Scale-Up Success Story
KEMARO
From Gut Feeling to CULTURE SYSTEM:
How KEMARO Defined and Operationalized Its Team Values During Growth
3. Culture Cornerstones and KEMARO-specific culture language
For each of the five values, a full Culture Cornerstone was developed, covering everything from an articulation sentence and desired everyday behaviors to team rituals, role model examples, and practical do's and don'ts.
This format ensures each value becomes an operational tool teams can reference and hold each other accountable to, rather than just an empty word on a PowerPoint listicle.
To make the values memorable and ownable, KEMARO-specific slogans were developed per value using the company name as an acronym (K-E-M-A-R-O), with each letter carrying a slogan for each value. For example:
K = "Keep Moving the Needle" (Growth-driven)
E = "Execute, Then Iterate." (Innovation-driven)
M = "Make the Team Shine." (Team-oriented)
etc.
This language was designed for everyday conversations, team meetings, and internal communications, giving the team a shared vocabulary beyond generic "values talk."
Additionally, use-specific culture statement options were co-created to serve as a team manifesto for internal and external use.
Leadership chose the letter slogans and culture statement they identified with the most.
2. Values discovery workshops
Two intensive workshops were facilitated with the full leadership team:
Workshop 1 focused on surfacing the values already alive in the team. Through structured reflection exercises, the leadership team identified strengths in collaboration, what made KEMARO unique, and what behaviors they wanted to see more of. The session used a values theory framework and included live behavior mapping.
Workshop 2 deepened the work. The team confirmed five core values, prioritized them, and began co-creating their Culture Cornerstones by translating each value into specific, actionable guidance for everyday work.
The five values KEMARO confirmed and refined:
Growth-driven: bold choices, ownership, forward momentum
Sustainability-led: long-term thinking, scalable decisions, resource planning
Quality-first: process discipline, documentation, robust solutions
Innovation-driven: experimentation, early testing, letting go of what doesn't work
Team-oriented: trust, openness, non-hierarchical respect
One value initially used since KEMARO's early stage was deliberately removed during the process after the team realized its essence was already captured across other values and behavioral norms. A sign of real clarity emerging.
4. Leadership enablement and rollout
The values and Culture Cornerstones were finalized through iterative review with leadership and integrated into a visual deck for internal communication.
The rollout of the Culture System was intentionally aligned with the annual performance review cycle and the introduction of the compensation model, creating one coherent moment in which culture, expectations, and pay all connected.
Leadership received guidance (a live Q&A session and a reference guide) on communicating the values to their teams and 1:1 conversations, including how to address critical reactions to the rollout and how to reference the Culture Cornerstones in performance conversations and day-to-day feedback.
Because the values and Culture Cornerstones were co-created with the team and derived from lived reality (not imposed top-down), they have natural buy-in. The format is designed to evolve: new values, updated behaviors, or adjusted rituals can be added as KEMARO grows and enters new markets.
The culture system now serves as:
A foundation for selecting top-fit candidates in recruiting and in onboarding new hires into "how we work here"
A reference point for leadership alignment across locations
A shared norm for what good performance looks like
A bridge between culture and compensation as the values inform what the company rewards
“The Culture System and Culture Cornerstones gave us something we didn’t have before: a clear, practical way to talk about our culture, hold each other accountable, and onboard new people into who we are, not just what we do.”
Building a scalable culture system for a fast-growing robotics company
Client Snapshot
Company: KEMARO AG
Industry: Robotics / Industrial Automation
Team Size today: 60+ employees and growing
Team Setup: Switzerland HQ with international presence
Context: Pre-Series B, international expansion, organizational development
KEMARO develops autonomous cleaning robots used in industrial environments. As the company approached its 10-year anniversary in 2026, the team had grown to more than 50 employees and continued to expand internationally.
The collaboration began during the company's Innosuisse scaleup coaching phase, where leadership was reviewing internal structures to support continued growth. When KEMARO reached the maximum duration within the Innosuisse program, the company chose to continue the engagement directly, investing in the culture and compensation system design through to rollout.
The Challenge
KEMARO had a strong and positive team culture: people genuinely enjoyed working together, and collaboration was a natural strength. As the company grew, however, that culture was largely implicit.
A diagnostic of existing People & Culture practices revealed that while many operational foundations were in place (recruitment, knowledge transfer, communication channels), a clear articulation of the company's values was missing.
Leadership began noticing typical scaling friction:
New hires didn't have a clear picture of "how things work here" beyond onboarding logistics
Cultural expectations were passed on informally, which became harder to maintain across teams and locations
There was no shared language for what "good collaboration," "expected performance," or "the KEMARO way" actually meant in practice
Without defined, articulated, and operationalized values, there was no foundation for aligning behaviors, feedback, or leadership expectations
As the team expanded internationally, leadership recognized that scaling without a shared culture foundation risked creating disconnected offices rather than one cohesive team.
At the same time, KEMARO was building a compensation model that triggered this culture work. Following our advice, leadership wanted the two systems to reinforce each other, ensuring pay systems and pay decisions were grounded in clearly articulated cultural priorities.
The goal was not to "create culture from scratch" because KEMARO already had a strong one. The goal was to make it visible, explicit, and scalable so it could grow with the team and strategically inform the design and rollout of the compensation model.
“We always had a strong team culture at KEMARO, but we struggled with articulating it. The culture work with Carolin gave us a language and a system that makes our values visible and actionable. Exactly what we needed to scale without losing what makes us, us.”
The Approach
The objective was to uncover and articulate the values that already shaped KEMARO's team culture, translate them into concrete behaviors, and build a system that leadership could use to embed, communicate, and scale those values as the company grows.
Rather than introducing an abstract values poster, the focus was on building a practical culture system the team co-created and could own, using our Culture Cornerstones methodology. From first workshop to rollout: under four months.
1. Culture diagnostic and scoping
Before the collaboration began, a diagnostic of existing People & Culture practices was conducted to identify strengths and gaps.
The diagnostic confirmed strong operational foundations (e.g., recruitment, knowledge transfer, defined roles) but flagged that the articulation of values, feedback mechanisms, and internal communication practices needed attention.
This scoping phase informed the workshop design and ensured the culture work addressed real gaps rather than theoretical ones.
The Outcome
KEMARO now has a clearly articulated and operationalized culture system.
What leadership initially considered a "side project" alongside the compensation model turned out to be one of the most impactful outcomes of the entire collaboration. As the CFO noted, the culture work was a major added value, important at the time and still relevant today.
The system enabled the company to:
Articulate their core values, co-created by the leadership team
Translate values into actionable Culture Cornerstones with specific behaviors, rituals, and expectations
Create a KEMARO-specific culture language that the team can use daily
Build a culture foundation that directly connects to the compensation system
Provide a scalable framework (Culture System) that works across teams and international locations
Beyond the system itself, leadership observed tangible behavioral shifts after the first annual cycle:
Middle management found it significantly easier to have salary and performance conversations because the framework gave them clear backing from leadership
Managers now feel confident to argue for decisions and say no when needed because the values and compensation logic are clearly defined
The team embraced the Culture Cornerstones with broad buy-in, creating a shared sense of identity across the organization
Middle management is running the system independently, without requiring ongoing internal (HR) or external support
The fact that middle management was integrated into the workshops from the start proved critical.
Because they co-created the system, they understood its logic and stood behind it, making both culture and compensation conversations significantly easier across the organization.
“The Culture Cornerstones are really cool. Everyone likes them and stands behind them. What started as a side result alongside the compensation project turned out to be a major added value for us. It was very important then and still is today.”
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