The book · Reading sample
Der Game Plan
A true story about change management, leadership and 84 people who began to write.
Thirty-six branches deep in the red. Four managers in three years. An organisation that had learned to wait. And eighteen months in which it stopped. The book (English title: The Game Plan) and the reading sample are in German.
How it begins
Four managers in three years
Manager number one came from London. In his first address he used the word “transformation” twenty-seven times – some colleagues had kept count on the back of the meeting minutes. Fourteen months later he was transferred to Singapore before his plan had been implemented.
Manager number two brought along CRM software that was supposed to revolutionise every process. Eight months later he left for Poland to revolutionise something there. Number three stayed eighteen months. Number four announced a programme he called “the holy grail of branch banking”.
The moment the words “holy grail” were spoken in an Austrian conference room, something happened that organisational science calls institutional memory. The workforce did not wait for the holy grail. It waited for the transfer notice.
That was the real problem. Not the strategy. Not the concept. The time horizon.
Who it is for
Who reads this book
Board members and heads of division with a programme under way that is not making progress. Executives who know the sentence “we have tried that three times already”. And supervisory board members who want to know how to tell whether a transformation is holding or merely being reported.
It is not a management guide. There is no five-step method at the end of each chapter. It is a story with numbers – and the numbers are documented.
What is inside
Six of fourteen chapters
What it is about
The story in four numbers
Figures from the manuscript. Measured over nine months, the mandate itself delivered a 60% increase in branch lending volume, almost twice the life insurance production and 50% more credit protection insurance – put into context in the case study GE Money Bank Austria.
Reading sample
Foreword, Chapter 0 and prologue – to download as a PDF (in German)
Twelve pages, in German. You read what the starting position really looked like and what happened on the morning of 28 June 2005. No sales copy, no newsletter attached – just the text.
The form is currently in German.
How it works
01
Submit the form
Your first name and email address are enough.
02
Open the confirmation email, one click
It usually arrives within a minute – the sender is “Markus Slotta, MBA”.
03
Read the sample
It opens straight away in your browser and is also sent to your inbox.
Nothing arrived? Check your promotions or spam folder. Still nothing: reload the page and request it again – or send a line to office@slotta.at and I will send it by hand.
Where the title comes from
The phrase is not mine
At the close of 2005, Dan O’Connor, President & CEO of GE Consumer Finance Europe, addressed the leadership conference in Austria in a video message. He spoke of the first profit in many years – and of an ambitious game plan.
“You started this year with an ambitious game plan to reposition your business for growth. Not only did you execute your plan, but you were also able to turn in a significant profit for the first time in many years.”
Dan O’Connor · President & CEO GE Consumer Finance Europe · Video message, end of 2005What became of this story:
- I did not accompany it. I was accountable for it.
- What the master’s thesis made of it
- The career behind it
- More papers and self-assessments in the library
The recording can be seen in the case study on the branch turnaround.