The strategy exists, but it does not reach the daily work.
Goals, initiatives and programs do not add up to a picture that decisions can be aligned to.
Strategy · Organizational design · Product development
So your organization can shape its own future.
I help companies act effectively under conditions of change and complexity, and I build the capabilities that make them independent of outside consultants.
Selected companies and institutions I have worked with
This may sound familiar
Months pass between an idea and real customer feedback.
Dependencies, handovers and coordination cost more time than the work itself.
The target picture is clear, the next step is not.
Getting there would overwhelm the organization, and nobody knows where to begin without breaking something.
AI is changing the work, but nobody knows what it means for roles and collaboration.
Individuals work with AI. The organization learns nothing from it.
Four contributions
In the order in which it is usually needed.
Create headroom
We start by looking at what currently creates effort without creating value: unnecessary handovers, waiting time, parallel initiatives, rework, results that nobody uses. We make these burdens visible and develop changes that can be implemented quickly. This produces economic benefit you can trace early on. It also frees up the time, attention and budget for the work that actually matters.
Set direction
Together we build an understanding of the decisive challenge and its causes. From that comes a strategy that actually guides decisions, with a standard that lets other people decide without asking first.
Build the ability to act
Structures, decision-making authority and technical conditions in which people are able and willing to take responsibility.
Enable learning
Short feedback cycles, direct contact with customers and product, transparency about where things genuinely stand. So that assumptions surface early and not at the point of delivery.
Two things that rarely come together
I work at every level
In the morning with an executive team on vision, strategy and organizational design. In the afternoon with a development team on how to cut a complex domain problem into a first deliverable step. The two belong together. A strategic decision only becomes effective when the technical reality can carry it.
More than 30 years in product development, technical responsibility, leadership and transformation, starting in telecommunications at Siemens and Nokia Siemens Networks. I developed, led and carried responsibility myself before I advised anyone. In 2015 I became the first German-speaking Certified LeSS Trainer.
I make organizations independent of outside consulting
What experienced consultants derive from principles and experience has to become understandable and usable by your own organization. So I anchor decision criteria, principles and feedback mechanisms in a way that lets your leaders, teams and internal coaches carry the development themselves. For difficult questions and conflicts I am there. For everyday decisions you should not need anyone from outside.
These are the seams it most often comes down to:
Executive management and engineering. I make the technical, organizational and human consequences of strategic decisions understandable. And the other way round, what technical conditions mean for the business, for delivery and for the ability to adapt.
Vision and strategy, organization and delivery. I translate strategic direction into organizational design, products, roadmaps and concrete next steps. And I make sure that progress, product status and customer feedback flow back into the strategy.
Professional leadership, line leadership and self-organization. Product and quality responsibility on one side, developing people and capabilities on the other. Both are dimensions of equal standing, not a ranking.
People, organization and technology. I treat technology and AI as part of a sociotechnical system and help shape their effects on work, roles, collaboration, responsibility and learning.
Impact you can verify
Four cases.
Organizational design at scale
BMW Autonomous Driving
18 months full time, April 2017 to October 2018
A new organizational design for more than 700 employees and an agile working model for more than 1,000 internal and external contributors, in driver assistance and autonomous driving. From an executive workshop in April 2017 until the end of October 2018, full time, as initial lead coach of the large-scale change in the autonomous driving division. Work with the migration team and the executive team on the working model and the organizational design, with interfaces to other development units, HR, the works council, approval bodies, partners and suppliers. Monthly attendance at the ADD Executive Board.
The case also shows the limits of purely conceptual organizational design. Even a convincing target picture only becomes effective when technical conditions, competencies and decision-making capacity can carry it. That experience still shapes my incremental approach today.
Core of the organizational design
- Aligning the organization around customer value and learning
- Feature teams instead of component-oriented structures
- Decoupling the organization from the technical architecture
- Separating product responsibility, line leadership and coaching
- Short feedback cycles and regular contact with the real vehicle
From a multi-year topic to a first step
Mobility company
A domain problem that had been analyzed in isolation on the business side for years at a mobility company. Using cell-based splitting, concrete examples and by connecting domain and technical expertise, a first deliverable and verifiable step emerged in about two hours.
2 hours
instead of years of isolated analysis
Mid-sized companies
ifap Service-Institut für Ärzte und Apotheker
One large development unit was split into three smaller teams working on a single product and a single product backlog. My role: training, organizational design, LeSS lead coaching and management consulting. Go See, a kick-off week, self-designing teams, a transformation roadmap, multi-team refinements and coach-the-coach connected structural change with enablement.
“Mark has guided us through the process of reorganising our teams into smaller, agile units. His ability to assess our current team dynamics and identify areas for improvement was instrumental in our transition to smaller agile teams. Through his tailored coaching sessions, he equipped us with the tools and strategies necessary to embrace this change effectively. We have experienced a marked improvement in productivity. Communication has also improved, and team morale has soared.”
Original wording, released for publication on this website by the author.
Delivery under time pressure
BMW i, Unified Sales Platform
A new direct sales process under high time pressure, more than 80 affected systems and over 30 external interfaces. Transition to five cross-functional feature teams working from one shared backlog.
95%
fewer defects during integration than in a comparable project
15′
between builds, regression results two to three times a day
0
critical incidents in the first five weeks after go-live
Code freeze skipped
new functionality delivered weekly until two weeks before go-live
How working together begins
Not with a transformation program.
We begin where something can move quickly, and we make the effect traceable in economic and operational terms that matter to you. In parallel we look together at the actual work, the product and the organization.
Only then does the question arise of what this is really about: strategy, organizational design, product development, leadership, technical conditions. Or several of them at once. That diagnosis comes out of what we have seen together, not out of a proposal that was written beforehand.
Built in practice
Team Knowledge Model
Make the distribution of knowledge in a team visible, plan how it grows, and show a team’s development over time. Templates included.
Vector-based assessment for leadership and development paths
Developed together with Prof. Dr. Bernt Mayer. It makes professional and managerial development equally assessable, with equal career opportunities and equal recognition. An answer to the question of how people can grow professionally without having to move into management.
Backlog visualization and forecasting
Forecasts without estimation rituals: waterlines, statistical ranges and trends drawn from what the organization actually delivers.
Talks, case studies and articles
LeSS Conference, meetups, podcasts.
Let’s talk
If you have a situation in mind where you are stuck, write and tell me what is going on. A first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.