Here's how you can drive successful culture change by leveraging problem solving skills.

Die Annahme, Kultur zu etwas hin verändern zu können, ist für sich genommen falsch. Kultur entsteht aus den systemischen Bedingungen einer Organisation. Ändern können wir die systemischen Verhältnisse.

It is often quoted that “culture eats strategies for breakfast”. Therefore understanding the culture of your organisation is crucial to effect change as no matter how good the plans are true changes cannot sustain if the culture is not well-understood. There is always that well-intentioned, lofty, and catchy organisation Vision that is espoused. However, culture is what cannot be seen especially the Hidden Beliefs of the people within the organisation. Getting to know the values and aligning values of the people to the organisational value would be a good place to start.

Focus groups, ideally run by someone independent, can be very informative. In particular they can reveal how people are rationalizing things in a dysfunctional way - what stories people are telling themselves. And these stories become raw material for story-led interventions.

To use the problem solving skills of your team, distill the problem into a video drama in which a character has to make a difficult choice. People naturally ask - "What would I do in that situation?" This is the beginning of a conversation - one that can change culture from the bottom up.

Execution is a critical phase during culture change. Establishing strong foundations to eliminate and anticipate the arising problems during execution would be useful. When problems still arise, finding the right root cause by classifying them into each foundation will make it easier to resolve the issue. This is a time when you show your problem solving skills appropriately. - if the issue related to lack of commitment, set a binding agreement - if the issue is about trust, give your team freedom to carry out the task to create sense of belonging. Provide proper guidance. - develop a regular constructive communication, when the issue is about lack of teamwork. - develop legitimate tools when the issue is about insecure feelings. Etc.

To drive successful change initiatives led by problem solving it’s crucial to build connection, community and invite diverse thought leadership. You need to build a safe space where everyone can bounce off each other, judgement free, and inspire each all to piece together the skills knowledge and experience to craft a solution.