Cases | Typical Problems and Concerns
Organization
Organizational Design
Situation
The management board of a global company in the financial industry wanted to make IT more market-oriented and agile. As part of a reorganization, they decided on a matrix structure. The new organizational design was on paper, but had not yet arrived in the daily work.
Approach
In several workshops, the new interfaces around the changed role of middle management crystallized as central. The future processes were simulated on the basis of expected use cases and those involved were able to learn their new roles and collaboration in a low-threshold manner.
Results
This collective learning eventually led to meaningful adaptations and readjustments of the organizational design.
Cooperation | Agility
Situation
The top management of two divisional organizations in the medical technology sector repeatedly observed sudden project delays for new developments. The collaboration on the current new product was characterized by deep mutual mistrust. This collaboration was to be optimized.
Approach
To this end, an agile work mode was introduced with cross-functional mixed project teams on their own project areas. Through both formal measures such as retrospectives or an escalation process and informal coaching of the project managers, mutual trust was gradually rebuilt.
Results
The customer-specific use of only selected agile methods and preceding executive coaching turned out to be critical to success.
Innovation
Situation
In an international plant engineering company, the annual planning of internal improvement projects was on the agenda. Instead of continuing with the same ideas from previous years, the responsible middle management wanted to take a more innovative approach this time. In a workshop lasting several days, innovative ideas were to be generated by means of Design Thinking.
Approach
In several design sprints, ideas were drafted, critically discussed, specified and finally, despite initial skepticism, modeled with Lego® Serious Play® with a lot of love for the implementation detail.
Results
An important signal to take the ideas seriously was the pitch with representatives of the top management at the end, who spontaneously and enthusiastically approved budget and support for the three top ideas on the spot.