Welcome to ITIM america

Culture Audit & due diligence for M&A, and Change Management

Our tools

Itim has developed a number of tools, which are unique in their precision and accuracy. They are all based on the research results of Hofstede and others, which we have translated and adapted to be of practical assistance in your real life work situation.

Tools we use to help you to manage your organizational culture effectively are:

Multi Focus Model^©
Consistency check
Levels of Change

The Multi Focus Model^©

We use this model to conduct culture audits on an organizational rather than a cultural level. We use proprietary software to provide a realistic picture of:

The organization as it is now
The `optimum´ culture, based on strategic objectives
The desired culture, i.e. what most employees would prefer.

We can provide answers to questions such as:

Is the current leadership style working?
What styles might be more acceptable?
Is the current culture functional or dysfunctional?
Are employees strongly motivated?
What is the likelihood of resistance to change?
Are potential partners fit to engage in a merger?

There are 7 primary dimensions and 31 sub-dimensions on which the culture of a company is scored.

The primary dimensions of organizations:

Means-oriented versus Goal-oriented
Internally driven versus Externally driven
Easy-going versus Strict work discipline
Local versus Cosmopolitan
Open versus Closed
Employee-oriented versus Work-oriented
Acceptance leadership style versus Rejection leadership style

Consistency check

All too often clients would like to achieve characteristics within the organization, which are contradictory in nature. Sailors also have to deal with these contradictions - the ideal sailing boat does not exist. If you want stability you need a lot of wind. If you want to compensate for the wind by a swing keel then the boat becomes less stable etc.

In the case of culture this means that it is not possible to create an organizational culture characterized by both a great deal of innovative spirit combined with enormous work discipline, cost consciousness and punctuality. You either have to water down your requirements or create sub-cultures - one for R&D with an emphasis on innovative spirit and one for your mass production plant with an emphasis on work discipline.

The above may be obvious, but there are other much less obvious aspects of work reality for which a consistency check may work wonders. It can help you to focus and differentiate better between requirements, which different departments should meet.

We can do three consistency checks:

Translate all your strategic documents in terms of the Multi Focus Model© and compare the results with the optimal culture as defined by you.
Compare your optimal choices made on the primary dimensions with your choices made on a selection of sub-dimensions.
Assess the conditions that have to be met in order to realize the optimal culture.

Levels of Change

Probably one of the most challenging aspects of corporate life is how to realize change in a focused way. Our change levers help you to realize just that. We make a pre-selection, from around 500 change levers, so that the levers direct only those aspects of the culture, which you like to see changed. From these you then select those levers, which best fit your work reality in order to translate them into concrete actions.