- Main range of offers: Netbooks, mainframe computer systems and IT infrastructure solutions
- approx. 14,000 employees
- Sites in Europe, the Middle East and Africa
Details about the company
German subsidiary of a Japanese IT group and leading European IT infrastructure provider
Situation and challenge
A comprehensive restructuring of the organization while at the same time achieving the target figures
Market trends such as software and infrastructure-as-a-service, software-on-demand and cloud computing are becoming increasingly important. One thing is clear: the company must fundamentally reposition itself to remain competitive and increase its profitability. A structural and organizational realignment is also necessary, including the optimization of processes and the transformation of the sales apparatus to achieve high performance. A concrete 10-point program is launched. The organization has been plagued by numerous CEO changes, resulting in a lack of trust in leadership.
Project
cetacea provides support with a team of several people on site over a period of 1.5 years
cetacea provides engagement and enablement of the company’s international (CEMEA) Top150 leadership team as well as communications support for the transformation. Primary objective: Prepare leadership team for dramatic change, clarify leadership role, enable leadership team to act confidently in this situation, build confidence in the program, create a mood of optimism and strengthen the will to change. Not an easy task: there is a certain amount of change fatigue, and the workforce has experienced many changes in recent years.
Result
The organization was convinced and numerous co-creators of the transformation could be won:
- Trust built in CEO and leadership team, mobilization of the organization
- Suitable Top150 leadership team that is committed to the tasks at hand
- A sense of optimism about the transformation
- Efficient communication structures for the top management team within the organization and within the Top150 team
- Exceeding target figures despite transformation
- Implementation of a sustainable corporate strategy and a new mission statement
- Established new structure with new responsibilities
- Motivating communication and clear documentation of transformation successes
- Greater willingness to change and employee satisfaction (results of employee survey)
Procedure
cetacea is part of the Transformation Office and takes responsibility for the workstream “Communication & Mobilization”. Close to the planning of the 10-point program, cetacea develops the formats and content for the involvement of the Top150, the storyline, sets up the procedure for the alignment of all 150 executives with the CEO and also takes charge of continuous communication.
The entire management is involved from the beginning. Together, the priorities of the respective phases of the transformation program are determined. The first phase focuses on optimizing structures and processes, while the second phase focuses on the new strategy and corporate culture.
There is also a special focus on ensuring the alignment of the countries: In this way, the top management of all countries is brought on track, enabled and motivated to actively shape the future of the company and become engines of change during an event lasting several days. The same applies to the employee level: Livestreaming events, webtalks and standardized dialog formats conducted by local managers ensure that transformation topics are taken notice of and become part of everyday working life.
To ensure clear and continuous communication, numerous communication tools are first coordinated and the content is communicated to different target groups, including managers, the transformation community and all employees. Some media are being developed specifically for transformation communications to further involve employees and enable a direct dialog between the CEO and employees. It is of paramount importance to make the new CEO tangible, to show his credibility and thus also to build trust in the transformation process defined by him and his management team.
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