| SUCCESSFUL EXAMPLES |
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| Sustaining growth in an entrepreneurial culture |
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Situation
Our client is an entrepreneurial Romanian company that wishes to consolidate a healthy organizational culture for their current business stage. The initial culture of the business has been one typical for small entrepreneurial companies: few but very dedicated people, a well bounded community and a family-like environment.
Due to the high professionalism and dedication the company started gaining credibility and together with it a higher portfolio and market share. The sustained growth, especially in the past years, placed an increasing pressure on the number on people, making the need for new employees stringent.
In 2007 the company reached a number of 60 employees, and the shareholders started facing challenges in leading such a numerous team. Moreover, the experienced employees lingered over the old way of working and the family-like environment, expecting the shareholders to make things as they once were. The new employees found it easier to work in the fast pace of the present, and with a strong pressure for results.
The Human Invest Solution
Human Invest’s role was to support the shareholder’s team in identifying the existing challenges and problems in their company. Three practical instruments have been used:
• The older employees were involved in a series of focus groups. These had the role of involving them in the organizational culture’s diagnosis, of offering them the opportunity to express their feelings towards the undergoing changes and the impact these have upon them, and of validating the shareholders’ assumptions over the things going wrong.
• In parallel we ran a survey investigating the organizational culture, to obtain a clear picture of the actual culture. More than 75% of the employees participated in the survey, which guaranteed a high accuracy of the results.
• The shareholders used a personal evaluation tool similar to a 360° feedback. This instrument illustrated the impact their leadership behaviours have in the organization, and their influence on the organizational culture. After filling in the tool the shareholders participated in two workshops on understanding the behaviour patterns and their impact, together with correlating the figures in the survey with the business reality.
Results
• The shareholders were able to identify the challenges that arose with the growing business and a larger team. Due to this they were able to respond accordingly, and to minimize the negative aspects on the change, while striving to enhance its positive ones.
• The chosen solution was to create a middle management team to support decentralizing decisions. These managers were invited by the shareholders to take part in the company’s management, and they participated in a special preparation day for understanding the current reality and culture of the company.
• The next steps are to build a program dedicated to preparing the new managers. They all are very good specialists, with a broad experience in their field, but they lack management experience, and thus the priority is to invest in equipping them with management abilities.
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Human Invest is a Premier League company in the arena of training and
organizational development consultancy services, present on the Romanian market since 1998.
We are recognized for conceiving and implementing programs which offer managers an authentic experience towards improving their leadership
performances, and thus we support companies in becoming more and more engaged in delivering excellent services for their clients.
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