A big hello. At first, everyone spoke in confusion. They greeted here, greeted there. Shoulders were tapped. Handshakes were implied.

We usually have a sales meeting twice a year, in the middle of the year, usually in May, then just before Christmas, immediately before our Christmas party, when colleagues from far away are also with us in Engen. The focus is on concentrated work on strategic issues. What corporate goals do we want to achieve on the market? How do we want to work the market? Sales meetings are strategy meetings.

The only problem was that many things did not work in the "normal way" in the past two years. Among other things, our strategy meeting could not take place in person. No direct exchange. No strategic cooperation. Instead, home office and online meetings.

Now we had the first sales meeting for two years in Presence. Joyful faces everywhere, because it was simply good to have a piece of normality again. So we rolled up our sleeves and got down to strategic sales work ... No, not business as usual.

Why? Why not finally return to normality?

Culture meeting instead of strategy meeting

Many companies are facing exactly this challenge: to breathe life back into the normality lost through Corona, to make employees returning from the home office part of a team again.

I think it is important for you not to let this step into normality simply happen "under the table". Instead, you should use it to reflect on your corporate values and the culture that defines your company.

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast" is how Peter Drucker once put it. You can still have a good corporate strategy with which to tackle your corporate goals if your people don't get on board. If you can't get your people excited about your business goals, the strategy won't work.

That's why we put strategy on the back burner at the sales meeting and spent half a day on culture: instead of a strategy meeting, we had a culture meeting.

Company goals need both pillars

In this way, we wanted to boost the sales team's sense of community, to inspire sales people by reflecting on our corporate values, the special culture that characterizes allsafe.

We started the culture meeting with short impulses on our corporate values and our mission statement, we then discussed central aspects in the team: What do we understand by fairness? Customer orientation? Innovation? Why is self-leadership so important to us?

And what became increasingly clear - and that's why it was so important to me to make a new start after Corona with the culture meeting: Culture doesn't just eat strategy for breakfast. They need both. We need strategy and culture to move allsafe forward as a company.

At allsafe, we see both culture and strategy as important pillars to achieve a key business objective.

Strategic success alone, success in the marketplace, is not enough for us. But without this success, our corporate culture, the values of community and sustainability that we want to advance, do not develop their full effect.

The unifying element, the roof over the two pillars, our cultural meeting revealed, is pride.

I can be proud if the company is successful, but I can only be proud if this success has been achieved in a way that is consistent with my values. If I achieve the company's strategic goals by dishonest means, I will not be proud.

But I want to be proud.

What is your goal, for your work, your company? My goal for allsafe is that everyone with us goes home proud in the evening.

Jens Laufer