The Network of Enterneers®

What this bus and business sparring have in common

Some topics have been around in the business world for a long time and have repeatedly been rehashed or cited without ever being sustainably debunked in all these years. Nevertheless, like many other people, I tend to lose sight of these principles from time to time -– in certain situations, even more so – or to let them take a back seat to competing issues.

What this bus and business sparring have in common

Some topics have been around in the business world for a long time and have repeatedly been rehashed or cited without ever being sustainably debunked in all these years. I like to think of such issues as ‘laws of nature’ because this helps me to think or speculate less about them, allowing me to more easily access my own patterns of thought and action. Such topics include the Peter Principle, the Theory of Evolution or the entrepreneurial approach of ‘Work ON your business, not IN it’.

Nevertheless, like many other people, I tend to lose sight of these principles from time to time -– in certain situations, even more so – or to let them take a back seat to competing issues. Why is that? Does this make me a bad leader or a useless entrepreneur? The answer to this is a diplomatically correct ‘NO’. In actual professional life, the answer to this question is not irrelevant and is quite complex. Especially because the answer to this question is always situation-dependent. And this is precisely where the challenge lies: in defining an approach and a structure that helps you keep the focus on the essentials and yet adapt your leadership role according to the specific situation. This sounds very academic, but in my view, it’s not that complicated.

The basic prerequisite is to have understood the particular principle and to have accepted it for yourself and your role in the company. Anyone who can't get past this point and tries to disprove the principle – or successfully disproves it for themselves – can, in my view, easily spare themselves the subsequent steps. When it comes to personal acceptance, I believe that self-reflection is the next step, to identify the GAP between the core elements of the principle and the actual situation. In my eyes, it is not a sign of weakness to involve one or more other qualified persons in this reflection.

Once the GAP has been identified, it is usually easier to define and decide upon suitable measures. In my experience, the tendency to break away from these measures or structures varies depending on the type of person, role, organisational form or business situation. A kind of ‘route master’ can help here, someone without personal sensitivities or conflicts of interest, who determines and makes transparent deviations from the course at regular intervals. This will at least give the ‘guilty conscience’ of those who bear responsibility a real chance of being noticed.

If you are still not quite clear what the bus in image and business sparring have in common, just let us know and we will have a quick chat about it.

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.

When transformational and evolutionary pressures collide

Professional enterprise engineering is particularly essential at present. In addition to classic drivers, such as business growth, market expansion, system renewal, modernisation and rationalisation, we are also experiencing the impact of external factors, such as climate and demographic changes as well as digitalisation, pandemics and, most recently, the consequences of the war in Europe.

More and more often we find ourselves confronted with the following (or similar) situation:

Yesterday's start-up has successfully established itself on the market and now faces the challenge of expanding significantly or perhaps even scaling up. This young company must therefore successfully implement series production. The introduction of professional structures in the areas of organisation, management and leadership is an essential ingredient for success. [Evolution]

The founders or management team must progress from the early days of self-employment to entrepreneurship. What can be done if the management team, which has been heavily involved in the company itself, needs to do more work ‘on’ the company in the future, but still needs practical training in order to do so? [Evolution]

The numerous current global disruptions in the form of demographics, climate, pandemics and war have put entrepreneurs and managers in every sector under high pressure to enact change. [Transformation]

Taken in isolation, perhaps none of the factors listed above is anything unusual. However, the combination of all these factors during one development period is, in our view, an extraordinary constellation. [Disruption]

Successful work ‘on’ the business must be learned and practised. Not every entrepreneur takes this task as much to heart or has as much native talent for this as they do their business-related activities or creativity, innovative ability, and enthusiasm. It is not uncommon for management to be dominated by work ‘in’ the business, on the product or on the customer.

Learn more about successful work ‘on’ your business
Professional enterprise engineering is particularly essential at present. In addition to classic drivers, such as business growth, market expansion, system renewal, modernisation and rationalisation, we are also experiencing the impact of external factors, such as climate and demographic changes as well as digitalisation, pandemics and, most recently, the consequences of the war in Europe.

These disruptions have, at least in some part, put companies under pressure to enact changes within the organisation. Especially in medium-sized or young companies, this situation will require significant intensification of the work done ‘on’ the company. In some cases, there is a lack of sufficiently experienced staff and/or available capacities at C-level for this. In some unfavourable constellations, this challenge is compounded by company management that is young or less experienced in enterprise.

