Insights

Christina Bösenberg, Managing Director, BCG Brighthouse, Berlin and Volker Haber, Managing Director, Beaumont Germany

Beaumont Group’s Dynamic Dialogues is a collection of informal discussions with engaging business, political and other thought leaders from around the globe. The purpose of the series is to boldly explore challenges and successes executives and thought leaders across industries are thinking about.

In this, our inaugural issue of Dynamic Dialogues, we sat down with Christina Bösenberg of BCG Brighthouse in Berlin and our own Volker Haber of Beaumont Germany — to discuss the issues, opportunities and on-going challenges organisations face in their implementation of effective and successful transformation programmes. This conversation covered a lot of ground and as a result this will be the first instalment of a two-part discussion. The second instalment will continue our discussion with Ms. Bösenberg on diversity, equity and inclusion challenges at the highest levels of organisations. This will be published in next month’s instalment.

Interviewer: Christina, first of all, thank you for taking the time to chat with us today. Would you mind getting us started by telling us a bit about your trajectory as a transition architect.

Christina: Interesting and broad question [laughter]! But as you perhaps have seen my background is in psychology and economics. I concluded early in my career, having always dealt with transformation and large-scale transformation, starting with tech transformation, that I would focus on people and culture. I was deeply engaged in the digital transformation when it all started in 1999 and early 2000’s. Part of it participating in the executive talent programme at Siemens who at that point in time still had this communications segment. With mobile, fixed net and even mobile gadgets, which you may remember the Siemens phone.  I was part of that innovation group.

I have always been a woman in tech, starting with digital transformation. And, again, I quickly came to the conclusion that without engaging the people and culture of a company undertaking transformation and the behavioural aspect in regard to leadership, they tend to fail. Then the first numbers came out from McKinsey at that time, in early 2000’s, that 71% of their digital transformations failed. And we have numbers from BCG as well — around 70%.

I began to wonder how can we solve this problem? How can we shape better transformations and successful outcomes? And can we shape a better future internally for our clients? Of course! It is not rocket science, but people and culture is only one aspect.

The other thing that was also interesting to me is organisational design. So, what are the processes and structures that enable transformations and lead to a better company than before the transformation initiative — whatever that the goal may be.

Today, we are talking about digital and AI. But of course, we also must talk about carbon zero transformation — the climate issues that kicked in about ten years ago! And the cost of restructuring and the programmes around these initiatives. It is interesting in that what we found is it is always the same pattern. It doesn’t matter what kind of transformation we are talking about; the patterns and issues are always the same. You can’t have a hard restructuring, or an AI implementation if you are not considering people, culture, and organisation design in terms of processes, structures, the way we work together, it’s not going to be super successful. Well, some exceptions but only a few.

So that’s my background. That’s what made me become a transformation architect in the end. The architecture of every transformation I am talking about is technology of course, and tech is a great enabler, and it has to be tech. Then all architecture approaches hopefully drive fast, interesting and pretty cool ways of working together and then we can address the people and culture aspects of the organisation.

Interviewer: This people and culture element is very interesting. We love processes and structures but don’t often think of culture or even personality often times. Especially as a driver of success. How does your focus on the humanism element, the culture drive a large-scale transformation project?

Christina: Certainly, there are always project targets. Personally, what I found most successful over the years is that, of course, we start with a strategic plan. What are the goals? What are the targets? What do we need to achieve for the transformation? There are always economic and business goals. This is certainly very important.

We start by thinking backwards, I call this “Future Backwards”. First, we take a look at the strategic targets and talk with the C-Suite team and ask them, “Ok, if we want to reach these targets, what kind of leadership behaviours do we need? Is our organisational design going to allow us to reach these targets?” Nobody is ever just nodding their heads when I ask this. Everyone is starting to really think about these issues. How many decision owners are required to reach A, B, and C objectives? If we want to make a change to whatever goals we have, how many decision-makers will be required to achieve these strategic goals? We are thinking “backwards” then. If your goal is to get to market faster, do you need sixteen people to achieve this! It seems like too much, no? [Laughter]. Well sixteen is not a helpful number of leaders for a successful transformation.

