From production volume to client value, with structure and culture redrawn at the same time
A publisher with its own printing works saw the circulation of its main product more than halve over the years, in a home market that was steadily shrinking. The result: overcapacity in production, financial pressure and an operation that mostly looked inward. The company was not in acute distress, and precisely because of that, there was room to tackle it thoroughly. The board wanted to make both activities more performant and let the organisation evolve towards an operation in which leadership, disciplined teamwork across the whole chain and quality service delivery are central.
A diagnostic at the start of the trajectory gave the picture. There were no shared strategic goals, no operational translation of them and no measurement instruments. The processes were nowhere described, the structure was complex for an organisation of this size, and the departments worked as islands next to each other. The management team did not pull in the same direction and did not bring one unequivocal story to the rest of the house.
Beneath those findings sat a culture that had grown over decades. Whoever was critical had learned to stay silent. Employees who were open to change were sooner discouraged than encouraged. There was little ambition and little pride, and client-mindedness was missing from the way of thinking: the client could be happy the work got done at all. At the same time there was something hopeful too: many employees themselves saw that this could not go on.
Three shifts were therefore needed at the same time, and they needed each other. Thinking from client value instead of production volume. Working as one whole instead of as departments. Steering on processes instead of on machines. Each of those three takes years, and whoever tackles one without the others gets half a transformation.
Two tracks that ran in parallel, not after each other. And an order that followed the same logic each time: first consensus, then the cascade.
It started at the top. In a work session with the board, the strategic result areas were chosen, with client proximity and operational excellence as priorities. Only when that choice was set did it go to the management team, which got the same thinking frames so that everyone at every level spoke in the same terms.
The culture track focused on the people. The management team first mapped what kind of team it was today and what kind it had to become, and then worked on three layers: the base of shared mission and working agreements, mutual collaboration, and the relationship with the rest of the organisation. That included new client-oriented core values, translated into observable behaviour so that they became discussable and assessable, and a competence framework for leadership. A diagnostic of the capacities in the production department and among middle management made visible who was strong where, who could grow, and where training could make the difference. From that followed a training and development plan for the whole organisation, the first in the company's history.
The structure track focused on processes and architecture. The strategic priorities were translated into result areas per activity, with critical success factors and measurement points. The core processes were named and each got an owner. Then followed the redesign of the organisational structure: simpler, with more authority and responsibility with middle management and with a clear outward gaze. That redesign also touched positions, because authority that had been concentrated with one person was redistributed. The difficult decisions that followed were carefully prepared and openly communicated, to avoid unnecessary tension in a house where people had known each other a lifetime.
For middle management, seminars ran on process thinking: how to recognise waste, how to map processes across department boundaries, and how to improve them from what the client needs. Alongside that, training in situational leadership, in which the full leadership team sat together in one room for the first time. Finally, the HR system was rebuilt around the new way of working, with role and competence profiles as the basis for recruitment, coaching, evaluation, training, career and succession.
One choice deserves mentioning, because it typifies the approach. The process analysis made clear that the main product could be made in considerably less time than was being spent on it. That insight could have led straight to personnel decisions. That step was deliberately not taken in middle management's first work sessions: whoever teaches people to see waste and immediately uses that insight against them makes thinking about it impossible forever. The conversation about it did come, but only when the group could carry it itself.
The moment when the leadership team started seeing itself as one team instead of as the sum of department heads. From that shared identity, strategic choices could be made with conviction, and middle management got room to take responsibility. At the same time, the language in the company changed: no longer about volumes and machines, but about clients, audiences and service delivery.
An organisation that evolved from internally focused and barely coherent to a recognisable profile as service provider, with an effective leadership team, redesigned core processes with owners, a client-oriented values framework, a competence framework for leadership and an integrated HR policy. Middle management took decisions itself for the first time, in dialogue and as a team. Improvement capacity from then on came from the employees themselves instead of from external interventions.
First consensus, then execution. The trajectory did not begin with a plan but with a conversation at the top about what gets priority. Only when that agreement was set did it go to the management team and then to the rest. Without consensus at the top, every execution further down stays vulnerable to doubt.
Build the leadership team first, then the cascade. That team was explicitly designed, with a shared mission, agreements about mutual interaction and a sharp relationship with the rest of the organisation. An effective leadership team does not emerge by itself.
Insight into people before decisions on structure. The diagnostic of the available capacities made the redesign well-founded instead of theoretical: who sits where, what is the potential, and which gap can be bridged with training?
Quick results as an engine for credibility. An organisation that has lived for years in silent crisis first has to experience that change can work. That experience builds the trust on which the heavier decisions can rest.
Anchoring through HR. The transformation did not end with redesigning processes, but with role descriptions, evaluation criteria and development paths built around the new way of working. Without that anchoring, the old thinking sneaks back as soon as the guidance falls away.
Structure without culture gives resistance, culture without structure gives good intentions without execution. Working integrally requires more orchestration, and it delivers the only result that lasts.