Advisory

The new CEO, who had been a member of the Executive Board for many years, sought to further his understanding and possibilities in the span between the company’s vision, strategy, and organization.

Among other things, the strategy meant that the company:

• Expanded its scope in the industry value chain.
• Expanded geographically from having customers in a few countries to a play a visible role on three continents.
• Basically changed its business understanding from an inside out product understanding to an outside in market understanding.

The positive starting point was that both the vision and the strategy were very positively received by everybody. Still, and this was the the problem two years into the strategy period, very few elements had actually been implemented. This counseling focused on identifying the possible causes. The main conclusions were:

• With the new strategy, the average decision at all levels of the organization was lifted significantly in complexity. But the ability to decision-make among decision-makers had not – the people in the positions were the same as before (abstraction level of individuals cannot be lifted).
• Structurally, the commercial ambitions were not reflected in the organizational setup.
• The executive management team had not made clear to themselves and the organization what the business understanding change from product to market should entail.