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Organizational Development

Organizations are people - people are in motion
Change through economy, technology, environment, and health
Kodak Logo 1987
Nespresso Logo

Global change has advantages

The market is permanently moving. It is hard to predict towards which direction. Similarly, the trends and cycles are also hard to foresee. This reality confronts the organization with the necessity to continuously study innovations and processes depending on constant change. These changes are different. They are either of regulatory kind or it is the technological progress as such. But there are also political and social changes forcing the firms to adapt themselves. Companies are facing the challenge that tasks are either changing, are not needed any more or have to be created anew. The same applies to processes, products, and services. Historically grown structures within organizations can become inefficient or obsolete by that. All these aspects have an impact on the requirements of job descriptions and the needed skills. The core of the organization must renew itself permanently and in order to do that also has to leave things and knowledge behind. This may hurt sometimes. Let us look back on some cases:

 

  • IBM (Big Blue) turned from a hardware producer into a consulting company

  • Kodak used to be known for products for photographic equipment and is today producing printing machines. Kodak reacted much too late to the "Digital-Boom", although the 28-year-old Kodak engineer Steven Sasson had invented the first digital camera as early as in 1976. However, the Kodak management had rejected his idea.

  • Nestlé has reacted in time and nowadays earns money with Nespresso, although here as well the idea of the capsule that Eric Favre, the father of the capsule idea at Nestlé in 1976, was turned down with the argument "no chance". Nine years later he had enough and was about to leave Nestlé. With one foot out of the company, due to the unrecognized idea, Favre nevertheless stayed based on the trust given by Helmut Maucher, the CEO of Nestlé at that time. Latter success of Nespresso capsules led to Favre be appointed to the new CEO of the new firm Nespresso in 1986.

  • In the 70s, the Swiss watch industry was endangered by digital watches from Japan and almost disappeared from the market. Today it is again the embodiment of the watch industry. 

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Many companies suffered from comparable symptoms or have simply disappeared. They have one thing in common: They either could or would not adapt to changes and therefore had to go through hard times of restructuring and the reduction of employees.

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Factors of a successful re-organization
  • Involvement of the employees in the solution process and active participation of the management team, especially if it comes to create new structures.

  • Implementation of a fact-based perspective with a structured and fast approach.

  • Addressing of individual problems with an open communication of the surrounding conditions and targets.

  • Explanation of a comprehensible benefit.

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We help you identify improvement potential and optimize the organization and processes for the current and new job definitions. The optimization is based on a fact-based bottom-up-analysis with active participation of the management team and the employees. The target focused, clearly defined procedure enables a fast implementation. We work according to a three-step phase plan: Analysis and definition of solutions, implementation of the organizational and process related analysis, implementation of processes. This method has proved itself in practice. It leads directly through the restructuring of the organization and processes. There are clear objectives and deadlines in each project phase.

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Benefit

During change processes, the method-based procedure leads to a win-win-situation for all people involved:

  • Explanation of a comprehensible benefit.

  • More productivity and less working costs.

  • Enhanced flexibility of the production or of the services.

  • Adequate assignment of tasks, optimized regarding costs and needs according to the job descriptions of the employees.

  • More flexible use of staff, increased satisfaction of the employees and reduced fluctuation.

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Holistic organizational development (economy, culture, and leadership)

In some situations, it is not enough to reorganize the organization from a purely economic perspective. Every organization is more than just numbers, assets, processes, and charts. Organizations live because people work in them. Challenges like:

  • Staff fluctuation,

  • Morale,

  • Image,

  • Bureaucracy

  • Structures,

  • ... need to be addressed holistically, as everything influences everything else.

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In order to master such challenges, a holistic approach is required. This will be provided to you within the framework of:

Change management

Agile organizational cooperation/collaboration

Leadership in VUCA

Digital transformation

Project management

 

Profit by our experience and knowledge to sustainably lead and shape your organization.

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For more information, please contact us.

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