Complex organisational and business development solutions for multinationals, leading domestic companies, and startups.
ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Modern organisational development
Organisational development in modern business means transforming, restructuring, rebuilding, rethinking, and aligning an organisation to promote company-level goals. Proper organisational development defines development criteria at a strategic level and then breaks down these strategic criteria into operational tasks. The organisational development goals have changed considerably in the last few decades and require different approaches at different stages. That is why good strategies directly focus on and plan for current social and business trends. For effective organisational development, there is now a clear expectation that, in addition to the traditional job roles and responsibilities, a company should also strongly consider the personality attributes required to fill any given position, including generational factors, and thus define what kinds of people need to be in key positions throughout the complex organisation. Organisational development cannot work without a strong market research and analytical background, as the organisation’s challenges need to be understood in a broader sense, beyond the organisation’s micro-environment, because companies compete to attract and retain the best talent. In other words, the organisational development strategy also focuses on the competitive situation at the base of the organisation and builds the organisation to be effective in the long term and to be able to withstand external influences that may disrupt and threaten it.
Consequences of COVID-19 for organisational development
The pandemic, which radically transformed the way humanity lives and thinks, will have significant implications for organisational development strategies and methods. The labour market has defined a completely new set of priorities, thus bringing competitive challenges for organisations, managers, and HR professionals responsible for the organisation’s development. As these processes are completely new and involve unprecedented phenomena, organisational development is no longer an internal matter, but requires the cooperation of internal managers and external professionals to be successful. For the members of the organisation, health and quality time with family have become clear expectations; so too has the need for a “happy life” in general, which overrides many of the basic assumptions about the functioning, management, and development of organisations. Modern organisational development must be designed with these variables in mind.
Complex organisational development
Organisational development is the transformation of an organisation’s mindset, including its strategic planning, and translating this strategy into concrete organisational and operational work. It involves defining the organisation’s structure in relation to its organisational goals, breaking things down to the position level, and assigning expectations in terms of both hard and soft skills. It necessitates monitoring the organisation, defining potential development and risk points, and then managing them. Developers must strategically define headhunting and recruitment needs, manage those processes, fill those positions via a complex selection process, implement a sophisticated onboarding process, and form a motivational environment defined at individual and team levels. Motivation, in turn, requires assessing, addressing, and training these teams and individuals based on their development needs and opportunities. Overall, modern organisational development combines broad strategy with specific implementation tasks. A good organisational developer has the strategic knowledge of all areas of organisational development and the necessary prerequisites for its operational implementation. As a result, they provide complex and continuous support to their partners in the creation, management, and development of a happy organisation capable of achieving its goals.
MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT
Modern management development
Successful management is a key success factor for any company. This is perhaps the area where companies’ expectations of consultancies have changed the most. Management development today must clearly focus on enhancing the mental performance of managers so they can achieve their maximum. Traditional training focused on a single skill has been replaced by solutions that develop the manager as a complex person. Management development at the individual level is clearly about increasing the manager’s success and the fundamental mental development required to do so. Management development requires assessing the management, defining the strengths and weaknesses of the team, identifying development potential and threats, and then managing them. In other words, the starting point for management development is knowledge of the company’s goals. Along these lines, the suitability of the management and the necessary points for change and development are determined. The management health check clearly identifies the recruitment needs, and clearly defines the training, management development programmes, and techniques needed to achieve company goals. Therefore, successful management development shows an honest and clear picture of the suitability of individuals and teams and provides solutions to manage any challenges. The development programme goes far beyond traditional management training, as its unique content is tailored to the company and adapted to current social and generational processes. It does not speak in general terms about leadership development and the leadership skills required, but focuses specifically on the company’s particular challenges based on its economic environment, location, and sector. In addition to the content, the dynamics and design of the programme play a key role in ensuring that the deep content is easy to convey and understand. Management development focuses on processes rather than training days. Depending on the company and management objectives, there can be solutions with a duration of 3-6-12 months, including training days, interactive workshops, follow-up reports, personal interviews, etc.
