The Challenge
How a transformation in the culture of leadership can be achieved in a social organization that thrives on care, while also needing efficiency, focus, and sustainability?
Between Humanity and Efficiency
The Pfennigparade Foundation faced a typical but profound challenge faced by many social organizations: A strong foundation of values collided with a highly complex everyday working life with increasing demands on leadership, orientation, and accountability for results.
The central task was therefore not to introduce new tools but to renew the leadership culture without losing sight of humanity.
Specifically, the aim was to develop a shared, contemporary understanding of leadership across all walks of life, to overcome the gap between aspiration and practice, to develop a leadership culture that equally strengthens commitment, personal responsibility, and effectiveness, and to bring about a noticeable change in everyday behavior, not just a new mission statement.
Approach
From areas of tension to the core of corporate culture
The approach consisted of analyzing and addressing the leadership culture not in a normative way, but rather narratively and systemically. Our basic assumption: Culture does not change through insight, but through new experiences.
The following aspects were of central importance
- Making the existing leadership narrative visible
- Deciphering emotional, often unconscious patterns
- Working on leadership as an interplay of attitude, behavior, and circumstances
Scientific models from psychology, cultural, and organizational research (including cultural pattern and development models) were not explained, but rather translated into concrete interventions.
The goal was a warm transformation: managers should not be pressured, but drawn by positive inner images.
Long-term behavioral change always involves a change in identity.
IMPLEMENTATION
Methods
The process was structured in several phases and deliberately designed to be participatory.
Observations and analyses
Narrative interviews with managers, analysis of stories about leadership situations, and the identification of actual cultural patterns rather than abstract target images formed the central basis.
This revealed a clear picture of the internal tensions between:
The desire for humanity and efficiency,
Finding a generally accepted consensus and making decisions,
As well as between caring for employees and focusing on results.
Messages, Synthesis and Target Images
This consisted of developing a common leadership compass, translating abstract values into concrete leadership roles, and an already existing clear cultural focus: providing orientation without increasing control.
Cultural interventions
- Culture Campfires, in which leadership situations were “played through” narratively
- Culture Hackathons, to deliberately disrupt existing routines
- Snowball communication, card sets, and other formats that bring leadership to life in everyday situations
The focus was on the system in which leadership took place, not on individuals.
RESULTS
Today, Pfennigparade has a leadership culture that emphasizes connectivity without standardization. Different leadership styles are not contradictions here, but are a conscious core of the role portfolio.
Key Learnings
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Humanity is not an efficiency problem, but a factor in productivity
Leadership is effective when emotional closeness and clarity are considered together.
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Cultural change begins with stories, not rules
Only when managers recognise their own narratives does real room for new behaviour emerge.
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Roles create security in complex systems
A clear role model relieves the burden on leadership without standardising it.
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Behavioural change requires systemic triggers
New routines, spaces and formats are crucial for attitudes to become effective in everyday life.