As is often the case in life, in this situation, the success of a company's growth depends first and foremost on the willingness and ability of those with overall responsibility to change. From our own long years of experience in a wide variety of corporate settings, we know that two key elements determine how and in which way a company deals with change or ongoing development. These are the knowledge and awareness of the current and foreseeable situation. This may sound banal, but in practicality, it is, unfortunately, far too often a major shortcoming. What is required are simple things that are sometimes very difficult to implement under high performance pressure, such as taking your time and consciously raising your head, widening your gaze and looking beyond the edge of the mountain of workload that can seem almost unsurmountable.

There are many different forms of support and tools for meeting these challenges. Regardless of whether the chosen approach includes independent study, in-house training, the development of additional staff with relevant know-how, support from external experts or a combination of these, successful work ‘on’ the company isn’t something that can be fit in after work, at the weekend or just as time permits. From our point of view, the cards are generally stacked against anyone who cannot acknowledge this and act accordingly.

Implementation of Enterneering®

If a company organisation is to do more than just develop on its own, then essentially the same methodological principles apply as are used in the definition and realisation of corporate strategies. Here, too, the more incomprehensibly a strategy affecting the entire company is formulated and communicated, and the less measurable the success of implementation, the lower the plan’s prospects for success.

Successful Enterneering®, i.e. the development of the company in the areas of organisation, people and culture, requires a holistic and systematic approach. It’s not about the precise pre-definition of the content of a multi-year implementation plan. Nevertheless, we believe that successful Enterneering® should be an integral part of overall corporate strategy and planning. In keeping with this basic idea, a corporate strategy must first be in place. This means that defined strategic goals will have already been established, along with a long-term plan for achieving those goals. In addition, a suitable mechanism or process for operationalising the corporate strategy – i.e. making it viable in practice – must exist. As a rule, this type of operationalisation involves breaking down the corporate strategic goals into individual goals, for example, in the form of milestones with measurable success criteria and implementation dates. A strategic roadmap or a company backlog often forms a good basis for this.

If a company does not yet have an operationalised strategy, experience shows that systematic Enterneering® will not yield results. A suitable corporate strategy must first be defined.

If an operationalised strategy does exist, then the core elements of the corporate strategy form the starting point for the implementation of Enterneering®. The following key questions now arise:

Are there dedicated Enterneering® goals in the company's strategy?

How are the Enterneering® goals anchored in the planning and implementation of the strategy?

Have dedicated resources (time, know-how, money) been planned for achieving the Enterneering® goals?

Who is responsible as the implementation coordinator for pursuing or coordinating the Enterneering® goals?

Depending on the answers to these four questions, different courses of action will emerge, all of which have the same goal: resolving the open questions. In the process of doing this, the practical experience already gained in other companies or constellations can and should be drawn upon to resolve the questions in such a way that the subsequent implementation of measures reduces foreseeable obstacles, risks or threats and optimises the chances for success.

Goals

Reminder: Enterneering® consists of targeted work on the three corporate areas of organisation, people and culture. Accordingly, the goals of Enterneering® are also to be found and selected within these three categories. Typical examples are:

Future extent of development within the organisation (structural measures, degree of digitalisation, process maturity, etc.)

Desired or necessary core capabilities within the organisation (scalability, series maturity, interculturality, etc.)

Conformity to requirements (external and internal standards, customer requirements, legal conformity, etc.)

Changing work environments (hybrid workplaces, agility, digital work formats, labour market conformity, etc.)

Development of leadership and corporate culture (gender shift, work-life blending, self-organisation, etc.)

The same quality metrics that apply to all strategic corporate goals also apply to Enterneering® goals. They must be meaningful and useful enough for the long term and generally be considered feasible. In addition, the purpose of the goal must be clearly defined as well as what successful implementation will ultimately achieve, i.e. the concrete contribution the achieved goal will make to the company's success.

Anchoring

There are several ways to anchor goals in a corporate strategy in such a way that they can be successfully achieved in practice and are also measurable. We recommend that an adequate form of anchoring be established that balances Enterneering® goals with other corporate goals. This means that, as far as possible, it must be ensured that, in the consciousness of the company and the people working in it, Enterneering® goals are just as important and significant as other goals, such as those from business development. The idea here is to avoid the emergence of parallel worlds when it comes to the perception and implementation of individual elements of the corporate strategy. In this way, the Enterneering® goals can be implemented as honestly, transparently, and authentically as possible. Possible mechanisms for or methods of anchoring include:

Traditional Milestone Plan

Company Backlog

Strategic Roadmap

OKR Tableau

Balanced Scorecard

(...)

Other success factors in anchoring the goals and implementing them in the company are a dedicated change approach, a communication concept and the involvement of promoters and multipliers.

