried out, experienced, and reflected upon in everyday life. The former cid website already formulated this idea very clearly: New practices should not be imposed, but understood as experiments.
UNDERSTANDING PATTERNS
We clarify which expectations and behaviors shape today’s culture. Depending on the question, we use discussions, workshops, surveys, or methods such as OCI and OEI.
DESCRIBING DESIRED BEHAVIOR
We translate cultural goals into concrete principles and behaviors. This makes visible what should be experienced differently in the future.
NEW PRACTICES TESTED
Changes are tested in concrete situations. These can include, for example, new forms of feedback, decision-making, or collaboration.
REFLECTING ON EXPERIENCES
Together we examine what has changed, which old patterns continue to have an effect, and where further development makes sense.
Culture is embedded in the unwritten rules of the organization.
What is officially said about an organization is only one part of its culture. Equally important are unspoken expectations, everyday routines, and experiences regarding what behavior is actually desired.
Values need to be translated into everyday life
Values describe what is important to an organization. However, terms like respect, trust, or responsibility remain open to interpretation.
Therefore, what matters is what a value means in concrete situations. Does trust mean delegating decisions? Sharing information early? Addressing mistakes openly? Taking on responsibility without reassurance?
Cultural development creates space to clarify this meaning together. Only then can values become a guide for behavior and decisions.
The existing cid culture page distinguishes between values, principles, practices, and visible artifacts, among other things. Changes can be tested directly, especially at the level of concrete practices.
Unspoken expectations influence behavior
People have ideas about what they can expect from their organization and, conversely, what is expected of them. A large part of these expectations is never explicitly agreed upon.
In organizational psychology, such reciprocal expectations are described, among other things, as psychological contracts . If these are violated, trust, commitment, and the willingness to cooperate can suffer. Marc Solga at cid deals extensively with the question of how such expectations can be made visible and better shaped.
This is relevant for cultural development because culture consists not only of formulated values. It also arises from experiences regarding which promises are kept, what is perceived as fair, and what people can rely on.
Practices show which culture is actually lived
How are meetings conducted? How is feedback given? How are mistakes handled? Who is allowed to disagree? How is knowledge shared?
These everyday practices make culture tangible. That’s precisely why they can be excellent starting points for cultural development.
For example, a changed meeting practice can enable new experiences with responsibility, commitment, or decision-making. You can learn more about this in the article “Cultural Change Arises Through Action.”
However, it’s crucial not to introduce practices in isolation. If they consistently contradict the organization’s actual expectations and framework, they will rarely be sustainable.
Leadership shapes culture, but does not own it
Leaders have a significant influence on which behaviors in everyday work receive attention, recognition, or consequences.
They shape culture through their decisions, priorities, and their own behavior. However, organizational culture is not solely created by leadership. Work methods, informal rules, processes, incentives, and the experiences of many people also play a role.
Therefore, the targeted development of leadership behavior remains a separate area within leadership and leadership development . The cultural development section focuses on the organizational level.
Organizational design and culture must be compatible
Roles, decision-making rights, and organizational frameworks influence which behaviors are possible and likely.
For example, someone who expects more individual responsibility but doesn’t formally delegate it creates a contradiction between cultural aspirations and organizational design.
Conversely, culture influences whether a new organizational design is actually implemented. A new role model changes little if it’s still expected that every relevant decision must be secured through the hierarchy.
When structure, roles, responsibilities, or decision-making processes are the focus, we delve deeper into these issues in organizational design. The old cid website explicitly described the interrelationship between organizational culture and organizational design.
Cultural development takes time, but not just large programs
Cultural patterns develop over many experiences. Accordingly, they can rarely be changed by a single intervention.
However, this does not mean that cultural development must always begin as a large, multi-year program. Specific situations can also provide meaningful starting points, such as how decisions are handled, collaboration at interfaces, or new forms of feedback.
It is important that individual changes are not viewed as isolated measures. They should align with the cultural goal and the other conditions of the organization.
Rethinking cultural development
Rethinking organizational development:
Designing psychological contracts
Understanding and consciously shaping unspoken expectations
Analyzing organizational culture with OCI and OEI
Systematically examine cultural patterns
Change-Themen auf einen Blick
Frequently Asked Questions
What is cultural development?
Cultural development is the conscious evolution of the values, expectations, and behavioral patterns that shape daily actions within an organization.
It deals not only with formally stated corporate values, but also with how people actually collaborate, make decisions, and interact with one another.
What is organizational culture?
Organizational culture encompasses shared values, assumptions, and expectations, as well as the resulting behaviors and practices.
It is evident, for example, in how responsibility is assumed, knowledge is shared, conflicts are handled, and decisions are made.
Can corporate culture be deliberately changed?
Culture cannot simply be mandated. However, organizations can create conditions and provide experiences that make different behaviors more likely.
This includes, for example, specific principles, changed practices, appropriate organizational frameworks, and joint reflection. The existing cid website accordingly describes cultural development as a gradual process and emphasizes that new practices should be understood as experiments rather than imposed solutions.
How do you develop a target culture?
A target culture should not consist solely of abstract values.
First, it is clarified which values and behaviors should support the organization in the future. Then, it is specified how this culture should manifest itself in collaboration, leadership, decision-making, and other everyday situations.
How can organizational culture be analyzed?
Organizational culture can be examined through interviews, workshops, observations, and surveys.
Depending on the research question, standardized instruments such as OCI and OEI can also be used. It is important not only to consider officially stated values but also actual expectations and everyday experiences.
Why are corporate values alone not enough?
Values initially formulate a principle. Whether they shape culture only becomes apparent in actual behavior.
If, for example, an organization names openness as a value, but critical feedback regularly has negative consequences, people are more likely to orient themselves by this experience than by the stated value.
What role do unwritten rules play in organizational culture?
Unwritten rules describe expectations about what behavior is considered normal, desirable, or risky within an organization.
They can influence, for example, whether people take responsibility, address problems openly, or question decisions. Cultural development makes such expectations discussable and helps to examine which of them remain relevant.
What role do managers play in cultural development?
Leaders influence culture through their behavior, decisions, and the expectations they place on others.
However, culture is not solely created by leadership. Processes, roles, incentives, informal rules, and everyday experiences also shape behavior within the organization.
What is the difference between cultural development and organizational development?
Cultural development focuses on an organization’s values, expectations, and behavioral patterns.
Organizational development takes a broader view, considering how collaboration and an organization’s capacity for development can be further enhanced. Culture can be an important area for development in this context.
What is the difference between cultural development and organizational design?
Organizational design shapes, among other things, the structure, roles, responsibilities, interfaces, and decision-making processes.
Cultural development deals with the values, expectations, and behavioral patterns that determine how these formal frameworks are actually implemented.
Both levels influence each other.
When is cultural development useful?
Cultural development can be beneficial when desired values are barely discernible in everyday practice, new ways of working clash with old expectations, or collaboration repeatedly gets stuck in similar cultural patterns.
Mergers, growth, new strategic requirements, or major transformations can also bring cultural issues to light. Cultural development should not be an end in itself, but rather address a specific organizational development question. The existing CID Culture page explicitly reflects this idea.