Happy New Year

Today is new years eve, at least for the fiscal year 2020. OMG what a year this was! On the treshold to the new I want to pause, reflect on all the great achievements and say THANK YOU to all the persons who made vision become reality.

Leadership Culture

Together with the great support of University of Regensburg and GfeO, Prof. Fischer and Dr. Hanjo Gergs, we brought the science behind our leadership model and build a practical compendium which is a pure treasure chest of contemporary and ambidextious leadership. Special thanks to Julia Blonska who spend quite some hours on this and together with Daniela Haras making this a comprehensive storyline. The team around Gina Alladin and Giulia Fassina brought it than into the format of our leadership development trainings.

Engagement Culture

Already in fiscal year 2019 - with the great help of Julia Blonksa - we layed ground in designing the new way of fostering conversations about what matters and putting power and accountability to the level where the potential of our employees can really be unleashed. This year together with the great experience and project management know-how of Isabelle L?schner, we finished the vendor selection, layed ground for all the IT landscape and processes and - together with the new-on-the-team Anne Schulz-Ballier - we conducted a pilot with more than 4.000 participants. The results are clear and overwelming: the "listen, talk, improve together" strategy will support each manager and team with actively shaping their team and the company. And it will propell us into the 22nd century of data-driven decision making on culture and collaboration topics. A big thank you to all involved colleagues from Legal to IT and the great people of Peakon around Julian Tesche.

Global Diversity & Inclusion

In Dezember 2019 we started to enhance the global D&I strategy and with the great support of Kimian Deware, Julia Hahn, Jana-Lisa Willems and especially Michael Stuber. In less than 6 month we developed the new global strategy with great support and alignment of 32 country representatives and our top executives. We will pursue our company purpose with considering humans as precious individuals. We will continue ro develop innovative solutions while being prepared to think outside the box and step out of our comfort zones. With this global strategy we will open up the conversation even more to understand

• how people feel about differences, theirs and others,
• what experiences they have in working with and across differences and
• what they need in order to make the most of the great talent, theirs and others.

Scaling OD

In these last 12 month we layed ground to a topic very close to my heart: the scaling of organization development throughout a global company. I deeply belief that OD has to get out of the ivory tower of experts and HR. I deeply belief that OD has and will become THE general management competence in the next 5 years. And I belief that OD can be standarized, partially digitalized and scaled while bringing a new level of professionalism and practicability to the people using it. With that belief in mind and the huge demand from business we - the great Dorothee Argus, Barbara Laranjinha, Daniel Pichl, Ruth Kramlinger and Julia Blonska - started working on our OD workstream. And we managed with the later support of our great working student Laura Louise Matthis and the external experts Werner Schwabe, Lisa Wambach, Jesper Sylvest S?rensen, Nicole Anzinger and Christine Gajewski to craft guided end2end products along relevant ?use cases‘ of the different pockets of OD - easy-to-use and yet flexible standard products for everybody to use.

This will create personal, organizational, cultural and strategic alignment through standarized offers in relevant fields of Organization Develpment – scaled to global reach and anchored in cultural analytics.

People Excellence

Realizing that times and strategies had changed, realizing that this is not more of the same but different stuff, realizing that whether we succeed or fail is not only a matter of Financials, Technologies or Processes we said we need to upgrade ourselves, our teams and our organizations. It is about to have the right competences, the right behaviours, the right mindset. It is about People Excellence (isn`t it always?;)).

So starting in December we approached with the great trust of Andre Heinz and the support of all members of the HR leadershipteam our top management differently. We approached them with a mindest about willingness to learn, curiosity, leadership. We moved through different meaningful conversations and interventions from a “Know it all” to a “Learn it all” zone. Supported by COVID19 we left comfort zones and got to deep sharing & growth zone. We upgraded - head, hearts and hands.

So what?!

I know that I forgot to mention so many people which made all this possible and I deeply thank everybody for her/his contribution. Especially all my PL Heads and PL colleagues.

I also know that these topics - the shiny my little enumeration seems - are just small cogs in the big machine of the wondrous complexity we call enterprise. But still OD, cultural work and leadership development are deep rooted factors of success - often hidden but perceptible in these "zero moments of truth" of transformation. THIS!

So let me now wave a goodbye to the old and embrace the new with full of hope, dream and ambition. Wishing you a happy new year! Cheers!

Yours,

Bernd

Hi, I am Bernd - an OrgDev & HR Innovator and passionate about developing people, teams and organizations. I am expert in leadership development and large scale change. You can find out more about me: www.emergent-change.com or follow me on Twitter