How the Konrad Adenauer Foundation was able to create its new mission statement with the help of its employees and CrowdInsights.
What could a common mission statement for the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) look like? How should the foundation face technological developments and advancing digitalisation? Against this background, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation conducted a six-week participation process in 2018 together with CrowdInsights GmbH. The challenge was to formulate the foundation’s existing values in a timely manner and to re-envision itself.
The involvement of the employees was crucial for the creation of the mission statement. Their knowledge and experience were to form the basis for the development of a mission statement. The methodological approach was based on Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle. The concept is based on the three main questions focusing on motivation (why), process (how), and outcome (what) to identify an organisation’s self-understanding.
The participation process was implemented as a combination of digital and analogue formats in order to reach possibly all members of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The digital platform was to be the central frame of reference for the entire project. In addition to online participation, eight workshops were held with staff members from the various departments in Berlin and St. Augustin. In total, more than 360 participants were involved in the process, which corresponds to a share of more than 50 % of the staff. In addition, the offices in Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong, Kharkiv, and Mexico City conducted their own workshops and shared their results on the digital platform.
A special feature of the project was the parity of digital and analogue responses. In both cases, the same questions were asked, which made an equal treatment of the answers possible during the analysis. With the answers, CrowdInsights first isolated their essential core statements and assigned them to thematic clusters. Subsequently, new insights were editorially gained from these clusters. After the analysis was complete, the employees were informed about the findings of the participation process after which the editorial team, with the support of CrowdInsights, started to develop the mission statement on the basis of the results.
In summary, the findings from the participation process contributed to the elaboration of the central tasks and functions, as well as values and convictions for the mission statement of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. With the digital platform of CrowdInsights it was possible to collect the ideas of the participants in different locations and to gain new insights for the mission statement of the organisation through their feedback.