Personal Case Experience

CHANGE MANAGEMENT & Business Transformation

Managing projects and milestones is a methodology and mindset. I learned that the hard way when I had to manage different teams around the globe and was travelling most of my time to meet with senior customers. But it´s not the real challenge of getting the work done - that is to cope with barriers to change and transformation:

In my 20ths I dropped into the position of leading one of the biggest German corporate transformation processes. Today, I must admit, that I was pretty young at the time. Smart but naive. With two main weaknesses: I was obsessed with excellence and did not want to make any compromise at all. And I was impatient. While entrepreneurs with exactly those weaknesses have achieved extra-ordinary results, in a corporate environment it is key to understand that change does not happen over night. It requires time. Time for people to understand why, what for, how, when, who, and then why again? If you don´t have the patience to invest the necessary time and energy into this communication, you better leave. Leave the transformational leadership to someone else. As you´re about to fail. 

So during those years I learned tremendously about human behaviors in systems, about anxiety, power and the importance of communication - in groups and one-on-one`s. With my business partner we developed tools and approaches of how to overcome barriers and how to engage executive peers, teams and stakeholders in the transformational journey. Instruments such as (Personal) Visioning, Learnshops, Teamshops as well as large-scale, cross-organisational mobilisation and "swarming"-techniques - all targeting at broadening people´s minds in order to seize an even bigger picture of the future as well as to effectively build a critical mass biased towards that same future. I gathered many insights about to what extend you can actually develop and grow people WITHIN their existing environment, and when it becomes more effective just to establish entirely separate entities for today and for the future.

In other words: I learned how to lead the change without compromising the excellence of results and for ensuring fast-pace transformation.

But I admit that even today there are politically-motivated, destructive efforts - could be some politically-motivated press representatives or executives with diverging hidden personal interest, for example - that are hard to deal with and where I - with all my experience and good will - did not manage to get heard. But whenever there is a window of opportunity I have the attitude, energy and constructive will to open the door to engage with the people. 

Let´s get in touch and discuss the challenges of your particular change or transformation initiative. Let my experience work for you.