The Culture Factor BeLux

THE CULTURE FACTOR BELUX

Building on The Culture Factor Group research-backed methodologies, we offer our clients data-based, practical tools to effectively face cultural and organisational challenges.

We combine a long experience in management, sales, R&D, marketing, HR and consultancy and training in the fields of intercultural management and organizational culture in a global context. Our experience covers a wide range of industries including manufacturing, energy, financial, social and public services. We offer our services in English, French, Dutch, German, Luxembourgish and Italian.

Please contact us at belux@theculturefactor.com

Our Intercultural Services

We support our clients in harnessing the cultural diversity in their organizations. The workplaces are multicultural, customers are global and with our tools, backed extensive research and experience, we provide our clients with a practical framework and a language to understand, manage and use effectively the cultural richness of their organisation and customers.

Workshops, trainings or key note speeches are tailor-made for each client.

Our Organisational Culture Consulting

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast."

- Peter Drucker

The Culture Factor Multi-Focus Model is a highly practical, data-based tool, to measure, analyse and align your organisational culture with your strategy. Together we identify the gaps between the actual culture and the ideal one for your organisation and implement the transformations needed to develop the culture that serves your strategy best.

Each organisational culture intervention is tailor-made to your specific organisation.

Our Experts in Luxembourg and Belgium

Marc Jacobs

Marc holds a Master’s Degree in Engineering from KU Leuven and a Sloan MSc in Leadership & Strategy from London Business School. He became an associate partner of The Culture Factor Group) in 2014. He is passionate about using intercultural management and organisational culture as management tools to help you optimise the performance of your organisation. Building on his experience in senior international management positions in Operations as well as Sales & Marketing, he co-authored the book: “Negotiate like a local: 7 Mindsets to increase your success rate in international business”. Marc is based in Luxembourg.

Tatjana von Bonkewitz

Tatjana is a linguist and holds an MBA and a BSc in Psychology. She has been an associated practitioner of The Culture Factor Group since 2017. With management positions in operations and in HR, Tatjana has led major organisational change projects and understands the people as well as the business side of change in a range of industries and countries. Passionate about diversity, culture and change she accompanies organisations and individuals in their development. Tatjana is based in Luxembourg.

BART VERMEIR

Bart Vermeir has over 25 years of expertise in driving business transformations and leadership growth. As a Strategic Business Partner, he leverages his extensive background in sales and change leadership to help organizations build resilient cultures in dynamic environments.

Having held senior positions across various sectors, Bart excels at aligning business strategies with people’s potential, ensuring leadership teams are equipped to navigate change with clarity and confidence.

He enables leaders to foster cultures of high performance and continuous improvement. Bart is based in Belgium.

Never has it been more important to understand how executives from different cultures communicate and interact with each other. It's so important that we make sure that we bring The Culture Factor to London Business School in the first week of the Sloan programme, a one year full-time Masters in Leadership and Strategy, so that we can ensure that our incredibly diverse group of students understand the cultural lens of their fellow classmates. We have been fortunate to welcome Marc Jacobs from The Culture Factor in the last three successive years to deliver an immersive and fun workshop. The student feedback is always so positive that the workshop is a key fixture in their academic syllabus at London Business School.

Paul Drew, Head of Leadership Programmes, Career Centre, London Business School.

Further developing the intercultural competencies of our leaders is an important part of our Euroports Leadership Programme. We selected The Culture Factor Group to deliver a workshop on understanding and managing cultural differences and their impact on communication and behaviour in our global organisation. The workshop was very impactful and the feedback from the participants overwhelmingly positive (score 4.5/5). We highly recommend The Culture Factor Group and will certainly continue to work with them for future programmes.

Nassira Zahnoun, Learning & Development Manager, Euroports

Just a thank you for your brilliant speech at our annual conference. Seeing people with their mouths open and realising that so much that they presumed was wrong was just fantastic.

Bill Barton, Director and former president of the Leeds Law Society, Director of Barton Legal

The Culture Factor Group's workshop for our leadership team provided a powerful tool (Hofstede’s 6D framework) and a range of very practical insights that will enable our leaders to integrate their newly acquired intercultural competencies in our practices, our processes and our strategy. I recommend The Culture Factor Group's services to any organisation working in an international environment.

