For owners and managing directors
Transformation in mid-sized companies – restructuring without stopping the business
Full order books, yet every decision ends up on your desk? Then your bottleneck is not the market but the organisation. I lead restructuring, succession and repositioning from diagnosis to execution – with the perspective of a banker who knows how your main bank looks at plans like these.
The starting point
The business is doing well. The structures come from another era.
Most companies that call me are not in crisis. They have grown, and the organisation has not grown with them. Decisions depend on a few people. Sales relies on the relationships of individuals. And the plan lodged with the bank describes a company that does not exist in day-to-day reality.
Transformation in a mid-sized company therefore rarely means a large project with a team of consultants. It means finding the three or four things that are really stuck and changing them so that the business keeps running. Change management in mid-sized companies is hands-on work: conversations at the workbench, on the shop floor and in the office – not slides in the meeting room.
Everything goes through the boss
What meant speed with 30 people is a bottleneck with 120. Every approval waits for one person, who has time for the day but no longer for the company.
The handover is coming
Succession within the family, a sale or an external managing director: in every case, roles, decision paths and often the financing change. That is a transformation, even if nobody calls it one.
The bank is asking more questions
The rating requires a three-year plan, and your main bank wants to know who runs the business if you are not available. A restructuring the bank does not understand becomes expensive or does not happen at all.
Who I work with
Trades, retail, family businesses – four typical situations
The sectors differ, the patterns are remarkably similar. The following examples are deliberately generalised. They describe situations that occur in many businesses, not individual clients.
Trades
The master craftsman is the business
In the trades, everything often depends on one person: costing, customer contact, site planning, staff. That works as long as the boss is healthy and does not want to stop. Consulting for trade businesses therefore almost always starts with the question of what someone else can take over.
Example
An installation business with 25 people. The order books are full, but the owner costs every quote himself, and the building sites run through his mobile phone. He wants to hand over in five years – and nobody in the company knows how he calculates.
Retail
Revenue holds, the margin does not
In retail, change shows up first in the margin: online competition, rising staff costs, branches that each work differently. Consulting for retail has to consider sales, product range and costs together – and bring the sales team along.
Example
A specialist retailer with three locations. Each location manager runs things on gut feeling, figures arrive once a month, and the owner learns about problems when they have already cost money.
Family businesses and service providers
Two generations, one helm
In family businesses, every structural question is also a question of relationships. Who decides, who may disagree, and what happens to long-serving managers when the successor brings her own people?
Example
A second-generation service provider. The daughter is to take over, the father wants to keep having a say, and the heads of department are waiting to see who prevails. As long as that is open, every decision stays on hold.
Insurers and brokers
Sales in upheaval
Closer to my own background: insurers and brokerage firms are going through the same upheavals as banks – regulation, digitalisation, a sales force that has to reorganise. Here I can transfer experience from the financial sector since 1990 almost one to one.
Example
A brokerage firm whose portfolio is ageing along with its clients. New clients come online, the advisers work as they did twenty years ago, and commissions are falling.
The difference
Why a banker should accompany your restructuring
I am not an expert in your product. You have people who do that better. But I know the patterns that cause change to fail, and I know the other side of the credit conversation from more than 20 years of leadership responsibility in the financial sector.
Conventional change consulting
Asks whether the organisation is on board
- Workshops, mission statement, communication plan
- Often ends with the concept
- Financing is left to the tax adviser
Slotta Consulting
Also asks whether the figures and the bank are on board
- Restructuring and planning from a single source, so that they hold up in the credit conversation
- Execution is part of the mandate, not just the concept
- I stay in the company until the change holds without me
Business succession
Handing over a business is the transformation nobody calls by that name.
According to KMU Forschung Austria, around 51,500 small and medium-sized enterprises in Austria face the question of succession between 2020 and 2029. Many approach the handover as a legal and tax matter. It is one. But it usually fails because of something else: leadership, roles and financing that nobody discussed with the bank in good time.
