Companies
Volksbank Bodensee-Oberschwaben eG · Zukunftsbank
“How do we shape our bank’s future, and how does our strategy become part of everyday work?”
The project
What should Volksbank Bodensee-Oberschwaben focus on in 2027 and beyond? And how do strategic goals become something the people in the bank understand and can act on in their daily work?
The bank did not want to answer these questions from trends, metrics and the leadership’s view alone. It also wanted to hear what employees in different departments and roles experience: What is going well? Where does change run into obstacles in daily work? What opportunities do they see for the bank’s future?
The bank and Zeitgeist Labs developed a specialised AI agent, built around the bank and its strategic questions. Employees could share their experiences and views with it. Their answers were anonymised and combined into overall findings.
The results add to the other analyses and conversations in the strategy process. They show what is on employees’ minds and where views differ. That helps the bank set well-founded goals for 2027 and beyond. The next step is to translate those goals into daily work together with the departments. A strategy should not end up in a drawer: employees need to understand what it means for their work and how they can contribute.
For us, a strategy is only good if it means something to the people in the bank: if they understand where we are heading, what that means for their department and what they can contribute themselves. Otherwise all that is left is a document in a drawer. That is why we wanted to hear from employees while we were still developing our goals. In conversations with the specially developed AI agent, many people shared their experiences and ideas. The results show us what is on their minds day to day, where they see opportunities and what makes change difficult. Zeitgeist Labs helps us bring these perspectives together. That gives us a valuable basis for asking the right questions and for translating our strategy into daily work together with the departments.