If you are curious about the kind of solutions people have reached through working with me, here are a few case studies which show how I‘ve helped managers achieve professional success. Since projects range in complexity and price, I have also included the project cost for your orientation.

Sandra – First managerial role, and rising

Michal – Managing the transition from owner-founder to professional manager

Marek – Overcoming existing challenges at the top by mastering new ones

Sandra
Overwhelmed and not enjoying her new position – that was how Sandra felt after trading her expert role for a first managerial role. At the same time, she did want to move on in her company: bright, loyal, committed to results, it was a bit of a shock to her how much she resented managing others.

In fact she didn’t really manage them. They did what they wanted (her view) – or what they felt was appropriate, which is probably a more balanced view. She kept her feedback – and resentment – more or less to herself. Unless of course she exploded, which could happen from time to time – earning her a reputation of “to be treated with care”. At this point, she got a message from her boss that he would not second her to be promoted to headquarters as a next step of her professional growth. She felt disappointed and bitter. However, she had a mentor at HR who appreciated her diligence and wanted to help her grow.

In a five-month programme in Prague, she gained an understanding of the fundamental principles of good management, how she herself contributed to her present problems, and what she could do in order to turn the situation around. When she started to apply these new principles with her usual diligence, she found not only that they worked, but also that they were in no contradiction to her beliefs. Actually, after only 3 months she confessed to enjoying managing people, and started reaping the benefits of her reputation as a reliable, capable and effective manager.

When she started not just seeing results, but feeling the difference, we started working on getting that headquarters posting that she wanted – and six months into our programme, she had convinced her boss, her HR, and her new boss at HQ to hire her. Her last e-mail to me included: “After the last round of interviews, they offered me the job - which is in no small degree also to your credit.”

The client’s investment here was 100,000 CZK – about 3,600 €.

Michael
Lost in transition would be a good description of how Michael felt: Everybody in the organisation recognized his talents – he was an extremely capable engineer, and quick to think up solutions when everybody else had given up. He was also one of the founding partners of the company that was now some 80+ people, managed by his old chum Paul. Both still got along well, but had stopped meeting in their spare time. No more skiing weekends together, and even at work, if Michael thought about it, they were getting more and more formal.

Michael felt surrounded by people who were not his intellectual equals, which is why he enjoyed Paul’s company. In his own team, it was always difficult to get the right people. That was precisely why Michael ended up spending long hours and weekends at work. After his last relationship had collapsed, he didn’t really mind, because working was in a way more stimulating than spending his evenings at home in front of the television with a bottle of beer. The way he worked was by delegating only tiny bits of the operation, and making sure he stayed in control of the whole complex process. What was extremely irritating given his workload was that people would always misunderstand his instructions and as a consequence, spend hours working ultimately for nothing. If only he knew an easy way out of this. He could see the vicious circle between getting a life – and getting real help, someone to rely on, someone to really trust in his department.

At this point, a well-meaning HR manager, assisted by his friend Paul, called me in. We took a few hours in the first meeting to “test” each other, but in the end he decided to give this his best shot. Within a few months, he had turned around his hiring strategy, and was chairing the meetings he used to hate and just passively (or passive-aggressively) sit in on. He had found a way to use everybody’s input and tie the bits together – for renewed motivation and creativity of the whole staff, not just his own department.

He admitted that people at first were a little reserved about this changed behaviour (and some thought, he said laughingly, that he had a new relationship). But soon he got unambiguous feedback from many sides on how much people appreciated his contribution. After our six-month project, he spent another year training two successors. His job today is more of a high-level consultant and emergency creativity booster. He comes in two days a week, and uses the rest of his time out to get training in a new profession, and enjoy his position as a co-owner.

His investment was 4,500 €.

Marek
Marek, one of two managing directors in the Polish branch of a multinational, knew that all was not well. He had been with the company for a little over five years, four of which were with his co-director: a very capable manager, undoubtedly, yet very difficult for Marek to work with. Marek had noticed that he was enjoying his job less and less, and the frequent meetings with his co-director became a dreaded part of his schedule. He also felt his personal performance had been suffering, and he had no clear idea why, or, more importantly, how to get back on track. Was this stress, or burnout? Was it maybe time for a change? He had an excellent track record as COO with his company, and had been mentioned as a success story by the CEE director at their last meeting in Paris. Yet when the CEE director unexpectedly announced that the Polish organisation would have to temporarily co-manage the company’s Hungarian operations Marek’s stress level peaked.

A friend suggested that he should talk to me about his situation, and look together at what he could do to relieve his tension. In our first meeting in Warsaw, he understood that he needed to work on his communication style with his co-director. Their communication problems had been affecting other senior managers in the company as much as him, as he now saw, and this had slowed down major business and personnel decisions lately. With this added responsibility around the corner, they needed to sort things out fast. Within a few more meetings, Marek had found ways to better understand the unique contributions of his co-director, which resulted in a renewed respect for his differently wired personality. He had also learned how to make himself better understood, and win his co-director over to his own point of view more often. In a next step, he revamped the company’s reporting structure to better suit his colleague’s and his own professional interests and personality. These improvements immediately led to more effective communication with and between top managers.

Although the scope of my client’s responsibilities had increased significantly, Marek was able to stay on top of his new tasks while reducing his stress level. The organisation saw renewed morale and motivation among its managers, who now had a much clearer understanding of their director‘s expectations. Within six months, Marek had turned around a situation that had looked like a deadlock, and felt very much back in the driver’s seat.

In this project, we met alternately in Warsaw, Prague and Hamburg. The total project cost was 6,000 USD.