Andy Billings, Electronic Art

Misunderstandings occur easily when running a business in a highly multicultural environment like Luxembourg. The intercultural training and tools provided by The Culture Factor Group contribute significantly to the success of our teams and to their well-being. They enable us to move beyond simple awareness to true understanding of different mindsets and enable us to develop more effective relationships with our customers and partners.

Delphine Houliat, Directrice des Resources Humaines de Tralux

Personally, having worked in Portugal, Brazil and Belgium for a North American company, I could feel that Marc is really knowledgeable and a truly inspirational trainer. It really gives the necessary understanding on how different cultures work and how they see the world. Also, his multicultural experience gave a very direct understanding of our current situation and future goals. Our future is very dependent on the quality of our managers and leaders. Marc has been brilliant in bridging the gap between the fun of the activities and the real world of work, making sure delegates clearly understand and learn from this excellent training.

Miguel Vieira, Director International Packaging Development, Plastipak Inc

During the first edition of the Luxembourg Acceleration Bootcamp (LAB) we got a good taste of The Culture Factor’s expertise in organisational and national culture consulting. Tatjana von Bonkewitz, the managing partner of Hofstede Insights Luxembourg-Belgium, closed the LAB with a very compelling presentation on multicultural business practices. She showcased great flexibility to adjust to the audience and delivered a very interactive presentation including plenty of anecdotes and funny insights. At the end of the intensive four-day acceleration bootcamp startup participants received this engaging presentation well. They enjoyed the interaction with Tatjana who is a charismatic storyteller. Thank you, Tatjana for your great intervention!

House of Start-Ups, Luxembourg

The Intercultural training was organised to sustain and grow our training business worldwide. Its aim was twofold: to make our instructors and service managers confident in delivering a course/service in a completely different cultural environment and for our support staff to be aware of multicultural differences and arm them to deal effectively with these. This training was really tailor-made to fit our organisation’s specific needs. It was delivered by two experienced professionals, Tatjana von Bonkewitz and Marc Jacobs, who were really complementary in delivering the training. Many thanks for the excellent support.

Hendrik Dermont, Head of Training Development, Eurocontrol

Our company is present in 9 different countries and has been built on acquisitions and green-fields. Having a common company culture in this multicultural environment is quite of challenge. Working with Marc Jacobs and on the Hofstede models, helped us to understand better which culture we wanted, what culture is alive in the company and how to close the gap. The model is based on figures, which is important for an industrial company with a lot of engineers. The proposed actions are factual and comprehensive. These have been implemented and it shows results.

Benoit Henckes, CEO, United Caps

Mr. Jacobs delivered a compelling 30-minute keynote speech to our staff on the topic of cultural diversity and its impact on customer service within the context of international expansion. Mr. Jacobs' performance was light-hearted, humorous, and highly engaging, successfully capturing and maintaining the attention of the audience throughout. His insights into cultural diversity were not only thought-provoking but also directly applicable to our client relationship management strategies in a global context. We greatly appreciated Mr. Jacobs' professionalism, adaptability, and ability to tailor his message to our specific needs. His contribution added significant value to our internal reflection on cultural dynamics and international growth.

Olivier Gorin, Head of Digital Banking, Banque Internationale a Luxembourg S.A.

Providing a lay audience with a framework for explaining cultural differences in just 90 minutes is a challenge. Marc Jacobs mastered this perfectly. He crafted an immersive, interactive experience for Luxembourg City’s tour guides that vividly illustrated how cultural environments shape individuals. He showed how this influence affects social organization and everyday interactions, and he highlighted how our ingrained expectations can lead to misunderstandings when engaging with cultures unlike our own. His methodology, emphasizing a global perspective rooted in local context, paired with practical guidance tailored to tour guides’ everyday responsibilities, proved exceptionally valuable.

Tanja Bollendorf - Head of Sales & Operations, Luxembourg City Tourist Office