Intercultural Change Management

Is your organisation characterised by internal cultural differences? Are there branches in different countries or regions? Is your branch located in a context very different from the head office? If so, this is a great opportunity to actually examine the cultural differences and thus be able to exploit them.

Almost every multinational organisation has ethnocentric traits: the tendency to adopt the rules and management tools of headquarters. With a geocentric approach, more use is made of different insights and perspectives.

What about your organization?

  • Is the organisation allowed to differ in parts by country, region or department?
  • Do changes made stick or do they degenerate into a ritual dance?
  • Does your organisational culture support or hinder the establishment goals
  • How is the internal information flow and cooperation between individual layers in the organisation?
  • What do you know (and learn) about local forms of organisation, leadership and motivation?

Cultural Insights offers expertise and guidance and helps to combine the best of both worlds. Resulting in:

  • Good communication and better decision-making.
  • Innovation in both output and management tools.
  • Retention of motivated and talented staff.
  • Great opportunity for competitive advantage.

Approach

Our approach consists of four key steps:

  1. Analyse deeper cultural patterns to find the main similarities and differences. In particular, we use Hofstede’s 6D model.
  2. Examining the practical manifestations of the deeper cultural patterns. The Toyota tool ‘Genchi Genbutsu’ (go see for yourself) is used. From the outcomes of the first two steps, we jointly distil the building blocks for the required change process.
  3. Translating the building blocks into innovative management tools, organisational design and new ways of working.
  4. Implementation and fine-tuning of change, including tools for organisational development, role modelling of leadership and participation of different layers for embedding in the organisation.

For more information, see the book ‘Cultural Confluence in Organizational Change: a Portuguese venture in Angola‘.

We are happy to help you

Are you interested in one of these processes?

Please complete the form below or send an email to info@cultural-insights.nl. We will then contact you as soon as possible.

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See also Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Saskia Maarse

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Saskia Maarse is a Dutch intercultural speaker, trainer and author. For six years, she researched how Dutch culture is experienced by people from other cultures. She did so through in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs and managers from 30 different countries. She wrote two books on the subject: Tutti frutti – Success in a colourful and entreprising Netherlands and Onder de zeespiegel – collaborating and living together with the Dutch.

Saskia’s fascination for cultural differences started at a young age. She worked in tourism for over ten years, including several years in France, Spain, Italy and Austria. Her work experience abroad and her subsequent trip around the world broadened her view of the world and its inhabitants. Her research provided Saskia with much: more cultural awareness and extensive knowledge about Dutch culture in relation to other cultures.

Saskia’s mission is to provide as many people and organisations as possible with cultural insights and awareness in an accessible and inspiring way, so that more understanding of different cultures is created.

“During our team building day in Openluchtmuseum Arnhem we have had the pleasure to enjoy a very interesting cultural awareness workshop focussing on the Dutch culture in comparison with other cultures, how other cultures see us Dutch and what we can learn with the 6 principles of intercultural working from Saskia Maarse. The diverse group that we were with 25 people, 6 nationalities and even more cultures (including Frisian and Limburg) were really enthusiastic and even more understood the importance of good communication (verbal and visual) in international business.”
Marko van der Smitte, Sales Director Alfa Laval

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