The Dutch energy sector is in the midst of a historic transition. Gasunie, the backbone of the Dutch gas supply for years, is helping to transform: from gas to new forms of energy such as hydrogen and heat. This transition requires an agile organization that can switch quickly. That is why Gasunie is working on a cultural change around ownership, simplification and cooperation.
This is a profound change that will only succeed if employees feel like owners of this process. Too often, cultural trajectories are experienced as something imposed from above, resulting in resistance. Real change requires engagement: employees who actively participate, who provide insights themselves and feel heard at the same time.
Gasunie's management has defined three core values that should guide cultural change. But how do you translate these abstract values into new, concrete behaviors in the workplace? How do you ensure that employees know what these values mean in their daily work?
In an organization like Gasunie, it can be difficult to do this. Traditional participation methods fall short in this regard:
Real participation requires a dialogue in which employees themselves give meaning to the desired change. But how do you achieve that within a large organization without sacrificing quality or reach?
To achieve both scale and depth, Synthetron organized four online dialogues with Gasunie in which a total of more than 700 employees participated. The central question: what do these cultural values mean in your work? And what other behavior is involved?
This is a participatory approach where employees themselves indicate what opportunities for improvement and behavioral changes they see. In the sessions of less than an hour, presenting ideas and assessing each other's ideas created a supported image of the organization and the challenge.
The key to this success? The right question.
Through strategically formulated questions, we came to valuable insights together. Instead of asking “what's wrong?” we asked: “what opportunities do you see to simplify your work?” This positive wording helps employees get into change mode — not when critics are on the sidelines, but when co-designers are thinking about solutions.
Also questions such as “what should good cooperation meet?” gave employees the space to set the standard themselves. No prescribed answers that are then printed top-down by the organization, but collective wisdom about what really works in practice.
The question “what makes you sometimes fall back into old ingrained behavior?” created safety by making it universal. Not “why are you failing?” , but acknowledging that this happens to everyone. This led to surprising and honest reflections on workload, the layout of the work and the role of role models among managers.
The dialogues resulted in 6,000 messages, which were reviewed and prioritized by the employees themselves. Each question showed a clear consensus about where the organization stands and what direction is needed.
Employees themselves named where Gasunie is strong and where improvement is needed. No theoretical values on the part of the management, but concrete behavior from the workplace. Because these insights arose organically instead of being imposed top-down, they form an excellent basis for next steps.
Based on these 6,000 messages, Gasunie has developed its own cultural compass. This compass makes the three core values concrete by describing for each value what behavior looks like on a good day — and what it looks like on a bad day. So the core values are no longer abstract concepts on the wall, but recognisable behavior in daily work.
It is precisely this two-sidedness — naming good and bad behavior — that makes the compass useful. Employees and managers can talk to each other about it without it becoming moralizing: everyone has good days and bad days, and the compass helps to have a conversation about them.
The concrete result? A clear distinction between old and new behavior, supported by the organization itself. Gasunie can now implement the cultural change that the energy transition requires — with an organization that is agile, serves the market excellently and where employees feel at home.
Does your organization also want to change participatively? We would love to think along with you!
Mail to: info@synthetron.com
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