How we became what we are and didn't remain what we were

2023 | 13 min reading time

About organizational development based on the example of ZENTRALNORDEN

A pink skateboard, yoga mats and a well-stocked minibar. That's the first thing we both notice when we enter the ZENTRALNORDEN office at the end of 2019. "Very cool," we think, "this is exactly what we were looking for." A few days earlier, we had launched an invitation: "Dear creative industry crowd! Who among you has a 'dazzling' office where I and six participants in our organizational development training could visit you at the end of January?". Denise excitedly offered to give us a short tour of her working environment.

We at Como Consult are a Hamburg-based consulting firm with offices in Hamburg, Berlin and Bogotá and offer training in organizational development every year. One of the highlights is the organizational visit: the participants visit an organization and are asked to perceive only with their five senses. Perceiving without directly evaluating: this is one of our most important consulting tools.

A few organic sodas and exciting conversations later, we realize that ZENTRALNORDEN and Como have a lot in common. Both organizations are undergoing change processes and, more importantly, we share very similar values. We decide to embark on a journey together. In the eventful year 2020, the time had come and, after extensive preliminary exchanges, we started supporting an organizational development process at ZENTRALNORDEN.

About the wild life in a large family

ZENTRALNORDEN is therefore on the path of a long-term change process. Founded by four friends, the creative agency can now look back on ten eventful years. If we ask for an image for internal collaboration and cooperation, the answer is unanimous: Family. Questions about their own identity and its further development are nothing new for the team. What has remained constant is the way they work together: family-like, as non-hierarchical and inclusive as possible, making decisions together and maintaining a sincere relationship with one another. At the same time, the company is constantly growing in terms of employees, increasing customer diversification and more complex orders. This requires more structured ways of decision-making, more standardized processes and roles as well as professional management. Such developments harbor potential for conflict, contradictions and areas of tension.

There was now a desire to start a change process supported by all employees in order to formulate a common orientation for the future: "What vision unites and motivates us? What values do we follow? How and with whom do we want to work? What do we want to achieve?". This includes, among other things, putting internal processes and decision-making procedures to the test and (re)defining roles and communication rules. Open exchange, irritation and resistance are helpful companions along the way. In the form of specialist and process consulting, we promote the ZN team's problem-solving skills and ability to work. This includes, for example, strategic thinking and planning, collegial leadership and balancing and utilizing tensions. We started the process with an exploratory workshop. The aim was to take a comprehensive and critical inventory of all future visions, opinions, wishes and concerns in order to derive concrete next steps.

Best learning: Goodbye planning security

We often observe that our clients are undergoing or are about to undergo fundamental transformation processes. This applies to creative start-ups, large companies and non-profit organizations as well as public administrations and universities. Although the causes vary, all organizations have one thing in common: their environment is changing rapidly and drastically. Digitization, for example, is affecting all internal processes and structures and changing entire business models. The climate crisis requires a fundamental rethink of the values of our economic system. Demographic change is having a fundamental impact on personnel development in organizations as well as on the distribution of power and values. Our society is becoming more diverse in its composition, while at the same time the political discourse is intensifying at all levels.

Organizations must and increasingly want to position themselves in questions of values. The speed and complexity of change is increasing, leading to the following paradox: with increasing complexity and uncertainty about the future, flexibility and adaptability are required.

»At the same time, the need for security and orientation is increasing. Organizations must respond to this change in order to be future-proof.«

However, the significance and speed of the drivers mentioned above are currently more fundamental than in the past and require creativity, vision and major decisions. They lead to areas of tension in which organizations must navigate and continuously balance their own position. It is not just about optimizing processes or structures. Rather, it is about forward-looking, agile self-renewal (mechanisms), sometimes even radical reinvention and transformation. We call this phenomenon "adaptation movements".

Buzzwords such as New Work, agility, purpose or ambidexterity (the simultaneous and therefore "ambidextrous" management and leadership of core and innovation business) are answers to today's questions. Although these terms are diluted by their inflationary use, they nevertheless show what questions are at stake against the backdrop of change: "What is the purpose of our organization (also in the future)?", "What specific strategic goals are derived from this?", "Do we want to make a contribution to society and if so, what? And how?", "What individual, community and social values guide our actions?", "How can and should employees actually help shape our actions?", "What do users of our products and services expect from us?", "How do we want or need to organize ourselves in order to achieve our goals?", "How do we ensure our survival and remain connectable?". There are no unique and clear answers to these questions, especially not in today's world. All these questions have to be negotiated and balanced again and again. We address these tensions and work with our clients to find a productive way of dealing with them.

The art of using areas of tension as sources of energy

When we support organizations, we build trusting relationships and help them to clarify and sort things out. We consultants have a variety of organizational patterns at our disposal for this purpose. One example is Gareth Morgan's "Images of Organization". His metaphor of the organization as an organism is suitable for creative agencies in the development process. In the following, we outline its key characteristics and the corresponding areas of observation that have resulted for us at ZENTRALNORDEN.

The environment influences the organization or vice versa - just as every living organism interacts with its environment.

The current market and the trends mentioned above are influencing the agency: digitalization is changing consulting services and customer expectations. Social, ecological and demographic change are leading to new requirements in branding processes. At the same time, ZENTRALNORDEN wants to have a positive impact on its environment: We are observing a strong focus on ideal and organizational values. The ZN teams set up "customer-less", sustainable projects and initiatives that do not generate any direct monetary gain for the company. However, they enable the company to communicate its values to the outside world. One example is the annual Wasteless Open Air.

