Modern organisations are confronted with complex tasks resulting from correlating, varied interests, as their domain lies at the interface of politics, economy and society. At the same time citizens, customers, executives and specialists commonly assume a highly demanding attitude towards the provision of services, products and customer services of organisations. Within highly diverse task areas decisions taken unilaterally by administrations, institutions, companies and unions may fall short of overall feasibility. Therefore they will have to synchronise their actions with their respective environment in order to achieve progress on their own agenda. In this context we define Governance as the ability to integrate multifaceted perspectives with diverging requirements and at the same time to enlarge one’s own scope of decision-making in a results-oriented way. Governance means using initiative within a mind-set moved by strategic considerations to create solutions appropriate to specific requirements. It offers prudent guidance for organisations and their interconnected co-operators. At this point our expertise in Governance Consulting could be brought into effect. Public One is your partner in further developing your skills in successful Governance in order to bring about peak performance in the spheres of activity of your organisation.
Our own approach to Governance Consulting, which is firmly rooted in the principles of social science, reaches back to the year 2000. Since then we are steadily developing it using our experience of the complex and ever changing challenges to modern organisations, which require equally up-to-date ways and ideas in Consulting.
Public One approaches each new Consulting engagement on the principle that solutions will have to be found, which take account of the unique situation of the parties involved.
The aim of Governance Consulting is to concertedly develop skills, which implicate sense of purpose, context-sensitiveness and long-term effectiveness.
In any process of change, within organisations or in their relation to others, Public One will act as a value-centered, professional Consulting business, focussed on results to be arrived at in co-ordination with every party involved.
For these reasons the emphasis on dialogue is the essential attribute of our way of Consulting.
Public One gives support to building strategies for teams, divisions and organisations.
If there existed something as a kind of lowest common denominator in the realm of science of strategy it might be this:
In terms of strategy, potentially or factually important activities matter the most, as they will influence identity and future development of the organisation as a whole.
The excessive and often inappropriate use of the term “strategic” in connection to any number of activities within an organisation, may have contributed to a certain loss in conveying the word’s proper meaning.
The successful attachment of the the word to arbitrarily chosen questions or schemes, generally tends to increase the possibility of acceptance of a proposed action, helps canvassing support for it, or at least attracts increased attention to the subject.
To the casual observer, Public One’s seemingly peculiar way of avoiding a strict definition of strategy, may seem odd. That is, because we prefer to take our customer’s own designs on strategy as a basis for our consulting effort: The self-conception and commitment, which a senior management has set in an strategic agenda for its own organisation, exerts an already fundamental influence on the distribution of resources, the expectations towards employees as well as on priorities and processes. Successfully forming new strategies is therefore highly dependent on their being conceptualised by the management and the actual perception patterns of the lower echelons for their appreciation.
Together with Public One our customer will set an agenda to the assignment and clarify which methods, possibilities and restrictions within their organisation are of importance for forming their strategies. As to how much participation can or has to be contributed, depends on the client’s history and contemporary situation of the workings within his or her organisation, and is to be assessed.
Not acting within a standardised framework, we are able to offer tailor-made solutions to the client’s requirements. Each set of strategies developed with Public One, aims at providing orientation. The major point is to generate specific and justifiable options, together with the client appreciate their import, to give support in implementing the most promising course of action and to safeguard its execution. Furthermore we organise the collection of data as fundament to our strategy formation (such as surveys, polls, interviews of single individuals or groups, analysis of documents – internal and external), because any new development in strategy must be evidence-based.
Public One gives support to building strategies for teams, divisions and organisations.
If there existed something as a kind of lowest common denominator in the realm of science of strategy it might be this:
In terms of strategy, potentially or factually important activities matter the most, as they will influence identity and future development of the organisation as a whole.
The excessive and often inappropriate use of the term “strategic” in connection to any number of activities within an organisation, may have contributed to a certain loss in conveying the word’s proper meaning.
The successful attachment of the the word to arbitrarily chosen questions or schemes, generally tends to increase the possibility of acceptance of a proposed action, helps canvassing support for it, or at least attracts increased attention to the subject.
