The manager’s toolkit is in desperate need of an update. Sometimes we think that rewriting the organisation chart is all it takes to reorganise a company. But that can only yield limited results.
This means that management and organisational consultants must be able to offer their clients a full quiver of methods adapted to a company’s specific context, closely connecting the company’s strategy and transformation to its organisation.
At Bartle, our management and organisational consultants favour this approach because it delivers real results that last.
The first task of Bartle consultants is to ensure that the company’s strategy has been laid as the cornerstone so that the organisation is at its service, and not the opposite.
According to Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle“, the “Why” – the very reason for existence – is the foundation of any firm. Next come the “What” (products) and the “How” (technology, means of sale), which will shape the company’s strategy in combination with qualitative and quantitative criteria.
An organisation cannot be invented (or reinvented) without a clear business strategy from the outset.
Having a strategy is not enough: it has to be an effective strategy That is the second phase of work carried out by Bartle consultants: to help companies identify the strengths and weaknesses of their strategy. We would like to mention two pitfalls that our consultants hunt down mercilessly.
Designing an overall policy that is disconnected from operations
Dissociating strategy, a noble discipline, from execution is a trap. Any strategy should be designed for implementation, and the implementation may indeed influence the initial strategy in the interest of pragmatism.
The strategy is brilliant… but completely foreign to most employees
Sometimes, this happens out of a fear of “leaks” which could tip off the competition to the new orientation. Frequently, this happens because the strategy is not communicated at the effective level of each individual, or it is translated into divergent goals across departments.
Once the strategy has been properly defined and its pitfalls avoided, Bartle consultants help enterprises to define the right managerial framework for change management.
In practise, this framework is founded on the balanced management of four fields of activity:
Why “Care”? Because autonomy often goes hand in hand with fulfilment and productivity, a clear break with the tradition of strict control. This traditional thinking fought teleworking on the pretext that it was no longer possible to monitor people. Then the pandemic came along and swept away any reluctance.
There is one final, decisive factor that Bartle consultants always take into account: the company’s culture. Sometimes, designing an organisation is reduced to a game of Lego with “boxes” that are used to build an organisation chart. But the components of an enterprise’s structure should not overshadow its corporate culture. Culture is like the dark matter of our universe: it is invisible, yet all around us. To define and adapt it, our consultants conduct an audit inspired by organisational sociology. Because you cannot just “paste” any organisation on any culture.
This is why our teams make the effort to first diagnose the existing culture, then to compare it to the target culture so they can define a road map for transformation. It is not enough to work on a message and impose it on a future organisation chart. Our consultants help the companies they support to design a true “change management” programme that activates multiple HR and organisational levers.
Humans often reason incrementally when they want to implement organisational change: reduce payroll by x%; attain productivity gains of y%. Sometimes, however, Bartle’s management consultants apply the “Zero Basing” approach to wipe the slate clean and rebuild a structure that can operationalise the strategy while maintaining the fresh thinking of the company’s first days and shedding the weight of the past.
Finally, we often look for productivity gains in the same places: payroll, investments in IT or property infrastructure, etc. And yet, the true sources of productivity are often elsewhere, in places where no one thinks to look: excessive work. Excessive work is a waste of energy. Divergent duplication of effort. Tonnes of emails to justify the work. Interminable meetings, at night, with no agenda or clear decisions. Abstract management that is out of touch with reality.
This excess work must be identified, one step at a time, so it can be reduced or eliminated, through an analysis that will introduce the sociological approach mastered by Bartle’s expert consultants.
Thanks to their many management and organisational assignments. Bartle consultants are well equipped with the indispensable hard and soft skills it takes to carry out truly comprehensive and credible work that will have a lasting effect on organisations.
But all these skills would be meaningless if the first reflex of our consultants was not to… be quiet. To listen. To understand the specific context of the departments or companies for which they are working, including their challenges and goals. We know that listening is an active skill that requires ongoing effort, and it is an integral part of the behavioural know-how of Bartle employees.
Finally, to earn the buy-in of everyone involved with change, Bartle consultants work collaboratively with their clients so that, together, they design the ideal toolbox and road map to achieve the revamped target organisation.
