Breakthrough strategies: making new routines stick

The high dynamics in the environment and ever more complex requirements present companies with major challenges. This often results in considerable needs for development and change, particularly in existing structures, processes and routines. However, a considerable proportion of the change initiatives launched in this context fail in practice. The organisation does not succeed in anchoring the necessary new structures and routines with lasting effect.

This raises two questions. Why are an organisation’s entrenched routines and established structures so difficult to break through or change? And why do organisations persist in old patterns or fall back into them?

Organisations, as a special type of social system, are embedded in multi-layered, complex and highly dynamic environments. Taken together, the environments are more complex than the organisation itself. In order to remain able to act and stable as a system, organisations must therefore select their relevant environments and thus reduce complexity. According to Rudolf Wimmer, no organisation would be able to act if it had to react to every event in its environment and adapt its internal structures and processes each time.

Organisations are highly complex social systems with patterns of action and repetitive processes. Selection leads them to stabilise themselves internally, develop their own routines, largely decouple themselves from their environments and draw on themselves and their past in their development.

According to Wimmer, this creates the danger that organisations become blind over time to the requirements of their environments. The gap between their “own world” and the environment in which they operate then becomes worryingly large.

A corporate crisis can therefore be explained by the fact that, because of strong self-referentiality, demands from the relevant environments have for a long time failed to produce the necessary resonance in the system’s own operations. They have therefore not led to the necessary actions, that is, not to changes in structures and routines.

Consulting faces the challenge of prompting the organisation to make a change that connects with the existing state in order to be effective. At the same time, it aims at a change that, according to Peter Fürstenau, only the organisation itself can find and realise through a “leap” to a new level.

This means saying goodbye to the idea that changes could be brought into the organisation from outside. Changes to internal structures, routines and processes always require the organisation’s own decisions. In every case, these must come about through the system’s own communication processes.

According to Fürstenau, the task is to involve the organisation, through suitable interventions, in a joint, committed engagement. The subject is the productive further development of the company through self-reflection. The breakthrough strategy is one such intervention. It interrupts self-referentiality and serves to implement new routines effectively in the company.

Once the organisation has recognised and agreed on the decisive development needs, the question arises of how this potential can be “unlocked” and the associated changes implemented effectively and sustainably.

At this point, classic project management often comes into play in organisations. First there is extensive analysis, discussion, weighing up and planning, until agreement is finally reached on the approach and a far-reaching goal. This is usually followed by comprehensive planning of measures, division into different project phases and the setting up of a project structure. Only then does implementation begin.

New priorities often emerge in the course of implementation. They divert energy and jeopardise the consistent execution of the action plan. Behind careful planning in organisations there is often the paradigm that it must first be clarified exactly where one wants to be at the very end before implementation can begin.

This approach has two major disadvantages, which are reflected in the often inadequate implementation. The first concerns the general conditions. They change quickly, and the future is and remains uncertain. What seems right and sensible today may be judged tomorrow as no longer leading to the goal.

The second disadvantage concerns learning. The organisation does not develop any capacity for implementation and reflection. It gains no experience with implementation and does not learn to evaluate and reflect on measures.

The alternative to classic project management is so-called breakthrough strategies. They emerged from the analysis of successfully overcome corporate crises. According to Bernhard Hauser, severe crises are successfully overcome when the measures that are necessary and lead to the desired result are taken immediately and with shared support.

Some factors cause crises to lead to a dramatically increased performance of the organisation. Robert H. Schaffer calls them energy factors. They include a sense of urgency, a challenge and a success that is near and clear. People work together and a new “esprit” emerges. Added to this is pride in the performance and in what has been achieved.

The energy factors also include fear of a setback or of failure. The situation is exciting and novel, like a game. People experiment and act unbureaucratically.

According to Schaffer, a breakthrough project is defined as a planned project that uses the energy factors to achieve a tangible, fundamental result in a short time. It is therefore about concentrating on breakthroughs, on what is immediately feasible. Implementation and testing begin in order to gain experience, even if the overall direction is not yet completely clear.

