Mrs F., head of department in an IT company, presents her plan for a strategic approach to a difficult negotiation, but colleague X brushes off her proposal in a harsh tone. Mrs F then flies off the handle and tells him off in front of the whole team. This is not the first time this has happened to her; she is considered unpredictable. As a result, hardly anyone dares to express their own opinion. This weakens the overall team performance. A fatal situation for Mrs F. in her role as a manager.
Contrary to all attempts to flatten or even abolish hierarchies, they persist as an organizing principle in companies and corporations. Obviously, they fulfill an important function, regardless of whether they are imposed from above or developed informally through self-organization. Hierarchies seem to be indispensable to accomplish goals together with others. They fulfil not only an organizational but also a human need for order and orientation as well as the allocation of responsibility.
March 2024
In March, our Managing Partner Karsten traveled to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, to kick off the cooperation between the Cosmikk Foundation and our new project partner, Future For Ukraine Foundation (FFU).
Last week, on March 19, 2024, I traveled to the capital of Ukraine to kick off the cooperation between the Cosmikk-Foundation and our new project partner, Future For Ukraine Foundation (FFU). The Cosmikk-Foundation, founded by my colleague Uwe Achterholt and myself, provides NGO leaders free access to high-quality coaching. FFU provides prosthetics to wounded soldiers, psychological counseling to women who experienced sexual violence, and social support to children with mental health issues.
Olena, president of FFU, and I had met in Warsaw back in January of 2024. Our teams had been working on finalizing the agreements to work together for some months. When we first met, Olena had invited me to join the premiere of a documentary on their work in March, and we agreed to combine it with a signing ceremony to kick off our joint project. Here are some of my impressions from this trip that changed and widened many of my perspectives, brought me new friends and simply changed my life.
The Insecure Overachiever
Since the 1950s, McKinsey & Company, one of the world’s leading strategy consulting firm, has been known to employ the best graduates from the best universities, and to use performance incentives and a very formative high-performance culture to shape these young, hungry ‘high potentials’ according to their requirements. After these young consultants are pushed to the maximum by their international projects, most of them voluntarily leave the company on good terms after three years at the latest in order to take up leading positions in the industry and then to become potential customers of their former employer. Over the past few decades, this HR strategy and its accompanying high-performance culture were adopted in the field of professional services by the majority of international companies and are now also entering many more traditional industrial and service-based companies.
More than a century ago during the period of rapid industrialization, the ‘human factor’ and his or her contribution was fitted into standardized structures and processes. Being successful in large and ever-growing organizations required the individual to understand and play ‘the rules of the game’ well.
