The energy company saw a clear need for development, along with many opportunities. The management understood that a more comprehensive and in-depth development must take place, in which the company’s culture would be the main focus. The board of directors and the owners wanted to achieve better control of the business, long-term development, stable revenues and openness to collaboration/joint action with other actors within the industry. They also wanted to make the company more innovative and to achieve better access to the experience embodied by long-term company employees.

The challenge involved stimulating the development process while respecting the content of the organisational culture. The focus was placed upon an in-depth analysis of the company culture and actions in order to achieve greater cultural impact in the forthcoming change work. It was particularly important to engage everyone in this change work – the board of directors, the managers and the employees. A key factor was getting the managers to take on the role of drivers in the change process. Their ability and commitment in reinforcing the cultural values that facilitated development of the company were seen as highly desirable. Driving the change on both the cultural and structural level was viewed as central.

Kontura’s starting point in developing the business was a working model – the Culture Analysis. This is a model which has developed over many years’ consultancy work and follow-up evaluations.

An analysis of the organisational culture. The culture analysis included all of the staff and a selection of both private and corporate customers. On the basis of the results of the culture analysis, a measurement instrument was developed to follow the managers’ implementation of the development process. The measurement instrument was in part constructed to capture preparedness for development and change and to obtain an image of the relationship patterns between managers and work colleagues. The method emphasises more in-depth structures and motivations in the culture and reflects how people feel and think about their experience of the company and how they relate to what is taking place, either now or in the future. The work method is based on a process-orientated consultation, which means that the consultants do not come in and “take over” the managers’ assignments and responsibilities – nor do they “do the job” for them. When used on the strategic objectives, culture provides a powerful lever.

The culture analysis affects the design of the strategic objectives and changes the starting point for the development process. It is self-evident that the culture analysis would function as a navigational aid during the development. It clarified the employees’ emotional motivations, put into words the cultural characteristics and highlighted areas urgently requiring development. The managers in particular accepted the content of the analysis as they recognised the aspects that the analysis had put into words. They demonstrated at an early stage that they were prepared to get to grips with the company’s development needs. The focus was on using the positive motivations that we found among the employees, which was a way of showing respect to the employees.

In the costomer’s words

• The culture analysis was used to create content falling under the heading of “customer satisfaction”, which meant not merely paying lip service to this concept but implementing an approach and a set of actions that built upon a sustainable and stimulating collaboration.

• We were searching for an identity and achieved one through the work we carried out. The culture project came at exactly the right time. Everything was controlled by the work that we carried out. Now we can allow ourselves to see that we have achieved world class quality

      Kontura worked through us as managers. One major result of this, perhaps the most important, is that we obtained secure managers. As managers, we went to Kontura’s “training camps”, came back and met the employees in a completely different way.