Winning team programmes at Mentors & Partners Group
Management development, like most areas of organisational development, has been significantly and permanently transformed by the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic has confronted managers with unprecedented challenges, for which there are no textbook solutions, as experience with this type of crisis is not widely available. Therefore, it is paramount that successful management development programmes cannot be implemented today without a strong strategic background in market research, social and generational trends, and analysis. Managers want concrete, up-to-date content; they do not want to develop in general; they want to pass predetermined milestones along the way. There is fierce competition in the labour market to attract and retain business partners, and management must be able to win this competition. In other words, the objective is no longer just to build a team of managers who generally work well, but to ensure that this team can perform excellently in a completely transformed social and labour market environment. In other words, in addition to traditional individual development and traditional team development, successful management development also focuses on teaching the team to win. To do this, it is necessary to combine the experience gained in sport with the elements of management programmes already familiar in business.
Mentors & Partners Group builds its management development programmes on more than 22 years of experience in business and more than 17 years of experience in sport, with a focus on leaders who know themselves perfectly. Successful team management today works differently than it did even ten years ago. It is no longer the responsibility of team members to “fall in line” with team goals and for the individual to take a complete back seat to team interests. Truly winning teams contain strong, interesting characters and individuals, and can work together as a team without team members having to give up their own individuality to succeed, so that the team can truly harness all the knowledge and advantages of its team members. In this way, management team members are self-consistent and mentally healthy, which affects their physical fitness, and they do not work for the company solely out of obligation, but feel a calling to leadership. As a result, they take responsibility, are open and honest with each other, do not only listen to but understand their colleagues and team members, and are empathetic and attentive to the quality of life, needs, and motivations of the people on their team. This elicits real and lasting improvement in the organisation as a whole. In an MPG management development programme, a special role is given to the analysis of the complex personalities of the participants, the understanding of the resulting decision-making mechanisms and behavioural reactions, and along this line, the change of dimension of communication within the team. The team members understand their own and their teammates’ motivations and ways of thinking, define the differences among them, their benefits and challenges, and a team is formed that truly embraces a common goal and can mobilise extra energy to achieve it. The experience gained in sport, with club teams and national teams, plays a vital role in programme design. MPG has supported the team development of teams that have won several national championships, continental championships, world championships, and in 2021, MPG developed teams that won 4 gold medals, 2 silver medals, and 4 bronze medals at the Tokyo Olympics.
The RISE Human Development System
A key element of Mentors & Partners Group’s management development is the complex assessment of personality and behaviour, using the world’s most professionally in-depth and effective tool, RISE assessments. RISE’s advantages over other assessments are essential for developing a truly successful team, including management teams. One of these elements is the definition of the “original personality”, which clearly defines the true personality traits of a person, their impact on decision-making, motivations behind actions, and the direction of individual goals. In sport, the “original personality” is responsible for decisions made in crisis situations, and in business, it is the basis for the most important decisions in the lives of leaders. RISE can also define additional personality states – the “present personality”, “childhood personality”, and “idol personality” – which can be used to clearly identify the manager’s decision-making mechanisms, their behaviour in different situations, their reactions, and the resulting outcomes. One’s degree of personality modification can be determined by analysing the differences among personality states. Such modifications are directly responsible for persistent conflicts within a team, thus providing strong starting points for improving team cohesion. RISE’s unique generational and social research background and generational methodology can also be used to determine the quality of relationships between different age groups, thus helping to identify the sources and resolutions of potential conflicts. And RISE’s definition of the “idol personality” is the basis for developing leader-employee and idol-talent relationships. Thus, in management development programmes, RISE provides professional support in the areas of self-evaluation, understanding and acceptance of others, cooperation and communication among team members, managing team cohesion and generational differences, and becoming an idol leader (and maintaining that status). For more information about the system, please visit:
Mindset Change Management 2022-24
Team Incentive Programmes
Team development solutions, modelled on management development programmes, focus on taking team cohesion to a new dimension, improving the relationship between the leader and the team, and increasing the overall success and effectiveness of the team. As with all Mentors & Partners Group programmes, an important factor is that the basis for improving team performance is to increase team members’ satisfaction, motivation and happiness. An appropriate level of honesty within the team, acceptance of one other, and the creation of the necessary communication platform are important elements of the programme. In addition to defining and understanding the participants’ self-awareness, personality, and behaviour, the team development process also helps to define and understand the benefits and challenges of generational differences. The clear aim of the programme is to provide meaningful, concrete discussion about the conflicts that need to be resolved for the team to be successful and to provide participants with real, practical solutions. Prior to the design of the programmes, participants will be assessed on their personalities with the applicable assessments of the RISE Human Development System. For more information on the system, please visit: www.riseanalysis.com The specific programme is always tailored to the needs and personalities of the participants to ensure that the team development is sufficiently interesting and motivating. The team development programmes can last between 1 and 12 months, depending on the goals set for the team, and in each case, MPG uses mentoring tools and techniques tailored to the specific project (training sessions, workshops, interactive discussions, written reports, small group sessions, 1-on-1 discussions, and video meetings where appropriate).
