C-suite Culture Advisors
Strategy defines what you need to be good at. Culture determines whether you will be.
Trusted by Fortune 500 clients · 30+ years · Thinkers50 recognised
Reconciliation
Every organisation faces tensions
When these remain unresolved, performance suffers:
- Global vs. local
- Speed vs. control
- Innovation vs. discipline
- Short-term vs. long-term
Real leaders distinguish decisions from dilemmas. Then they move beyond either-or choices and even beyond both-and thinking to through-through reconciliations, in which each side strengthens the other.
Situations
When strategy isn't the problem
We're called when leaders have the right strategy, the right talent, and the right intent — and execution still stalls. Usually because culture is doing its quiet work.
Typical situations we're asked to help with:
- A strategy that won't translate into behaviour on the ground
- A merger or acquisition where cultural integration will make or break the deal
- A global operating model strained by local realities
- A leadership team that needs to move from alignment on slides to alignment in action
- A function — Sales, Marketing, Finance — underperforming across markets
If any of these look familiar, we should talk.
What we do
Three ways we turn culture into performance.
Every engagement starts with a tension that's costing the organisation value.
We find it, work through it, and rewire the behaviours that let it keep happening.
Strategy & Culture Alignment
Translating ambition and the resulting tensions into the values, behaviours, and structure and process changes that deliver it. When strategy is sound but execution drags, this is where we work.
Global & Cross-Cultural Effectiveness
Helping leaders and teams turn cultural difference into cooperation, speed, and innovation — across borders, functions, and diverse workforces.
Transactions & Functional Performance
Protecting and accelerating value where cultural fit drives financial outcomes — in M&A integrations and in high-stakes operational functions incl. marketing, finance and sustainability.
Our thinking
Riding the Waves of Culture, and everything that followed.
For 30+ years, THT co-founders Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner have led the research into what culture actually does to performance. The body of work includes Riding the Waves of Culture — named a Thinkers50 Management Classic and translated into more than 20 languages with 300,000+ copies sold — over 100 further publications, and proprietary models now used by leaders and institutions worldwide, including the 7 Dimensions of Culture and the 4R approach to dilemma reconciliation.
"Any value disconnected from its opposite leads to a pathology."
"The value of a value is in the degree to which it helps reconcile a dilemma."
"Organisational culture is the end result of competing values fighting for preference."
"While most models focus on recognizing cultural differences only, we take advantage of those differences."
This is why we do what we do: to help organisations build stronger cultures, and to advance the broader understanding of culture itself through ongoing research, practical tools, and deep insight applied where it matters.
Clients
Our clients
We have been working for over three decades with Fortune 500 companies to support business leaders in dealing with the complexities of competing demands, across organisational and international borders by building meaningful connections.
Let's talk
Turn tension into traction in your organisation.
Together we determine and implement what is critical to get right to increase performance.
Other ways to work with us
→ Training
Programs in Creating Your Organisation's Vision, Dilemma Reconciliation, and Servant Leadership.
Embed our methods inside your organisation with certified practitioners.
→ Keynotes
Invite co-founder Fons Trompenaars or partner Bas Kemme to speak on performance, culture and leadership.