Whether in the magazine industry, the automotive industry or in stores: to change a company and focus on new goals, is a tedious and long way. Not only the Volkswagen Group currently serves as an example: the Bauer-Verlag
speaks unexpectedly about a “continuous transformation”, but the changes under the chief of publisher Yvonne Bauer, who incidentally on together with her sisters 66th place in the richest list
ranked, recently resembled a 180 degree turn. For example, the publisher sold the business areas with price comparison search engines and advertising holding for small and medium -sized companies – although the expansion of the portfolio was still an important step into the future a few years ago.
Bauer is not alone in this. The Porsche Consulting Group puts the current transformation efforts of companies in German -speaking countries every two years. In the current study
The advisors present what leadership qualities are needed so that change can succeed.
Seven out of ten companies fail on the change
The results of the study are worrying: seven out of ten of the companies surveyed could not achieve their transformation goals. That corresponds to the value, which was determined two years ago
. The worst is the worst and space companies that fail 90 percent of their transformation plans, closely followed by Life Science (80 percent), transport (79 percent) and automotive companies (73 percent). On the other hand, there are astonishingly well financial company, they “only” fail with a rate of 44 percent.
Interesting: In 2023, the Consulting Group crowned the public sector as a champion of failure. At that time, the transformation did not even succeed in 90 percent of the cases, the industry does not appear at all in this year’s change compass.
Profitability instead of sustainability or diversity
This could be due to the fact that the topics pressing for managers have changed significantly in the past two years: the topic of digitization is still the most pressing, but there has been a lot compared to 2023.
The topic of sustainability, for example, has lost urgency: in 2023 it was still in second place (83 percent), this year it will only end up in 5th place (66 percent). In addition, diversity (from 54 percent to 29 percent) and New Work and Agile Management (62 percent to 42 percent) have also lost importance for successful transformation.
Companies in the fire extinguishing mode
These supposedly soft topics have given way to “more urgent concerns” such as cost cuts, profitability and improvement in performance. According to the Porsche consultant, the tense economic situation forces companies to make short-term transformation approaches. The economy is in a “fire extinguishing mode”, “at the expense of long -term and strategically valuable re -calibrations.”
But why are companies so difficult to transform successfully? According to the Porsche advisors, this has two reasons: many of the employees, both in medium-sized management as well as employees without decision responsibility, have neither the skills nor the motivation to advance transformations. The management consultancy came to this result in the change compass 2023 and took the CEOs obliged: You have to “make a change into a top priority,” said Wolfgang Freibichler (48), one of the authors of the study, the manager magazine.
The leadership style of a submarine captain should judge
In most cases, this succeeds if the employee is more responsible. Freibichler and colleagues refer to the former naval officer David Marquet, who has been feasible as a coach and management consultant since his guest house. In his time as a submarine captain, he converted the crew of his USS Santa Fe from one of the worst rated teams into the best ship of the armed forces. His approach: grant the individual members of the team more freedom of choice and in return demand a higher level of personal responsibility.
The Porsche consultants see the key to a successfully transforming company. By clearly communicating the corporate goals with their employees, they give them the opportunity to continue in their field and finally leave them control over their respective area of responsibility, they can ensure motivation and competence in a team and thus initiate successful change in the company.
More on the subject
For example, the Allianz, which rely on diversity early on, shows how such a successful corporate change can succeed and meanwhile now Four successful operations in their ranks count. Sirma Boshnakova (53), for example, as a leader for Allianz Partners, digitized and simplified the service offer of the partners and built a standardized platform for the state companies. Her actions were successful: Allianz Partners has doubled his operational profit since 2020.