Strategy and Implementation
The call to come up with some sort of strategy in an organization is as popular as the demand for more transparency and better communication. But strategy is one of those typically slippery terms everyone interprets differently – something that can be conjured up at will, whether to be clamored for, rejected or used as a smokescreen.
Sometimes, strategy is nothing more than a nicely printed piece of paper with any number of pretty goals on it. More extraordinary are cases where a true strategy provides actual operative instructions. The operationalization is usually the crux: Often the strategy fails to elucidate proper orientation for those who need orientation. And occasionally it simply proves to be useless for the task at hand and must be revised.
For us, strategy does not mean developing and presenting a plan that our customers can work through like a checklist while hoping the market will wait on them. Rather, strategy always denotes a clearly delineated scope of action that enables every single employee to make the right operative decisions that both serve the company’s goals and reflect the dynamics of the respective market.
We accompany this strategic process and work with our customers to determine the scope of action. If need be, we also assist in adapting the strategy to the organizational needs and support the internal communicative tracks. Think of our assistance as a way of jointly translating a company’s strategy such that it creates true changes to the way that company’s workforce makes and implements operative decisions.
Do you have questions?
»I’m especially happy that our strategy did not end up in the drawer but has remained relevant and useful and became the subject of further discussion. Of course, in the end, that meant burying our previous business plans completely, albeit with a good conscience. They would only have frayed our nerves more and wasted precious time.«
Paul Rösberg, Owner & CEO
Rösberg Engineering Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH für Automation
What we wanted was to have our whole business fine-tuned, to steer the focus toward our individual business areas and still retain a solid metalevel as the bracket that holds everything together. Also, we wanted to move away from these rigid, polished business plans that seem to always end up in the drawer.
Together with the Organeers, we then envisioned a rather simple target with checkpoints that could be adapted dynamically. For me, this sort of strategy development seemed extremely pragmatic and easy to handle – and refreshing.
An important aspect of the new strategy was the question: What do we throw out, what is superfluous? At the beginning, that was not an easy task, though in our everyday business it proved helpful to have options to dispense with. It sharpened our focus. Also, the strategic and metalevel principles we ended up agreeing on collaboratively could be productively applied everywhere and guided our subsequent actions.
I’m especially happy that our strategy did not end up in the drawer but has remained relevant and useful and became the subject of further discussion. Of course, in the end, that meant burying our previous business plans completely, albeit with a good conscience. They would only have frayed our nerves more and wasted precious time.
»The whole new strategic framework resulted in spreading the responsibility and betting on independent work throughout the entire company, which can be felt down to the very last team. Thanks again to the Organeers for their fantastic efforts on our behalf!«
Andreas Jonderko, Owner & CEO
gastronovi GmbH
At first, I had trouble understanding that we indeed had a strategy problem, and that our people were missing something. Up to that point, we had always thought in terms of milestones; that seemed to be working fine. Together with the Organeers, we proceeded to attack three things: What is our “polar star” in the sense of an attainable and sustainable situation – our why, our be-all and end-all – something that would once again show us our original motivation and our most important strategic guardrails. Such a comprehensive approach was new to me at the time but has proved to be sensible and sustainable.
The basis was the decisive matter of “why?” I thought about this for myself: “Why am I doing this?” And, in the end, my answer was: “Because I want the restaurant business to be fun again.” And I mean that to be motivating for me personally and for my team, to be felt by everyone. That helped us tremendously to define our polar star and to decide on the necessary strategic efforts we had to take.
Today, our polar star has been accepted by everyone and has become an integral part of our daily life, guiding us, for example, when we choose new projects. It is characterized by the equality of all our customer relations, which for some in the team who came from the service-oriented food industry was a true challenge as well as a great relief.
A further strategic cornerstone now lies in focusing on our target market, which generated an upheaval at gastronovi. We started to address a completely new group of customers and got much better leads that could then be quickly processed by our marketing people. Why? Because they fit our company better, not the least because of their high IT affinity.
This process of going after a smaller target group was tough on us since from the beginning gastronovi had seen itself as a company that delivered “everything for everybody.” But now, thanks to the support of Organeers, we’ve matured. Before the situation was: “Whoever comes and whatever they want, we’ll do it for them – even if it means bending the whole company to achieve it.” Now we have made our choice of customers fit our system and vice versa.
The whole new strategic framework resulted in spreading the responsibility and betting on independent work throughout the entire company, which can be felt down to the very last team. Thanks again to the Organeers for their fantastic efforts on our behalf!