Straturity

Transforming Organisations

Reavis

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Can you afford NOT to do it?

You are a leader. In normal times you have enough to do to keep your eye on strategic goals, identify and take advantage of opportunities and attain financial goals, all the while supporting, motivating and inspiring your people. Then comes the pandemic, creating new challenges overnight, from ensuring safety to moving your business online and navigating the online work world (with all that entails) in an endlessly VUCA business and private situation. And in many cases, with contracts canceled, supply chains disrupted, consumption reduced and seemingly no end in sight, you are spending your time just trying to save what you can.

It is not surprising if you say you have no bandwidth for “optional” things, such as preparing for a post-pandemic world or completely rethinking how you mobilize your resources and run your business, let alone spending tight liquidity on anything “non-essential” concerning staff.

However, precisely the dramatic situation described above calls for different thinking! In a world in which you can never know where the next volcanic eruption will take place, probably one of the most important things you can do is to find out how to release the maximum potential available in your enterprise so that when the unexpected occurs you can respond quickly and effectively. Finding that out requires taking stock of where your company or organization is now, what strengths you can count on – and where the real risks and challenges lie. With that knowledge, you can set about preparing the company to capably and sustainably meet whatever challenges the future has in store for you!

With so much at stake, can you really afford not to do so?

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Webinar July 27, 2020

Resilienz-Check: Wie Sie Ihr Unternehmen gegen zukünftige Krisen stärken

Zukunftsfähige Unternehmen zeichnen sich durch eine ganz bestimmte Eigenschaft aus: Sie sind besonders widerstandsfähig bzw. resilient gegen Krisen. Doch was braucht eine resiliente Unternehmenskultur und wie können Unternehmen ihre eigene Resilienz überprüfen? Antworten auf diese Frage gibt dieses ca. 60 minütige Online-Seminar, dass am 27.07.2020 von 15:00 bis 16:00 stattfindet.

Reavis Hilz-Ward und Christian Klapproth stellen das Analysetool “STRATURITY Human Capital Self-Assessment©” vor, das sie gemeinsam entwickelt haben. Sie zeigen, wie das “STRATURITY Human Capital Self-Assessment©” abläuft, welche Bereiche abgefragt werden und wie die Ergebnisse zu verstehen und zu interpretieren sind.
Die Initiatoren des Human Capital Self-Assessment verfügen über umfassende Praxiserfahrung in Top-Unternehmen weltweit und über tiefe und breite Kenntnisse international bewährter Managementmethoden. Jahrzehntelange Erfahrung im Personal- und Projektmanagement führten zu der Entwicklung dieses Verfahrens, das greifbare Ergebnisse liefert und damit auch einen indirekten Zugriff auf den Erfahrungsschatz der Initiatoren.

STRATURITY als Neologismus steht für die Kombination aus Strategie und Maturität – den strategischen Reifegrad.

Webseite zum Anmelden:

https://www.ibo.de/seminar/webinar-resilienz-check-wie-sie-ihr-unternehmen-gegen-zukuenftige-krisen-staerken/WEBSTRAT%20IBO%203

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Is Your Corporate Governance Designed to Invite Dissent?

The distribution of decision rights, authority, and resource control is the essence of governance design. The aim is to ensure successful execution of strategy with sustained integrity. And in this context, virtually every executive will claim to want honest, open debate – and be upset if important facts are withheld. However, all too often, resource control, authority over execution decisions, and setting long and short-term priorities don’t occur where they should. On the contrary, such responsibilities are usually assigned to the wrong level and include too few of the right players.

Why is dissent – or at least the possibility to challenge “truths” so important? Simply, to avoid Groupthink and provide an atmosphere in which people feel comfortable holding difficult discussions. In such an atmosphere, mistakes can be found and corrected before they end up endangering the business!

So how to get it right? The real quality of a corporate governance system can be seen in the organisation’s culture (Are mistakes really acceptable or must they be swept under the rug? Can decisions be challenged without risk to one’s career? Etc.), in the delegation of responsibility for meeting reporting requirements (Do the frontline employees also report on their actions?) and in decision-making and resource allocation of the company (Who decides how resources will be distributed? How are business decisions made?).

For companies looking to strengthen their governance (not just the reporting function!), a useful start can be to assess where they are strong and where risks may lie today. The Straturity Human Capital Self-Assessment© gives answers to these questions and more. Check it out on www.straturity.com!

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Webinar: Quick-Check für Unternehmen – Wie gut sind Sie aufgestellt?

