Beyond a certain size, every decision gets stuck with the CEO. With my strategic partner Phoenix Transformation and its lead consultant Mátyás Bodor, we build an organisation where decisions are made where the knowledge is. The goal: up to 40% more productivity and staff turnover below 2%.
There comes a point in a company’s life when the question is no longer whether there is enough work, but whether the organisation can carry it.
The CEO has to be in every decision, teams wait for each other, and good people quietly burn out or leave. At that point another piece of software or another org chart won’t help. What helps is changing the way people work together.
That is why I don’t deliver Business Transformation on my own. My strategic partner is Phoenix Transformation, whose lead consultant, Mátyás Bodor, works in Hungarian, German and English. In this article I explain what the service involves, who it is for, and how we work.
Familiar symptoms?
- Every decision lands on the CEO’s desk, and stays there.
- Departments guard their own territory instead of working together.
- More rules, more approvals, more meetings, and everything gets slower.
- Part of everyone’s energy goes into office politics.
- People do what they have to, and not one bit more. “Quiet quitting” has reached your company too.
These are not individual failures. They are symptoms of the system, and they can be addressed at system level.
What does “at eye level” mean?
Phoenix Transformation describes its approach in German as Organisationsentwicklung auf Augenhöhe: organisational development at eye level. It works on three levels:
- At eye level with the client. The people who know an organisation best are its own leaders and employees. The consultant doesn’t bring a ready-made recipe; the solution is developed together with them.
- At eye level with stakeholders. Direct communication, responsible action and empathetic involvement create a framework where win-win solutions can emerge.
- At eye level with people. When people can talk to each other as equals, relationships grow strong and collaboration becomes efficient.
What results?
+40%
productivity
Organisations that use the method to remove bureaucracy and office politics can work 40% more productively.
<2%
staff turnover
In a healthy company culture, people stay for the long term.
38.5 hours
is full time
Efficiency comes from better collaboration, not overtime. That leaves room for life outside work.
Source: Phoenix Transformation, phoenix-transformation.eu
What makes it possible? Five shifts
Today
Departments thinking in silos
After the transformation
Company-wide collaboration around shared goals. Gatekeepers become sherpas.
Today
A decision bottleneck at the top
After the transformation
Distributed decision-making. Decisions are made where the knowledge is, so they are made faster.
Today
Bureaucracy and approval chains
After the transformation
A learning organisation. Autonomy drives innovation instead of hierarchy slowing it down.
Today
Office politics
After the transformation
Strong relationships. Transparent methods build trust between parts of the organisation.
Today
Quiet quitting
After the transformation
Motivation and participation. People have a say in the decisions that affect them.
How does it work? Three steps
- We start by understanding. A free first conversation, with no pre-packaged solution. The aim is to really understand your situation.
- Doing, not talking. We work together on your first concrete challenge, so there is a tangible result early on.
- Leading and accompanying. Over the longer term we support the organisation with workshops, training and coaching until the new way of working stands on its own.
Who does what?
Mátyás Bodor leads the organisational development work: the workshops, leadership and team coaching, and the introduction of the new operating framework. He works in Hungarian, German and English, so international and mixed-language teams are familiar ground.
My role is to make sure the systems change along with the way of working. I align business goals with the IT and operational infrastructure, manage development teams and external suppliers, and we measure efficiency at every milestone. An organisation can’t decide faster if its information still lives in five different spreadsheets.
Depending on the size of the client and the task, we bring in further specialists, but only as many as the job really needs.
Currently underway: we are working on the transformation of a large Hungarian group of dental clinics. We will share a case study as soon as we can.
Who is it for, and who isn’t it for?
Business Transformation is for established SMEs and larger organisations. Typically where several teams, several sites or several levels of management work together, and the CEO can no longer (and no longer wants to) be part of every decision.
If your company has 1–10 people, you probably don’t need a transformation. You need systems that work. In that case the Comprehensive Business & IT Audit is the right starting point: we find where operations get stuck and what is worth automating.
Let’s talk, with no ready-made answers.
In a free first conversation we look at where your organisation stands and whether transformation is really the right next step.