51,500SMEs facing the succession question, 2020 to 2029
692,000jobs that depend on successful handovers
I support the handover of a business where the lawyer and the tax adviser stop. More on support for business succession
Source: WKO, “Nachfolge gesucht: Anzahl der Betriebsübergaben steigt”, based on KMU Forschung Austria; figures exclude one-person businesses. To the source (wko.at, in German)
Where I start
Four occasions that bring business owners to me
Succession & handover
Lead the transition rather than endure it
Who decides in the meantime, how is the new leadership put in place, what does your main bank say? Planned before it becomes urgent.
Structure & leadership
Out of the boss bottleneck
Clear responsibilities, a second management level that is allowed to decide, and key figures that give management time back.
Sales & growth
Sales that do not depend on individuals
Setting up sales steering, pipeline and sales leadership so that growth becomes predictable. My core field from GE Money and Santander.
Restructuring & costs
Improve results without losing substance
Streamlining processes and sizing capacity correctly so that the margin is right again. Without slash-and-burn cuts and without losing the people who carry the business.
How it works
The Slotta method: four stages, the same in every mandate
Situation, straight talk, execution, result. After each stage you know where you stand and what the next step costs. The decision remains yours. The Slotta method in detail →
01
Situation
I talk to the people who do the work, not just to management. That gives an honest picture of where the business stands, recorded in figures.
02
Straight talk
From that comes the target state: what should be different at the end, measurable and with names attached. Plus the plan you can present to your bank.
03
Execution
Before results are demanded, your people know what is changing and why, and are able to do what it takes. Then I lead execution with them, on site and with responsibility. As interim manager if necessary.
04
Result
Key figures checked against the baseline, handover to named individuals, open points identified. Then I leave.
From practice
If you can deliver transformation under banking supervision, you can deliver it in your business too.
Four major transformations in banks, most recently Programm Adler in the Volksbank association, completed ahead of the planned schedule. 360 employees led. And with golf-unique.com, a company of my own founded, built and sold. So I also know what it feels like when wages have to be paid at the end of the month.
Change management is not something I have only read about: my master’s thesis on the subject was graded “Excellent”.
Frequently asked questions
What business owners want to know before the first conversation
Isn’t my business too small for a consultant?
It does not depend on headcount but on whether a restructuring is due that you cannot lead yourself alongside day-to-day business. That can apply to a trade business with 20 people just as much as to a retailer with 200. In the first conversation I tell you openly whether the effort pays off for you.
What distinguishes transformation from an ordinary reorganisation?
In a reorganisation, the organisation chart changes. In a transformation, the way the company decides, leads and sells changes. The organisation chart is then only the visible consequence.
Do you also support business succession?
Yes, specifically the part that the lawyer and the tax adviser do not cover: leadership during the transition period, putting the new management in place, the roles of the existing managers and the plan your main bank wants to see for the financing. More on this on the page on business succession.
How long does a mandate like this take?
A diagnosis usually takes two to four weeks. Execution depends on the project; a few months is typical. Every mandate has an agreed end that is fixed from the start.
What does the support cost?
There are no flat-rate packages. After the first conversation you receive an offer tailored to your situation, with scope, duration and price. The first conversation itself is free of charge.
Do you also work outside Vienna and Lower Austria?
Yes. I am based in Oeynhausen near Vienna and work throughout Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The diagnosis takes place on site, because you cannot get to know a business by video call.
Clear limits
What I do not take on
- No tax or legal advice. That belongs with your tax adviser and your lawyer, with whom I am glad to work.
- No specialist expertise in your product. Where sector knowledge is essential, I say so in the first conversation.
- No concept for the drawer. If all you want is a paper, I am the wrong person.
Every company is different. That is why, after the first conversation, you receive an offer tailored to your situation.
Next steps
Three ways to get a clearer picture
Self-assessment · 4 minutes
Is what was decided actually arriving in day-to-day work? 20 statements, instant results.
Field report
Facilitating a deadlocked conflict
Head office versus independent subsidiaries, and how both supported the outcome in the end.
Sparring
Sparring for managing directors
When you do not need a consultant but someone who asks uncomfortable questions.
Which decision are you currently putting off?
In 30 minutes we clarify, in confidence, where your company stands and whether I am the right person for it. Free of charge and with no obligation.