Worauf basiert unternehmerische Resilienz? Wie können Sie auch in herausfordernden Zeiten – und ohne externe Berater – prüfen, ob Sie auf neue Chancen und Risiken vorbereitet sind? Dieses Webinar zeigt Ihnen wie Sie mit unserem Tool – eigenständig und sogar im Home-Office – Ihr Unternehmen unter die Lupe nehmen, Stärken und Schwachstellen klar identifizieren, Risiken minimieren und Prioritäten für Ihre weitere Organisationsentwicklung optimal setzen können.

Ihre Trainer erklären Ihnen, wie das Straturity Human Capital Self-AssessmentÓ abläuft, welche Bereiche abgedeckt werden und wie die Ergebnisse zu verstehen und zu interpretieren sind.

Folgende Fragen werden im Webinar beantwortet:

  • Wie kann ich wissen, ob unser Human Capital Management auf die Zukunft ausgerichtet ist?
  • Welchen Gefahren sind wir mit unserer jetzigen Personalpolitik ausgesetzt?
  • Haben wir für uns die richtige Balance zwischen Freiheit, Kreativität und Innovation auf der einen und Standards und Kontrolle auf der anderen Seite?
  • Wieviel Transparenz passt zu unserer Unternehmenskultur?

Wir erläutern, welche Unterstützung Ihnen unser Straturity Human Capital Self-AssessmentÓ zu diesen wichtigen Fragestellungen liefert und stellen Ihnen das Produkt, sein Konzept sowie dessen Nutzen vor. Straturity als Neologismus steht für die Kombination aus strategische und Maturität – den strategischen Reifegrad.

Hier können Sie sich dafür anmelden:
https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/8957584198816559884

Ihre Trainer:

Reavis Hilz-Ward  
Executive-Coach, Trainerin und Beraterin, mit langjähriger Wirtschafts- und Unternehmenserfahrung und einem besonderen Blick darauf, Menschen und Unternehmen zu unterstützen, neue Ziele zu erreichen.  
Christian Klapproth  
Mit umfangreicher Erfahrung auf der Managementebene im Banken- und Börsenumfeld als selbstständiger Unter-nehmensberater und Projektleiter tätig, mit der Maxime, dass hinter allen fachlichen Aufgabenstell-ungen Menschen und deren Bedürfnisse stehen.  

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Make your company more resilient!!

Lots of people are talking about resilience these days, as the secret to staying afloat and strong in times of extreme challenge. But what is resilience in companies and how can it be built?
Clues to the answer can be found in the psychologists’ definition of resilience: psychological stamina, or the ability to survive difficult situations without incurring lasting damage.
What does this mean for a company? Resilience in a company can best be characterized as the ability to successfully overcome crises, external shocks or major setbacks caused by changes to social, economic and/or political conditions, and to grow even stronger in adapting to the new circumstances.
Building and maintaining resilience should of course be automatically included in the strategic goals of any company hoping to survive and be successful in an unpredictable world. But this is much harder than it sounds. So, you may ask,


The development of a strategy for resilience should comprise the following main steps and answer key questions:

Carry out a structured, holistic (but also sufficiently detailed) status review
Identify risks and vulnerabilities, including those that could be game changers
Introduce preventive and protective measures
Ensure the optimal balance between agility and predictability
“Keep your eye on the ball”

  • Where does the company stand today?
  • What could prevent us from bounding back from a crisis?
  • How could we avoid or protect ourselves against such an occurrence?
  • How flexible can we be without losing our inner stability?
  • How can we maintain resilience on an ongoing basis?

It is often very difficult to develop an objective response to such questions, and companies spend considerable sums on consultants to obtain one. But there is another way: the STRATURITY Human Capital Management Self-Assessment© provides answers and specific recommendations for achieving continuous improvement. And it can be carried out from the comfort of Home Office!!

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How do Good Organizations achieve Greatness?

What is greatness in an Organization? It goes way beyond good figures and a solid bottom line, important as these are. Greatness in an organization can be seen in its outstanding performance in terms of people, potential, transparency, agency, governance, lived values and sustainability, all of which will be reflected in its unique, individual culture.

So, if you know you work for a good organization or company and want it to evolve into greatness, how do you go about this?

First, it is important to take stock of the strengths upon which you can build. What do you do particularly well? Which special features create an enabling, innovative and productive environment?  Are you good at finding the right people for key tasks, in motivating, training and reinforcing them, in applying the right skills at the right time? Can your teams take autonomous decisions, including on investments for their work? Or do you perhaps have a culture in which all employees contribute to identifying and living up to a set of common values?