Specifically, this means: serious gaps between target and actual state that cannot be closed by existing problem-solving routines and that require a breakthrough are worked on in a structured way in a facilitated breakthrough event.

What is special about a breakthrough event is its focus. The knowledge and energy of a group of managers and employees are directed at one task within a clearly defined period. The period comprises three to five days and a 30-day deadline for follow-up work. The task is to agree on, specify and analyse the identified gap between target and actual state, to develop solutions and to implement them consistently and directly.

For this, the group is qualified accordingly and receives all the necessary resources and powers. “Breakthrough” here means fundamentally questioning existing processes, routines, structures and general conditions and replacing them with new and appropriate ones.

Breakthrough strategies break through, as it were, the prevailing logic of the organisation. Some change initiatives are only possible with difficulty within the existing patterns in which the organisation works. Concerns that something new will not work straight away, or fear of change, often hinder the implementation of measures, even when they have been “decided”.

In the breakthrough event, there is, for a short time, the flexibility to develop new solutions in the absence of the usual hurdles and to implement them immediately. Afterwards, the “new reality” has already been created. It no longer has to be implemented, only defended.

A breakthrough strategy proceeds in five steps: formulating the goal, composing the team, the breakthrough event, follow-up work and evaluation. Before the breakthrough strategy can be launched, a breakthrough goal must first be formulated and a team of key players put together.

The first important step is formulating a breakthrough goal. According to Schaffer, it must meet five requirements. It must be urgent and compelling, a real attention-grabber. It must be a first step that can be achieved in a short period, in weeks rather than months. It must be an end result that stands on its own and is measurable.

The goal must also make participants feel ready, willing and able to achieve it. And it must be achievable with the resources and powers available.

At this point, according to Holger Lindemann, it should be borne in mind that the goal alone, with the problem construction implicitly behind it, can define what actions and changes are possible at all afterwards. The goal should, on the one hand, provide orientation and, on the other, leave enough room for manoeuvre in finding and implementing solutions.

It should be guided by what is feasible in three to five days of intensive engagement and 30 days of intensive implementation work: with great effort, but realistically.

Once the breakthrough goal has been formulated and agreed, a team is put together to implement the breakthrough strategy. Four points must be borne in mind.

First, the team should include key players from all the process and functional areas affected, in order to pool the necessary process knowledge.

Second, “potential for irritation” should be deliberately built in. This means people who come from process and functional areas other than those directly affected. They can be colleagues from other departments, business units or locations. For certain topics, it can also make sense to involve external partners and experts. As a rule, these people ensure that new perspectives and different experiences are fed into the discussion. This often gives rise to new impulses and approaches to solutions.

Third, the team should include the managers who can make the operational implementation decisions. Agreed measures and changes should be able to be decided and implemented without having to obtain further “approval”.

Fourth, the next higher management level should support the event but not take an active part in the event itself.

The acceptance of the results is strongly shaped by the people involved in developing them, both “up” and “down” the hierarchy. It must be ensured in advance that the team is equipped with the corresponding decision-making powers and that the event and its results are supported by management.

The “Wave of Change” model by Blank and Bents is suitable for describing the course of a breakthrough strategy. It describes the path through awareness, personal concerns, management issues, decisions and implementation to evaluation. The event of three to five days and the follow-up work of 30 days form the time frame.

In the breakthrough event, the first task is to establish a shared understanding of the current state and the associated urgent need for change and to agree on the goal within the team. Only a shared awareness of the problem and a shared orientation towards the goal mobilise the joint energy for implementation. In this first phase, awareness is created and urgency made clear.

In such constellations, the “pressure of suffering” is usually unevenly distributed, and over the years considerable annoyance has built up among those involved. It is therefore first necessary to gather the different perspectives and reflect on them in the team. Those involved are also made aware of the existing internal customer-supplier relationships. This is the phase of personal concerns.