Resources

A common management error when dealing with development measures in the areas of organisation, people and culture is to put the effort (and possibly the pain) into defining and budgeting for appropriate and necessary resources in abbreviated planning models. This refers to statements such as "...this belongs to the standard tasks for managers or the HR department..." or "...we will clarify this in more detail during implementation – let’s get started first..." or "...these are soft factors anyway, which are difficult to plan ...". Experience shows that the success of the Enterneering® development measures is dependent on a clear understanding of the necessary resources. Typical elements of resource assessment in Enterneering® are:

Time requirements and top executive know-how

Time requirements and management-level know-how

HR expertise and resources

Internal communication resources

Budget for external support and media

Implementation Coordinator

For successful implementation of the Enterneering® goals, a clear commitment and minimum level of capacity among the management and top executives during the implementation period is mandatory. Only under certain conditions is delegation of the ‘client’ and ‘implementation coordinator’ roles to a single team (commonly, the HR team) a helpful option. Some tasks are difficult to delegate. Entrepreneurship is one of them: this role or task usually entails the cost of a partial loss of impact. A proven option is to use a temporary C-level resource with the necessary stature, who operates somewhat downwind of senior management. This person can be implemented as a kind of Change Master, comparable to a SCRUM Master, and take over the coordination of cross-departmental strategic measures. Ideally, this person should already have relevant practical and leadership experience and be as free as possible from conflicts of interest within the business organisation.

Are you interested in speaking with an expert about how to successfully implement Enterneering® in your company? If so, simply contact an Enterneer® to arrange a personal meeting.

Connecting People in Enterneering®

I want to raise awareness of both the term and the importance of Enterneering®. To do this, I have established a blog, drafted an editorial plan and provided resources. I am pleased to welcome all those who would like to follow me and who have an interest in the upcoming posts as well as in the topic in general. Incidentally, I would, of course, also be pleased to hear from anyone interested in obtaining my support as a sparring partner. 😉.

The idea of my Enterneering® blog basically arose from a typical start-up problem I encountered myself. After more than twenty years of working in different jobs and at different career levels, I decided to take my management skills and professional experience and make myself available as a sparring partner for other entrepreneurs and CxOs. In doing so, I have committed myself to a topic that has occupied me very strongly for many years and in whose importance and significance for successful corporate development I absolutely believe. It is what I refer to as work ‘on’ the company rather than ‘in’ the company. In order to focus even more intensely on this and bring my own strengths to the foreground as much as possible, I have designated a dedicated target area for myself: enterprise engineering in the areas of organisation, people and culture. I ultimately coined my own term for this – ‘Enterneering’ – which I have registered as a trademark.

So far, so good. Now all that's left to do is to acquire as many excellent, and above all suitable, orders and clients as possible. In doing so, the first move is clearly to search within my own network. Then comes the search on consulting platforms and, finally, expanding the network to include suitable social media, which provides good options. The obstacle I encounter here is that there is no really well-fitting search term or title for this specific range of services. What I essentially mean is a keyword under which both I and my potential clients can search and find each other.

You can learn more about this blog and me here.

The Enterneering & Enterneers Initiative

Hi, I am Sandy (♂) and I recently launched the ENTERNEERING® and ENTERNEERS® initiative at the end of 2021 and founded my own consulting boutique in Germany. I have made the decision to invest my time as consistently as possible in assisting entrepreneurs and managers, serving as a sparring partner in the practical management of Enterprise Engineering.

Hi, I am Sandy (♂) and I recently launched the ENTERNEERING® and ENTERNEERS® initiative at the end of 2021 and founded my own consulting boutique in Germany.

In my professional life, I have come into contact with many different companies, entrepreneurs, and shareholders as well as numerous managers. I have spent a lot of time working together with some of them. In my experience, it is often easier to take care of concrete tasks, projects, customers, or contracts than to devote oneself to working on strategic partnerships, complex structures, corporate organisations and, above all, the soft elements of people and culture.

However, I am firmly convinced that it is precisely the topics above that are one of the actual primary tasks of successful entrepreneurs. From my point of view, often a competition arises between working ‘on’, as opposed to ‘in’, the company. In actual practice, the sequence is often to work first ‘in’ and then, if there is time left over, ‘on’ the company. Yet we all know that in busy organisations there is little, if any, time left over after the work ‘in’ the company. From the outset, this time must be reserved consistently and with equal passion.

I have made the decision to invest my time as consistently as possible in assisting entrepreneurs and managers, serving as a sparring partner in the practical management of such tasks.