Once you are clear about where your strongest strengths are, examining your biggest weaknesses is the next step. Where are the greatest challenges to transparency in the organization? Are there areas of operation which are unsustainable (either in their nature or in how they are currently working)? Is the real potential in your activity being attained or what is holding you back?

After that, clarifying the risks is very important: does a genuine commitment to good governance permeate the organization? Do you succeed in enabling sufficient transparency that problems and failures can be detected before they do harm?

But how to carry out such an analysis, particularly in times when those who can are working from home and many others are in maintenance mode? One way is to complete a self-assessment such as the one offered by www.straturity.com. This can very quickly clarify the current situation and help you prioritize your steps to attain greatness!

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Preparing for the World Post-Corona

In a crisis, we all tend to focus on immediate relief, rapid solutions, stemming current harm and resolving challenges as they arise. Right now, businesses are all making significant adjustments to their operations (including closing down for a period). There is massive disruption all over – and also heretofore unknown amounts of rapid reorganization, including setting up entire workforces to work virtually, taking momentous decisions on skeleton staffing, workplace hygiene, home office, furloughs or even reductions, and more. That is all important and urgent, and must be done. And it can easily create the feeling of being confronted with a never-ending series of smaller and larger fires to be put out.

Yet, it is also vitally important to begin thinking RIGHT AWAY about the aftermath of the crisis, long before the end is in sight. In fact, it is a sign of outstanding leadership when people do this!

What are visionary leaders doing at this moment to prepare for ramping back up their business when the pandemic subsides? They are examining their organizational resilience, their “fitness” to capably and flexibly respond not only to challenges but to new opportunities!

  • For such an examination, leaders must ask themselves a number of difficult questions, including:
  • Am I sure that our business development is creative enough to identify new options if necessary and yet fully concentrated on success?
  • Where are our biggest risks and weaknesses and what must we do to mitigate these?
  • Are my people genuinely supporting each other and collaborating optimally?
  • What must I change in our human capital management to adequately shape our operations directly after the Corona crisis?
  • Where are we strong enough so that we don’t need to change anything right now?

How can they carry out such an analysis in a structured, comprehensive and yet clear way?

One way is by using the Straturity Human Capital Self-Assessment©. This analysis can be completed in the comfort of home office but nonetheless covers all aspects of human capital management in a company. It provides concise and practicable answers to the above questions and many others, and enables leaders to prepare to hit the ground running once businesses reopen.

For more information, check out our Straturity Human Capital Self-Assessment© offering!

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“It’s all just marketing, the values thing”

Well, at least that is what some managers would like to believe. In fact, there are a large number of different international companies whose foresighted top management has understood that values-based leadership and an encouraging, supportive company culture are actually highly beneficial for business in the long run.

Let’s take three examples from very different industries – that all have in common high cost-saving pressure and rising competition: Unilever, Zappos and Nordstrom. All three very successful, all growing solidly and being successful despite turbulence in markets and other potentially hazardous conditions.
Unilever: The four core values of this company are integrity, responsibility, respect and pioneering. And Paul Polman, CEO until the end of 2018, ensured that these values actually guided the choices made in most instances by managers and staff alike. Even the “mistake” that contributed to his resignation after 10 years at the helm of the organization had to do with sustainability: trying to move the corporate headquarters from the shared site between the UK and the Netherlands, to a simple location in Rotterdam. The rationale was to reduce the risk of a hostile take-over from Kraft Heinz or others with vastly different corporate cultures and try to preserve the very special and forward-looking company culture.
Zappos: This company has 10 core values:
1. “Deliver WOW Through Service,
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More with Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble
Nordstrom: the core values are trust, respect, loyalty, awareness, humility, communication and collaboration. With those values as the foundation, Nordstrom creates a culture of innovation and adaptation in order to stay relevant.

So, the next time someone suggests that there is an inconsistency between the values published in your company and those that its staff and customers experience, you may wish to consider applying the lessons of these three companies – for your own long-term success!!

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Six ways that cost cutting exercises actually end up costing more money

While cost-cutting in itself can be absolutely necessary and worthwhile, HOW it is done is very often wasteful and ends up generating higher costs than the intended benefits can ever bring. We speak today of six specific cost-cutting traps.

1)   Undiscerning hiring freezes

It seems logical: if we think we have too much staff, we should stop hiring. However, a blanket hiring freeze can put your company into a straitjacket that actually increases costs. With bigger companies, people will tend to take on external contractors, who – even though they ostensibly don’t show on the balance sheet – are usually more expensive than staff. And then these external contractors may leave after a few years, taking their hard-won knowledge with them. In smaller companies, where the possibility to bring in external contractors is limited, important jobs don’t get started or completed and the flexibility to bring in exactly the skill set required for certain challenges is capped.