Then we can decide what kind of people and behaviours do we need to be successful. What are the leadership behaviours do we need? What are the processes and structures to reach our targets? Do we need to think differently?

Do we need to think about product teams working closer to say sales and marketing teams? If not, then how can we change it to make it more likely we reach our goal? So, thinking backwards and asking every part of the organisation “…is this the way to reach our targets? And if not, how can we or should we change to reach our goals.”

The second dimension of the work is emotionalising people to effectively achieve the goals. Activating the organisation. Activating the individual. Engaging the individual members of the team emotionally.

Volker: This is so very important. I completely agree. If you don’t emotionalise what the goals of organisation or that of leadership are, it will not work. We see this continually with clients facing a significant transformation undertaking. They have a solid strategy and plan, but getting the whole team committed to the goal is critical. And this is an element in leadership that is so often overlooked.

Interviewer: So, when you start to look at the humanistic element and the execution of strategy, is that an exercise in profiling people and leadership? Interviews? Getting to know the team? What is the approach to achieving a successful outcome?

Christina: No not profiling per se. The approach definitely depends on the project. If we are talking about a new CEO’s purpose, employer branding, and other things, yes, we do interviews. We do workshops on all levels. Interdisciplinary workshops across the hierarchy of an organisation and so on. This insight contributes to a benchmark or starting point and overall picture if you will, because you always need a starting point. Part of that is interviews and part is getting information from other inputs like employee surveys, great-place-to-work surveys. Things like that. So, there is always an analytic and research phase. We try to keep it brief, crisp, and short. But we need a benchmark, a starting point and take it from there.

It is a bit of science and art as well. The art element is interesting because from behavioural science we know how to change behaviours. And that is not by telling people you need to be enthusiastic about X, Y and Z. Or sending a nice Powerpoint around because that is not what emotionalises people. People need to really understand “why are we doing this. What is in there for me on a very individual level.”

We had one client, that was so funny, where we were working for a large international bank with the C-suite team where to them it was crystal clear that they needed to achieve their productivity target — double productivity. We said, “well, ok, but that is not a purpose that the team can embrace. I mean how do you want to emotionalise anybody around you need to double your speed and productivity!” It just will not work. So, we boiled it down and came to a conclusion of focusing on quality and innovative thinking as an approach to engage and emotionalise the business goals for the team.

It is so interesting because the C-Suite think in their own patterns. They all agree on what needs to be done, but it has nothing to do with what the workforce is thinking and what they need.

Interviewer: Volker this of course has implications regarding your work in helping clients find great leaders. From your perspective, can you share your thoughts on the cultural nuances of organisations and the emotional elements of successful candidates.

Volker: I fully agree with what Christine is saying because this is what we deal with day in and day out. Dealing with old patterns that we have to really challenge our clients on. What is it that will emotionally engage people? To make them happy to work at our client’s company. Not only promotion, or money. It is getting less and less important for people. Of course, money is important. A path to the next career stage is also important of course.

But this is not the sole focus. The most important is really do I like the work. Will I be emotionally engaged. Does it make any sense. Can I really help and change something. This is what people are more and more focused on.

I’ve been in the executive search business for thirty years now. My background was as a lawyer, but wanted to work with people, focus on the human side of things. Therefore, I went into search to work on international projects. But the culture within companies has changed dramatically over the years.

When I speak with younger people and younger leaders, it’s purpose they need for their work. Not position, or company car. It is purpose. They really want to create something. It is not necessarily what older leaders are focused on or how they are thinking. They have to be challenged on behaviours. They are very happy when we do challenge them, question their behaviours. You explore that as well Christina as you have shared. My experience is that when offer new insights and ideas, they are very happy with the input and guidance. This makes it very interesting today.

Interviewer: Interesting evolution in engaging teams today. Very exciting! Thank you both for sharing your thoughts on successful transformation and impact on teams, leadership and successful outcomes today.