Leaders of organizations across the globe are increasingly confronted with the dual challenge of managing tangible resources (financial, machinery, vehicles etc.) as well as intangibles such as people, culture, competencies and relationships. Already in 1990, Kaplan and Norton, the inventors of the Balanced Scorecard, highlighted, that more than 75% of a company's market value is derived from intangible assets and a more recent long-term study by Mc Kinsey among the top 30 global companies also concludes that the wealth creation in today's corporations is increasingly driven by them.
But how can leaders get a grip of something that is so difficult to be measured and yet forms the substance of created value? Which are the tools to even identify the essential issues in the field of intangibles, which can be highly complex and are not always visible at first glance?
A Business Constellation is a solution-focused process, which helps leaders of organizations (and their consultants and coaches) to identify the complex, often informal, relationships and inter-dependencies within their organization and to develop a deeper understanding about the underlying dynamics in a very time- and cost-efficient manner.
Method
The method is not completely new. Originally developed and used for family systems, constellations have in recent years developed into a highly effective approach for organizational change. The effectiveness of this method has of late been scientifically proven by various research studies. It has become a widely accepted discipline in business consultancy, organizational development and executive coaching.
A Business Constellation is a scenic process bringing relationship structures and dynamics into a three dimensional space by using representatives to portray a specific aspect of the organization's reality. Their physical perceptions in the representation are then systematically extracted via questions from the constellation facilitator, enabling the reconstruction of a comprehensive set of facts and options of sustainable solutions available to the leader and her team.
The process serves as a platform to solve business issues and to create future change - e.g. with regards to solving conflicts within the organization, improving business stakeholder relationships, enhancing strategic focus and alignment, developing a sustainable corporate culture, optimizing the organization's performance and enabling the strengths of individual team members as well as the team as a whole to fulfill there tasks in the most productive way. Business Constellations can be used in a stand-alone workshop setting or be embedded within the wider scope of a consulting process and be combined with other methods of intervention.
The Business Constellations Group is the first initiative to establish and further develop constellations work in South African business organizations.
Business issues that can be constellated
This is just a small selection of cases from organizations, who worked successfully with Business Constellations:
- The CEO of a company seeks to develop a deeper understanding about the leadership dynamics among the various management levels.
- The leadership team of a pharmaceutical company intends to validate the new organizational structure of the R&D department.
- The executive board of a health group is confronted with a high degree of fluctuation and key employees leaving the organization.
- The newly hired leader of an Advertising Agency is battling with acceptance among the company's employees.
- A newly formed company resulting from a merger of two consumer goods companies is facing massive problems in merging their IT systems and with the cooperation of the two companies' IT units.
- The founder and CEO of a retail chain who plans to retire wants to make a decision on his successor and the company's future leadership structure.
- The executive team of a non-profit organization intends to elicit their vision statement and set of values.
Facilitators
Svenja Wachter, co-founder of Family Constellations Africa, certified Systemic Family Therapist and Systemic Coach, is facilitating constellations for more than 10 years.
Following 9 years in the marketing management of Kellogg, Bahlsen, and Coca-Cola Svenja has worked as an independent marketing strategy consultant, and for the last eight years she has been a business coach for individual executives and leadership teams of large organizations across various industries, parastatals and government departments.
During that time Svenja worked as a partner with Change Partners, Johannesburg, one of the leading coaching firms in South Africa and a member of The Global Coaching Partnership (TGCP), providing one-on-one and team coaching services, strategy development facilitation and implementing whole systems change interventions in Namibia, Ghana and Mozambique.
Past clients include Standard Bank, FNB, International Finance Corporation (member of the World Bank Group), Sasol, Daimler, Clover Danone, Merck, Netcare, Swiss Re, Cummins, BHP Billiton and the South African Government Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.
Svenja is trained in systemic family therapy and systemic coaching. She also holds a post graduate certificate in professional development (Coaching) of the Middlesex University, London in collaboration with the Professional Development Foundation (PDF).
Leon Rautenbach provides executive coaching in all sectors of business, facilitating individual and team coaching processes. With 20 years experience in corporate media, he now manages his own coaching practice Ekhaya Coaching. He is qualified as a Master Practitioner in NLP, Meta-Coaching and added Family and Organisational Constellations to his coaching practice during 2007.
In 2008 he becomes a member of ISCA (International Systemic Constellations Association) and attends the annual Working Group for Systemic Resolutions
in Cloister Bernried,
Southern Germany. He is a certified Meta-Coach and integrates Meta-Coaching, Family Constellations, Organizational Constellations, Thinking partnerships and Integral Theory into a unique coaching practice that creates integrated solutions for his clients. Leon's clients list include Free State Treasury, Worldsview, Autodesk South Africa, First Rand Group, GibbsSteel, SAAB Grintek, Carrier, Ewation, Enterprises, Aviation, GriDS, Wesgro (Cape Town and Western Cape), Standard Bank of South Africa and The National Peace Accord Trust (NPAT)
Contact us for more information
Svenja Wachter (cell: +49.160.97333 551; email: svenja@worldonline.co.za
Leon Rautenbach (cell: +27 83 276 5908; email: leon@ekhayacoaching.co.za
Our Business Constellations Group is dedicated to the promotion, application and development of systemic interventions in organizations.
