3 or 4 times the turnover?

In the coming weeks, I will be blogging on how we work. Quite a number of posts will point out defects in our current way of working. Other will indicate how we can improve. In our current economic worldview, an improvement is only real when it can be measured. That’s why I will first talk about some of the benefits that an organisation gets when working in non-traditional ways.

4 times your productivity in 3 years’ time, without extra costs

In 2012, Eric Van Zele was voted Manager of the Year by Trends. When he started leading Barco, he told management that they had failed:

“Onze mensen geloven niet in ons verhaal. Ze zien het echt niet meer zitten”.

His approach was to get large parts of the company involved in the transformation. He decentralised the decisions away from traditional management, to a broader range of people. Key areas of improvement were, amongst other, “cultural, commitment and  engagement”. The success was spectacular:

“Je zoekt mensen met passie en dan is het vallen en opstaan en corrigeren tot je er bent. (…) Met dezelfde ploeg en dezelfde kosten kunnen we in Kuurne nu drie of vier keer meer omzet maken.”

Multiply your turnover by 3 or 4 with the same costs? That’s impossible if you just tweak your processes or implement a number of best practices. Improve your company culture, though, and you can get spectacular results just like these.