All systems consist of subsystems - just as an organism consists of cells, molecules or organs. The subsystems adapt according to certain principles: Just as the parts of an organism evolve or regress over the course of its life.

At ZENTRALNORDEN, we have found a wide variety of subsystems: Founders, managers, employees, the self-employed, creatives, project managers, old hands and newbies. And if we took a longer look, we would certainly discover a few more. The continuous adaptation of subsystems to external and internal influences takes place both organically and evolutionarily and is consciously controlled by planning and management. From a consultant's point of view, we recognize three almost prototypical areas of tension that need to be dealt with productively so that the agency can continue to grow.

We are Family / ZENTRALNORDEN is a limited liability company

The purpose of founding a family is to form a community. The purpose of founding a company is to accomplish a common task (e.g. to provide services). We clearly advise ZENTRALNORDEN to focus on the common task: On the profitability and thus the viability of the GmbH. We ask: "How exactly do you want to earn your money and secure the existence of your company?". Their answers initially describe "How do we want to do it?" rather than "What exactly do we want to do?".

High need for autonomy / artistic, individual freedom to make decisions as a company

One of our first perceptions of the ZN team was a strong desire for personal responsibility and participation. Such an observation is typical of "agile" and "convinced" organizations. In administrations, for example, where decision-making is strictly hierarchical, we find less of this. Non-hierarchical organizations need a higher degree of decision-making authority. This is because the ability to make decisions is crucial for further development. Hierarchy has the task of moving reality in the desired direction through management decisions. If it is less pronounced or absent, other decision-making mechanisms are needed, such as collegial leadership.

Serving market requirements (and generating profit) / Influencing the environment by living your own values

ZENTRALNORDEN wants to drive positive change in our world and, as a service-providing agency, is constantly caught between its own values and those of its clients. The trick here is how to develop "both" from "one" (living one's own values) and "the other" (generating sales). Or how to bring your own values into the world of your clients to a certain extent.

Polarity arises from opposites. Opposites mean a diversity of perspectives. Healthy organizations are able to use opposites and the resulting tensions productively for growth. And here we use less an economic and more an organic concept of growth. This means that the organization can continuously adapt to the requirements of the environment and thus maintain its viability. If strong opposites are perceived as contradictory or even paradoxical, a particularly high level of tension competence is required in the organization: we often call it balancing.

"Just as a tightrope walker achieves his balance by constantly correcting his movements around his center point, organizations and their members can only become secure in uncertainty through conscious action and continuous self-observation, as well as through the willingness to allow mistakes and irritations and to learn from them. The organization must provide time and space for this." (Excerpt from our consulting philosophy)

Ways out of the predicament

Dilemmas are part of organizations, can be exhausting and can develop into stressful conflicts. But it is much better to use them productively for growth and development. The more dilemmas there are, the more opportunities the organization has for decision-making, movement and change. So how can tensions be balanced and used productively? We like to use the so-called SySt® tetralemma. It is based on the two-thousand-year-old Nagarjuna logic and is used in Indian jurisdiction. According to this, the right can be awarded not only to one or the other party, but also to both or neither of them. In our work with ZENTRALNORDEN, the next step is to promote tension competence. To do this, the team goes through the "positions" of the tetralemma in small groups and answers the questions posed there, e.g. as part of a workshop. The ideas collected are then prioritized and made feasible with concrete steps.

(Co-)designing development spaces

Sustainable change requires spaces in which the members of an organization can open up to each other, listen to each other and allow new things to emerge. In which resistance and tensions can be understood and dealt with. And where the aim is to find the right solution. It is important for our work that the relevant people become fully aware of the challenges together. We cannot prescribe the solutions. Our customers can only formulate them themselves. Edgar Schein, one of the founding fathers of organizational consulting, writes: "Gathering the right people in a room and setting out on a dialogical exploration of complex chaos is perhaps the best model for a future of effective action.". And that is what ZENTRALNORDEN is all about at the moment: consciously shaping our own future. In such processes, we encounter a spirit of optimism, resignation, euphoria, skepticism, conflict or resistance. It is about creating something new, but also about saying goodbye and giving things up. This can hurt and at the same time have a very liberating effect.

A fascinating partnership

With ZENTRALNORDEN, we were still at the beginning of our journey together at the start of 2021. The agency is now not only designing. A steering group and four working groups on the topics of corporate strategy, communication culture, leadership and project management are also happily and energetically working on organizational development. We look forward to supporting ZENTRALNORDEN constructively and with the right amount of humor. Our aim is to always learn something ourselves with every consulting assignment. And since ZENTRALNORDEN is not exactly known for its restraint, the creative minds are now helping us to spice up our own Como Consult brand in return. A perfect match!

This article is from our BAM Magazine. Find out more about it here.

BAM Magazine

Tags: Bock auf Morgen, New Work, Organisationsentwicklung, Spannungsfelder, Strukturen, Systeme, Veränderungsprozess

Michael Beyer

Consulting and Training | Como Consult

Micha set up the Berlin office of Como Consult in 2016 together with a few other crazy people. As an organizational consultant, he loves working with fields of tension and systemic structural constellations. He would love to go for a walk with Niklas Luhmann and Martin Buber to explore the connection between hard systems theory and Jewish religious philosophy.

como-consult.de

Mattias Wein

Consulting | Como Consult

After several years in the non-profit world, Matthias joined Como Consult as a consultant in 2017. With a view to the huge challenges and upheavals that lie ahead in the coming years, he wonders what organizations will look like in ten years' time. That's why he particularly enjoys advising his clients on strategy development processes.

como-consult.de