2)   Staff cuts by percentage

One of the most common cost-cutting mistakes is the across-the-board staff cut idea. In this case, each department or division must sacrifice equally, to avoid any complaints of favoritism. Needless to say, with such an approach, the most efficient departments will suffer in their productivity, creating exactly the opposite effect to what was intended. Add this to the rule that many top performers, knowing that they can get another job, will put themselves on the list of separations, and such a policy actively damages the enterprise. Not to mention the knowledge that is lost, the motivation that demonstrably sinks in such times and the general productivity reduction generated by uncertainty.

3)   Office/Space sharing which disregards the type of work

One very common mistake of the past 10-15 years has been to group staff in open plan offices. While such offices can be beneficial for saving space, study after study has shown that productivity can fall and staff anxiety, illness and general discomfort rise significantly when people who need quiet to think about their work are forced into undeniably louder and more distracting working situations.

4)   Outsourcing risks along with services

The dogma that outsourcing all “non-core” functions is beneficial has long been a mantra of cost-cutting. However, there can be significant risks to doing so. A number of companies outsourced their IT only to be obliged a few years later to insource it again. If, for example, IT is outsourced, a company still has to be very careful not to inadvertently take on serious new risks. It must have its own capability to supervise and oversee performance and development, not to mention the back-ups or other risk mitigation measures. And these are also costly!!

5)   Inappropriate savings on work tools

This may seem like a small-budget item, but it is a common favorite among some cost-cutters. Unfortunately, saving on the software updates or new tools and materials can also backfire in a big way and incur very large costs down the road (not to mention additional risks).

6)   Setting unrealistic goals

Last but not least is the trick of setting top-down cost reduction goals. These may look good on paper. But when individual departments and divisions are not consulted, such goals can badly backfire. One example of this is when work that is essential and in the global interest of the company is postponed or when strategic priorities are subsumed to cost-cutting pressures, and revenues suffer as a result.

At some stage, almost every company sees a need to reduce expenditures. As this article shows, it is essential to do so in a strategic, thoughtful manner that weighs the unintended consequences and avoids pitfalls. In coming blogs, we will discuss how to get it right.

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Germany needs a whistleblower law!!

As if the still growing diesel scandal hadn’t sufficiently demonstrated the strong need for whistleblower encouragement and protection in Germany, the recent case of the sausage maker Wilke drives the point home. Wilke has been found to be the source of the deaths of three people and sickening many more. And recently, photos taken by an ex-consultant of the firm prove severe, long-standing hygiene infractions.

Once again, as in the diesel scandal and many others, people wring their hands and ask “how could this happen?” or “why didn’t the staff speak up?”. Most employees are NOT inherently cynical or unconcerned about “irregularities” (whether cheating, skimping on necessary standards, or ignoring signs that products cause direct harm to customers in some way). On the contrary, I firmly believe that a majority of employees want to be proud of what they produce or do, and would unquestionably stand up for ethical approaches to their work.

So, what stops them? Fear. Fear of reprisals, of being ostracized, downgraded, cheated of opportunities or in the worst case, fired.

When managers push to cut costs and ignore potential dangers, employees are caught in the middle of what is often a slippery slope. Having looked the other way when the first safety process reduction took place, they already feel complicit in the next. And feel increasingly implicated – and therefore impotent to protest – as controls get eliminated, corners get cut and the limits get pushed.

This spring, the European Parliament established a regulation requiring Member States to pass whistleblower laws. This directive specifies when whistleblowers can leapfrog their own companies and address themselves to public bodies, and lays out additional protective measures that should be translated into national laws. Furthermore, it obliges Member States to require companies with more than 50 employees to set up mechanisms for internal reporting of anomalies/irregularities.

A number of organizations in Germany maintain that the legal framework is currently strong enough to protect whistleblowers. They are concerned about potential reputational damage to companies “unfairly” criticized. However, for every unfortunate case of this sort, there are dozens (or more) in which the damage is richly deserved. And having such a strong protection could well serve to make managers think twice about cost-cutting that also adversely impacts quality.

Of course, in this debate, it is also important to understand the historical sensitivities toward creating a “culture of denunciation”. But I would argue that, nearly 75 years after the end of World War II; Germany can consider the rule of law well enough established to create transparent and very clear protections for whistleblowers. This would indeed be a further demonstration of its leadership in living strong civic and individual protections – another potentially great export product!!