Shaping Better Organizations
How do you manage change?
Organizations are under pressure. Constantly. Megatrends like digitization, increased competition, changing customer expectations impact today’s organizations – the pace is accelerating, niches are narrowing. And small adjustments are often not enough, but holistic organizational development is needed. A strategic perspective on the required organizational capabilities of tomorrow. A comprehensive understanding is crucial for organizational change that goes beyond structure and processes. Informal aspects are often decisive: How well does collaboration succeed at the interfaces? Are employees working on the right things? Giving the right answers to these questions determine success in the market and among employees.
Solutions
What we do
Organisational
Design
Agile
Evolution
Smart
Reorganization
How we do it
What we have achieved with our clients
The Project
Dissatisfied customers, poor operational performance: After a merger, our telco-client faced very significant business challenges. One of the reasons for this was incomplete organizational integration.
We started identifying pain points, closely working with employees across the organization and generated acceptance for the project. On this basis, the management team developed the new organizational blueprint with our help. As a sparring partner in the final testing, we were able to eliminate the last weaknesses and directly convinced leaders of the new setup. The following communication cascade then went smoothly with the strong support of all leaders.
Our Impact
Our client is still working successfully in the new organization. Satisfaction among employees and customers increased significantly. We are especially happy about the increased motivation of the employees at their work.
The project
Changing customer requirements, new regulatory requirements, increasing competition: Our client – a successful medium-sized software company – found it increasingly difficult to keep up with those market conditions. An agile transformation of the product development organization was the answer.
In a quick analysis, including automated employee surveys and job shadowing, we identified improvement areas for the transformation effort. Improvement areas and pain points were registered in a change backlog to guide the transformation. In this setting, we jointly identified the most important impediments to the project goals – time-to-market, product quality and transparency. We then proceeded to eliminate them through agile practices and methods – as part of a step-by-step, agile transformation. Also, we set up an Executive Action Team and a Change Agent Community who still drive the transformation without any external support today.
Our impact
After only a few weeks our client achieved a significant reduction of time-to-market and a significant reduction of quality costs of new software. The organization gradually realized efficiency improvements – without the frictions of typical reorganization projects. We are especially happy about the personal commitment of the employees for further improvement – based on agile thinking and practices that we established (e.g. Scrum, Kanban). Today, cross-functional teams proactively drive the initiated transformation further.
The Project
An owner-managed family holding was clearly oversized. In addition, the subsidiaries resented the management style and questioned ever more openly the value of services provided by the holding. After a change of CEO, the time to address these issues had come.
In close coordination with the owner and the top management, we accompanied the reorganization. We provided end-to-end support, from designing the new organization to supporting its implementation. Especially important was to drive the cultural change in conjunction with the reorganizing effort.
The trustful and close cooperation with the owner was the basis for a smooth implementation and successful communication to employees and media alike.
Our Impact
The new holding company started with a positive media response, even though it involved massive personnel cuts. Today the targeted headcount reduction is realized. At its new location, the new organization has proven its worth in the strategic management of the subsidiaries and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. A change in culture is also clearly under way. The holding company is acting now in a much more collaborative way, both internally and with its subsidiaries.
Contact us
Partner
Associate Principal
Partner, Head of Organization Practice