Quo vadis 2013?

This does not surprise the Viennese management consultant Sabine Prohaska. After all, most market changes are gradual. This means that market participants are often not consciously aware of them. Only in retrospect do they realize how much has changed in the past five, ten and even twenty years.

Megatrend: flat hierarchies

Precisely because most of the really relevant change processes are gradual, it is important, according to Prohaska, to pause every now and then and ask oneself the key question, detached from the hustle and bustle of everyday life:

How is the economy developing?

This applies to all companies - but especially to service companies such as management consultancies and training institutes, which are ultimately "suppliers to companies". For them, the question "What is happening in our market?" falls short. Peter Schreiber, owner of the sales consultancy Peter Schreiber & Partner, Ilsfeld, is convinced of this. Because so his Credo: The training and consulting market reacts only to the changes, which take place in the economy. So the core question for consulting companies should actually be: What changes are taking place among our clients and in their market, and what are the consequences for us and our work? Otherwise, consulting firms would not be able to develop solutions to problems that meet their clients' needs.

One megatrend that all of the consultants surveyed note is: hierarchies in companies are becoming ever flatter and their structures ever more network-like. This means that hierarchical levels and divisional boundaries are playing an ever smaller role in everyday work - partly because employees are increasingly working in official or unofficial project structures and have to solve tasks together. According to Alexander Walz, Managing Director of Conciliat, a Stuttgart-based HR consultancy, this is reflected, for example, in the fact that in many companies the classic job description, which defines the task

Demographically Resilient Organizations

The term "competencies" is no longer used to describe an employee's field of work. Instead, the competencies that an employee needs to fulfill his or her function in the organization are usually described today - "and not only today, but also tomorrow.

New skills are needed

Due to the changed work structures, companies today also need different employees than in the past, or their employees need different skills. This issue has been discussed in HR circles for years under the keyword "employability" - "until two or three years ago, however, largely in theory". But now, according to Hubert Hölzl, owner of the management consultancy Hölzl & Partner, Lindau, there are "first implementation concepts - also because many companies have recognized due to the discussion about the demographic change: We have to make our organization 'demography-proof '; in other words, make sure today that we have the employees with the required qualifications tomorrow."

According to Hölzl, these new personnel development concepts are generally based on the following findings:

1. the need for change and thus learning on the part of the organisation and the individual employees is becoming ever greater, so that it is increasingly difficult to cover it with centrally designed measures alone.

2. the learning needs of individual employees or groups of employees are becoming more and more individual, so that it is becoming more and more difficult to record them centrally and to satisfy them with standardised development measures.

It follows from this: Employees must develop in the direction of "self-developers" who recognise for themselves where there is a need for learning and development and are either in a position to satisfy this need themselves or to organise the necessary support for this purpose.

Trend towards individualisation of continuing education

For Hans-Werner Bormann, this also explains the so-called coaching boom that is often noted in the trade press, although the managing director of the WSFBeratergruppe Wiesbaden prefers to speak of an "individualisation of further training and personnel development". Because actually under the term "Coaching" numerous promotion measures are subsumed, which all aimed at the fact that the coworkers acquire the authority to recognize to a large extent independently their learning needs and to organize the own learning. As examples, Bormann mentions such key words as mentoring programmes, supervision and collegial counselling in addition to the classic on-the-job training. These measures to develop and expand competencies are also booming, while classic training is losing importance.

Julia Voss, Managing Director of the training and consulting company Voss + Partner, Hamburg, refers to another point that all the consultants interviewed stated: Today, further training always takes place on an occasion-related basis and in relation to specific corporate goals. For example, a company wants to accelerate its production processes. Or an industrial company wants to achieve more turnover with services. In other words, the overriding question is always: How do we as a company achieve this goal - and usually in as short a time as possible?

Consultants become problem solvers

Michael Reichl clearly senses this change in the inquiries that arrive at his company im-prove, Schwäbisch Gmünd. Until four or five years ago, the consulting firm specializing in service companies still often received inquiries such as: "We would like to conduct a team training in our Bavarian branches. Please make us an offer." In recent years, im-prove has received almost no such inquiries. Now the inquiries are, for example, "We are increasingly feeling the competition from direct insurance companies. Therefore, we are looking for an approach how to ... Could you provide us with a proposed solution how to ...?"

The development of such solution proposals requires a changed competence profile from external consultants. They must know and understand their clients' business. They must know that a service company "ticks" differently than a production company. Or that a medium-sized company has a different culture than a corporation. Without industry or field experience, consultants are increasingly rarely accepted by companies. The pressure to change is too high for that.

Walter Kaltenbach, owner of the consulting firm Kaltenbach Training, Böbingen, which specializes in technical sales, can only smile in retrospect about the so-called card spinners, "whom you often met in seminars ten years ago. They were often downright proud of not having any industry knowledge because they felt responsible only for structuring the learning and knowledge process. Today, companies would immediately throw such trainers out the door. This shows how much has changed in the training sector.

The so-called systemic consultants, who see themselves primarily as process consultants, are increasingly experiencing a similar situation. They, too, are meeting with less and less acceptance in companies.

in-house consultants

However, external consultants can never have the same intimate knowledge of internal structures and relationships as well as the processes of companies as their employees. For this reason, and because their need for change is continually increasing, many large companies have come to the realization in recent years: We can no longer cope with the need for change in our organization with external consultants alone. This is why almost all DAX companies have set up in-house consulting departments. This trend is spilling over into medium-sized industry. They are also increasingly realizing that we need more change management expertise in-house. In the meantime, the first consulting firms are offering training and further education to become in-house consultants. For example, the two consulting firms Kudernatsch Consulting & Solutions and Hölzl & Partner. There is also a boom in coach, change facilitator and train-the-trainer courses for managers and experienced employees, which are also aimed at increasing change management competence in companies.

Leadership must redefine itself

One of the main target groups for these training courses are managers. According to Julia Voss, this is because their function has changed in recent years. Their core task is and remains to ensure that their division fulfils its function in the organisation. However, they also have to ensure that the strategic guidelines are implemented at the divisional level. Furthermore, it is increasingly becoming their task to initiate and accompany learning processes among employees.