This is how @AOEpeople tick: Results of the Core Culture Survey

At AOE we attach great importance to our corporate culture with all of its aspects of an optimal development of our employees, encouraging initiative and self-organization, and culminating in a mutually beneficial, value-creating partnership with our customers. Only if the existing culture makes these aspects possible, can we actually offer the excellence that our customers have grown accustomed to and which makes us successful.

Just as the various corporate cultures don’t fit with every company, a specific culture can lead to more or less successful company. At the same time, a company can only develop in an optimal way if the existing culture matches the corporate goals and -organization.

AOE has experienced rapid growth in the past few years, which is reflected both in employee- and revenue figures. This growth requires a continuous adaptation of our corporate organizational structure. And, since we don’t want to run the risk of upsetting the balance among corporate goals, -organization and -culture, we conduct an internal survey in regular intervals focusing on our existing culture. We want to know whether the corporate culture is changing with the growth of the company, positively or negatively, and which conclusions we can draw from this information. After 2013, we now carried out another such internal survey in 2016.

There are numerous and varying culture models, we orient ourselves primarily on the Culture Model according to William E. Schneider (“The Reengineering Alternative”). Schneider describes organizational culture with the statement “How we do things around here in order to succeed.” For Schneider, organizational culture is closely linked to the way companies are led (Leadership) and with the ideas management has about how things in the company are supposed to work.

The comparison to the survey results of 2013 – taking into account that the company was significantly smaller – is as follows:

Our fundamental course is confirmed. Collaboration und Cultivation still represent our core cultures. However, it’s worth noting that there is a small increase of the Competence Culture to ten percent.

Of course the cultures don’t mean that organizational cultures such as Cultivation don’t have Competence or that a Collaboration Culture works without Control. In this model those respective cultural priorities are depicted that are targeted at the basic leadership style, values and processes. Ulf Schneider provides an excellent description of the importance and characteristics of the individual cultures on allesagil.net; here’s a short summary of the two cultures that are important to AOE:

Collaboration Culture

“We succeed by working together”
Prototype: Family or Sports Team

Cultivation Culture

“We succeed by growing people who fulfill our vision”
Prototype: Religious Collective, Community

We at AOE can identify ourselves with a number of these statements. We attach great importance to people, to our employees within the team, on a personal level in the partnership with our customers and in the interaction with the management team.