With "The Practice of Management" in 1954, Peter Drucker provided generations of executives with a new awareness as "managers" as well as strategies and tools for successfully "managing" companies. Over decades, universities churned out armies of ambitious management aspirants. In global corporations, these were shaped into interchangeable "management clones."

As early as the late 1970s, Harvard professor Abraham Zaleznik complained that this uniform management elite resulting from this development lacked leadership qualities. While practically every employee now titled themselves "manager," the claim to leadership was then underpinned for top management with leadership qualities. Self-confident, visionary leaders who set clear goals and inspired with a strong mission were celebrated in the business media. Since success was increasingly defined in terms of short-term rising shareholder value, the underlying problems and challenges of managing companies were repressed for a long time.

Command- and control-based hierarchical structures are running into problems and can no longer keep up with the speed and complexity of the challenges.

Globalization, digitalization, interrupted supply chains, environmental challenges, and last but not least, employees with new demands on work-life balance once again required special (new) management qualities. And a new understanding of leadership, which must be an integrative and essential part of management. The role profile of the visionary "leader" must give way to a claim to leadership through motivation for self-responsibility, trust in individual performance, and joint successes with employees. From Chief Executive Officer to Chief Empowerment Officer.

From unconditional Management by Objectives with purely quantitative goals that are often difficult to achieve, or only at the cost of long-term risk to the company, to Management by Means. With a vision that, in addition to economic goals, builds above all on purpose, self-responsibility, and trust of the employees. With a performance-oriented, self-learning corporate culture as the foundation for growth and increase of corporate value. A corporate culture that is no longer built on pressure and fear (of failure), but instead brings about a flow that promotes the enthusiasm and innovative power of the individual and is experienced by customers, creates decisive competitive advantages in increasingly anonymized customer relationships.

Because: Growth is not a goal, but a result.

We would be happy to show you successfully completed culture change processes. Simply contact us at
fred.koblinger@iqonic.at 0664-4018042 or arno.wohlfahrter@iqonic.at 0664-22012243

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