Once shared awareness has been established in the team and personal concerns have been worked through, work can begin on substantive topics, the management issues. In this phase, today’s routines, processes and structures are first visualised and analysed. Concrete weaknesses and development needs are worked out and agreed. Methods such as process visualisation, taught beforehand in a compact training sequence, are used here.

Then the causes and background of the current situation, experienced as unsatisfactory, are determined and agreed. This is followed by the requirements for the new state, particularly with regard to the goal. Possible solutions and paths to solutions are then developed and agreed. It can make sense here to describe and agree on the target state, for example the new process or the new structure.

The team then makes a deliberate decision for a target state and identifies the resulting gaps between target and actual state. Here too, care must be taken that the solutions and measures can be decided and implemented by those involved without having to obtain additional approvals.

A 30-day action plan for working on the gaps between target and actual state is then drawn up and implementation begins. This is the implementation phase.

One key to success lies in steering implementation within the 30-day follow-up period. This requires regular status checks through a clear communication structure, reflection on the measures and their results and, where necessary, new interventions. After the 30 days, there is usually a first joint review of the course of the process and the success of the measures implemented. This is the evaluation.

At a glance, a breakthrough strategy is divided into three stages: goal formulation and team composition, the breakthrough event, and the 30-day follow-up phase with evaluation. Each stage has its own preparatory work, its own work steps and a defined result.

The first stage begins with the substantive introduction to the problem to be worked on and with a suitable search grid for the team composition. Then the need for change is specified and the breakthrough goal formulated. Guard rails and room for manoeuvre for the team are clarified, and resources and powers are assigned. The team is put together and qualified as required. The format is a one-day workshop with the project sponsors. The result is a clear target for the breakthrough event.

For the second stage, the design of the breakthrough event is developed in advance and all the necessary working and documentation structures are prepared. In the event, the need for action and the breakthrough goal are agreed. The current situation is analysed with its weaknesses and their causes. The team develops requirements for the new state and possible solutions.

It decides on a target state, derives the gaps between target and actual state and draws up the 30-day action plan. Implementation starts during the event with the question of what can be done immediately. The format is a three- to five-day breakthrough event with the breakthrough team. The result is a target state with a 30-day implementation plan.

For the third stage, monitoring of implementation is prepared and the reflection meetings are designed. Within the 30-day follow-up period, implementation is monitored, with regular status checks through a clear communication structure. Measures and results are reflected on, and new interventions are planned where necessary. After the 30 days, the joint review of the course of the process and the success of the measures implemented follows.

The formats are four half-day reflection and monitoring meetings with the breakthrough team and a one-day review meeting with the breakthrough team and sponsors. The result is an implemented target state with an evaluation of the process.

In complex organisations based on a division of labour, those involved are often not aware of what their actions trigger in other actors and in the overall system. As a result, no jointly felt need for change can arise, that is, no answer to the question of what plight must be averted together.

As a consequence, problematic routines continue and, in the worst case, reinforce themselves further and further. Given the dynamics in the environment and the requirements placed on it, this can develop into a threatening situation for the company or the organisational unit concerned.

Experience shows that actors in organisations usually do not recognise these developments because of the self-referentiality of the subsystems and the high demands of day-to-day business. They also lack the opportunities and the space to tackle such mostly cross-unit problems. It is therefore a leadership task to recognise such situations and to bring them into a suitable form of work.

From transformis’ point of view, the breakthrough strategy is such a form of work. If the right people are brought together, given room to shape and decide, irritation is deliberately created and the different perspectives and experiences are brought together professionally through communication, then jointly supported solutions for further development emerge. The key players involved actively implement and support them.

The focus on consistently implementing identified needs for change within a compact time frame, combined with continuous evaluation of the insights gained, is a suitable way of achieving tangible change in companies. In this sense, breakthrough strategies are an effective intervention for breaking through the self-referentiality of organisations and implementing fundamental changes to routines.