A Consistent Strategy for Targeted Enterprise Engineering

Why a consistent strategy for targeted Enterprise Engineering have a significantly greater impact today on a company’s success and medium- to long-term competitive position than in previous decades, is because in many regions and companies, the underlying conditions have changed significantly.

Basic Premises:

In many companies, it is standard practice that core strategic corporate and organisational development tasks are typically not integrated into the same operationalised corporate management system in which strategic core product and business development measures are planned and coordinated.

To free top management to concentrate on the coordination of product and business development measures, there is often a desire to “laterally” delegate the implementation of strategic organisational and human resource development.

In some companies, the core strategic corporate and organisational development tasks, in particular, tend to slide off the radar over time, becoming increasingly obscured and difficult to identify.

If we compare the management of a company with the tasks required of a pilot in the cockpit of a jumbo jet, it quickly becomes clear that in both cases, once the size and complexity of the tasks reach a certain point, a safe journey can only be assured with the aid of management systems. All entrepreneurs have a general understanding of this principle. Nevertheless, we regularly ask ourselves why it is, that in some companies, this principle is internalised for all of the business and customer side development and change measures, while at the same time, the organisational, personnel or cultural measures directed internally are considered less consequential.

With this type of parallel management approach, it is often apparent that not long after the measures have been defined, attention to and awareness of the company’s different strategic core measures sharply diverge. In our view, some of the reasons for this are that:

based on their personal background and work habits, many entrepreneurs prefer to concentrate on the customer, product or business rather than on the organisation itself and the people who work in it,

in most cases, the risks, threats and opportunities in product or business development measures are more clearly and visibly evident,

customers and external partners are perceived as having a more direct, rapid and effective impact on the company and its management than the company’s internal organisation and staff and finally,

there is too little articulation of the personal success and enjoyment associated with organisational and personnel development measures.

In our view, the reason the approach and behaviour described above, which can be observed in many companies, have a significantly greater impact today on a company’s success and medium- to long-term competitive position than in previous decades, is because in many regions and companies, the underlying conditions have changed significantly.

In many regions, labour market conditions make it clear that labour is becoming a scarce and costly commodity. Employee attitudes towards and loyalty to their employer have changed – frequent job changes and short stints at individual companies are no longer frowned upon but have become de rigeur. Fewer and fewer young people are willing to take on leadership responsibilities at work, while they are very happy to spend less and less time on the job. Disruptions resulting from climate change, demographics, pandemics and war make employee retention or the postponement of appropriate measures nearly impossible, which usually affects large portions of the organisation. Digitalisation, too, requires a very high degree of structural and process-related adjustment, which also has a significant impact on the organisation and the people working within it.

The Enterneering® approach is an effective and successful method for countering the situations and deficits described above. For entrepreneurs who have come to the self-reflective and critical assessment that they should not – and do not want to – view the use of external support as a necessary evil but rather as a valuable and welcome service, the Enterneers® can provide expert, experienced support, not only in the implementation of appropriate company-internal measures but, if required, also in the areas of staff training and the recruitment of qualified personnel.