Interim CTO: Strategic Realignment and Transformation of a Market Leader in the High-Tech Industry

The Client 

The client is part of a large multinational and globally operating corporation. The client’s division specializes on material analysis solutions and offers a wide range of devices for diverse industrial applications. It is one of the premier market leaders in its field.

The Challenge

The company was lacking leadership and had been operating without a country head for over a year. The global board of directors could not fulfil or support that role due to travel restrictions during the pandemic.

In addition, the order volume decreased during the first year of the pandemic which lead to the entity being scrutinized by the shareholders.

The company’s board had no alternative but to significantly reduce the cost of doing business. Therefore, a restructuring program was initiated wherein approximately 20%  of the staff was let go due to redundancy. Consequently, the motivation among the people and the company culture were at a very low point, which ultimately resulted in an even more difficult situation and also led to lack of performance.

Lastly, the matrix structure created further challenges as most managers had global reporting lines into managers based in offices abroad.

The Solution 

The interim manager implemented the following changes:

• Representation of the German entity on the global operating board
• Implementation of double reporting lines to their functional managers and to the local management
• Formation of a local transformation team to address certain tasks, increase transparency and encourage decision making
• Leadership coaching to local management. The Boyden Interim Manager also hosted two global Leadership workshops with more than 50 managers from across the globe
• Reorganization of several departments to resolve problems faster as well as save costs
• Improved internal teamwork and communication through workshops
• Broke down the global strategy and aptly utilised it in each area
• Regained trust by more frequent and more open communication, i.e., townhalls, newsletters and created a culture of appreciation
• Within one year Initialized  a production program to increase the output by 50%
• Implemented  new sourcing approach in procurement
• Recruited a successor for the local General Management role
   

The Result 

The company’s performance significantly improved during the nearly two years of the appointment, much to the satisfaction of the global board of directors and the shareholders.

The production had already increased by 30% at the time of handover.

The employees considered themselves more as a team than they did in the past and the collaboration between departments had much improved.

Through the support of Boyden Executive Search Germany, a successor was recruited to continue the transformation processes and the successful leadership work that had been initiated.