To the casual observer, Public One’s seemingly peculiar way of avoiding a strict definition of strategy, may seem odd. That is, because we prefer to take our customer’s own designs on strategy as a basis for our consulting effort: The self-conception and commitment, which a senior management has set in an strategic agenda for its own organisation, exerts an already fundamental influence on the distribution of resources, the expectations towards employees as well as on priorities and processes. Successfully forming new strategies is therefore highly dependent on their being conceptualised by the management and the actual perception patterns of the lower echelons for their appreciation.
Together with Public One our customer will set an agenda to the assignment and clarify which methods, possibilities and restrictions within their organisation are of importance for forming their strategies. As to how much participation can or has to be contributed, depends on the client’s history and contemporary situation of the workings within his or her organisation, and is to be assessed.
Not acting within a standardised framework, we are able to offer tailor-made solutions to the client’s requirements. Each set of strategies developed with Public One, aims at providing orientation. The major point is to generate specific and justifiable options, together with the client appreciate their import, to give support in implementing the most promising course of action and to safeguard its execution. Furthermore we organise the collection of data as fundament to our strategy formation (such as surveys, polls, interviews of single individuals or groups, analysis of documents – internal and external), because any new development in strategy must be evidence-based.
To liken an organisation to a machine might well prove too crude a comparison. To look at it as a complex organism going through phases of increased or decreased vitality is surely closer to the point. Therefore the notion that to increase an organisation’s performance, simply by adjusting wheels, belts and cogs of its inner workings by issuing new rules and enforce new practises is rather naive. In our experience, organisations which specialise in something are themselves always special, too. There is much room and opportunity for creativity, discussion of perceived aesthetics and change of mind when individuals come together. This is also an important reservoir of strenght that ought to be tapped. Many things can be formalised but generally there will be a large number of decisions made in conversations by the printing machine or over a cup of tea during lunch break. It is peculiar to many organisations that these forms of communication tend to have more clout than abstract sets of regulations, formalism and general bureaucracy.
But one can have easily too much of a good thing where communication is concerned: When questions for clarification, explanation, recurring discussions over minor issues or responsibilities are topical, informal communication can also help to gum-up operations formidably. Especially organisations which have grown fast and unsystematically may need phases of reconstruction in which their most vital functions are freshly arranged, responsibilities newly assigned and an altered division of competencies put to be publicly appreciated. Any organisation needs a sufficient quantum of reliability of expectation as to how their core performance is to be accomplished.
Public One assists organisations in positively guiding their own development. In the process it also becomes very clear, that developing an organisation without simultaneously developing proficiency in guidance and management, will fall short.
Peter F. Drucker
Are there courses in leadership? For most executives this question is utterly redundant, as they have already joined the fray of mutual expectations which they might or might not have explicitly communicated to their coworkers and subordinates and these, on their part, have on the executive or claim to do so. For the sociologist Dirk Baecker, the true meaning of leadership is to „make the action, conduct and experience of another a basis of one’s own conduct.“ – But this rule applies to both sides. „The led make the conduct of their leaders a basis for their their own conduct, as likewise do their leaders. [from his book: Baecker, Dirk (2008): Die Sache mit der Führung, Wiener Vorlesungen im Rathaus, S. 17, Band 142]. Whoever achieves in gathering or mobilising a following, factually is a leader. This being true, free from any notion of hierarchy and formality, naturally follows.
Executives must therefore be capable to reflect on their abilities and failures to project power within the framework of good leadership and to find their way to successfully communicate as to what needs to be done in any given situation. That at some point positive action might even consist of not acting at all, and avoid damaging micro management, has often been confused with laissez-faire politics.
Organisations cannot be successfully developed, if one is not willing and able to modify and develop the way the oragnisation in question is led. We at Public One are convinced, that an increased proficiency in self-reflection with the executive staff is always a point gained where strategy formation and organisatorial development is concerned. For this, we offer suitable methods and appropriate instruments.