When consulting clients, training management teams and coaching individuals and groups, understanding organizational culture is the starting point for everything we do. With Peter Drucker who famously said that culture would eat strategy for breakfast, we believe that culture is of overwhelming importance to a success of a business.
For Edgar Schein creating and managing culture, nurturing the environment people need to succeed, is the foremost task of a leader.
„The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you, and you may not even be aware of the extent to which this is happening.“
Culture, as Edgar Schein indicates, can manage you and become the stumbling block for any of your change initiatives.
„Culture is the deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously and define in a basic ‚taken for granted‘ fashion an organization’s view of its self and its environment.“
An organization`s culture is strongly influenced by the beliefs and behaviors of its founder and in a broader sense by its leadership culture.
„In the managerial organization, the top people sit in judgment; in the innovative organization it is their job to encourage ideas, no matter how unripe or crude.“
To stay innovative and agile is one of the biggest challenges successful businesses are facing. Today`s organizations, as John P. Kotter says, tend to be over-managed and under-led which means that new thinking and long-term, visionary perspectives have a hard time to prevail.
At INNOVA we bring culture and change, leadership and innovation experts together to work with clients on comprehensive culture change programs that bring them closer to their defined future state in terms of culture. We ensure a high degree of involvement of lower levels of management and general staff, we utilize assessment tools to structure the path forward and track progress, we help integrate culture into team and leadership culture and make it a strategic point of consideration at the top level of management.
We support our clients in their systematic efforts to build companies that are more aligned and unified, more competitive, future-oriented, value-driven and innovative with programs as:
- Corporate Culture Change Program
- Leadership Culture Workshop
Having started out with the main focus placed on cross-cultural management and leadership, we are known for being experts in the area of intercultural training and coaching. For more than 12 years we have been conducting the executive workshop „Leadership for Expat Managers: How to lead local Personnel“, a much acclaimed program several hundreds of executives have attended over the years. We support our clients in their efforts to build intercultural competence at all levels of the organization with programs as:
- Intercultural Training for Teams
- Leadership for Expat Managers: How to lead local Personnel.
For further reading, please refer to the sections Leadership, Change, and Innovation.
For more detailed information on our services and programs please contact us at info@innova-institute.com.cn
We believe in building learning organizations since only learning organizations have the capacity to innovate, anticipate the future and stay agile in face of an increasingly complex business environment made of disruptive technological and economic developments.
„The rate at which organizations learn may soon become the only sustainable source of competitive advantage.“
With Peter Drucker we think that organizations are characterized by both change and continuity and need both change and continuity to exist and further develop. We also think that an organization`s capability to adapt to external change is greatly dependent upon the mindset of organizational members:
„The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.“
Change is not only about the ability to adapt to external change and, better even, anticipate it. Change is very much about leadership as the ability to lead change is a key leadership skill and essential to successful organizational change.
„Speed of change is the driving force. Leading change competently is the only answer.“
We look at change from a positive, optimistic angle and through the lens of an entrepreneur. We believe that change provides opportunities to exploit:
„Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.“
At Innova, we are a team of senior change consultants of European and Chinese origin, with experience in supporting clients during post-merger integration, company turnaround and other challenging cases of major organizational change. One of our partners, Dr Gerald Renger, is an international change expert with more than twenty years of experience.
We support our clients during times of major change by designing and conducting change strategy workshops, running training programs for mid-level managers on leadership and change management and consulting and coaching change leaders.
For further reading, please refer to the sections Leadership, Innovation, and Culture.
For more detailed information on our services and programs please contact us at info@innova-institute.com.cn
The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you, and you may not even be aware of the extent to which this is happening.
Understand the „Pygmalion Effect“: Leaders should always expect the very best of those around them. They know that people can change and grow.
We always plan too much and always think too little.
Situations emerge in the process of creative destruction in which many firms may have to perish that nevertheless would be able to live on vigorously and usefully if they could weather a particular storm.
The function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on.
Innovation is the market introduction of a technical or organisational novelty, not just its invention.
Profit is the payment you get when you take advantage of change.
At the heart of capitalism is creative destruction.
„As a matter of fact, capitalist economy is not and cannot be stationary. Nor is it merely expanding in a steady manner. It is incessantly being revolutionized from within by new enterprise, i.e., by the intrusion of new commodities or new methods of production or new commercial opportunities into the industrial structure as it exists at any moment.“
„The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.“
„Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has two and only two functions: Marketing and Innovation. Marketing and Innovation produce results. All the rest are costs.“
„Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has two and only two functions: Marketing and Innovation. Marketing and Innovation produce results. All the rest are costs.“
„The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.“
„If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.“
„The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.“
„Listening (the first competence of leadership) is not a skill, it is a discipline. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut.“
„We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.“
„During periods of discontinuous, abrupt change, the essence of adaptation involves a keen sensitivity to what should be abandoned – not what should be changed or introduced. A willingness to depart from the familiar has distinct survival value.“
„Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.“
„You cannot prevent a major catastrophe, but you can build an organization that is battle-ready, where people trust one another. In military training, the first rule is to instill soldiers with trust in their officers – because without trust, they won’t fight.“
„Ideas are like frog eggs: you’ve got to lay a thousand to hatch one.“
„There is no perfect strategic decision. One always has to pay a price. One always has to balance conflicting objectives, conflicting opinions, and conflicting priorities. The best strategic decision is only an approximation – and a risk.“
„The greatest challenge to organizations is the balance between continuity and change. You need both. At different times, the balance is slightly more over here, or slightly more over there, but you need both. And balance is basically the greatest task in leadership. Organizations have to have continuity, and yet if there is not enough new challenge, not enough change, they become empty bureaucracies, awfully fast.“
„The basic economic resource – the means of production – is no longer capital, nor natural resources, nor labor. It is and will be knowledge.“
„Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.“
„Speed of change is the driving force. Leading change competently is the only answer.“
„The rate at which organizations learn may soon become the only sustainable source of competitive advantage.“
„Intelligence the ability to adapt to change.“
„As soon as you move one step up from the bottom, your effectiveness depends on your ability to reach others through the spoken and written word.“
„In the managerial organization, the top people sit in judgment; in the innovative organization it is their job to encourage ideas, no matter how unripe or crude.“
„Innovation requires us to systematically identify changes that have already occurred in a business – in demographics, in values, in technology or science – and then to look at them as opportunities. It also requires something that is most difficult for existing companies to do: to abandon rather than defend yesterday.“
„Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.“
„The manager is a servant. His master is the institution he manages and his first responsibility must therefore be to it.“
„The organization is, above all, social. It is people.“
„The most effective way to manage change is to create it.“
„Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation.“
„Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.“
„We learn together in teams. This involves a shift from a spirit of advocacy to a spirit of enquiry.“
„In great teams conflict becomes productive.“
„Most people define learning too narrowly as mere ‚problem-solving‘, so they focus on identifying and correcting errors in the external environment. Solving problems is important. But if learning is to persist, managers and employees must also look inward. The need to reflect critically on their own behaviour, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organisation`s problems, and then change how they act.“