Mindset Change Management 2022-2023
The crisis caused by COVID-19 and the ensuing complex transformation in societal expectations and labour market needs represent a major challenge for organisations and teams. The pandemic’s attack on our private lives has significantly changed the way people think and make decisions. One of the most important consequences of this is the radical change in the relationship between employees and employers in the labour market and the drastic reorganisation of the employee motivation systems, which organisations, employers, and HR professionals must follow quickly. Organisations that want to grow and retain their key employees in a changing market, and attract the most valuable new colleagues, will have to undergo a major mindset shift from 2022 to 2023. However, full “mindset change management” requires a very strong professional background, strategic planning, and mentoring for implementation. Mentors & Partners Group’s team development activities focus on shifting the focus of team development from typical cohesion-building to increasing collaborative effectiveness in a significantly changed social and labour market environment. In other words, “Mindset change management” is an integral part of team development. The programme focuses fundamentally on the individual, personal changes caused by the pandemic, intergenerational trends in the workplace, and the labour market and organisational challenges arising from changes in household solvency.
Talent Management
Idolism in the Organisation
Talent management has always played a vital role in the development of organisations, but since the Financial Crisis of the late 2000s, inadequate talent management work has clearly been a barrier to a company’s progress. For young workers, the right idol within the organisation has always been important, but its importance has changed dramatically for the new generations entering the labour market after 2008. Understanding talent management and talent-idol relationships requires a new approach to generational research, information, and methodology, which is provided by the RISE Human Development System’s generational research centre for Mentors & Partners Group’s talent management programmes (for more information on RISE’s generational methodology, please visit https://riseanalysis.com/the-system/generational-research/).
The idol of the Ambitionists Generation – those born between 1985 and 1996 – is very different from that of the previous generation of workers. For them, a leader is an idol who is successful both professionally and privately. This generation does not accept that they should treat anyone like an idol just because they are in a leadership position. Becoming an idol and staying one is a serious challenge for leaders, because, for previous generations, the Ambitionists are a sobering, sharp mirror. The acceptance of managers has also become clearly measurable, and whether this new generation accepts a company is more visible than ever. Many companies complain that they cannot attract the new generation of workers and, once they have been attracted, it is a challenge to retain them. Then there are companies and managers who report the opposite. The organisational challenges posed by the new generations have never been more extreme, and in addition, the labour market is already seeing the emergence of the Followers Generation – born between 1997 and 2008 – who directly follow the Ambitionists, but who exhibit drastically different thought processes. As they follow the values adopted by the generation before them, a company, organisation, or leader needs to be an idol for these two new generations; otherwise, progress will not be possible.
Talent management
Attracting, retaining, and developing a generation with different mindsets and expectations requires a completely different talent management solution. In business, building the right management methodology is a major challenge, and it is even more so in sport, where a significant proportion of current adult athletes are now from the Ambitionists Generation, and the Followers Generation are steadily entering the fray. This is why it is important that Mentors & Partners Group’s talent management programmes are also informed by successful programmes and victories alongside teams and national teams, both adult and youth. Overall, the talent management programmes are more complex than those traditionally employed with earlier generations, as they are clearly focused on the vision of employees with strong aspirations. The starting point for any individual in a talent management programme is understanding their true personality, motivations, and expectations, and making sure those align with organisational goals. If a talent wants to be a specialist in a particular field, this is the starting point for their development; if a talent wants to be a leader, they need to be developed into one. And while there are some common elements to these two development paths, these specialised programmes diverge content-wise, ensuring that the talents avoid wasting time, maintain their motivation, and are aware that they are being focused on as individuals, which is an important aspect for a generation with very strong individual interests. We use the RISE Human Development System analysis to assess and understand each talent – for more information on the system, please visit: www.riseanalysis.com – which is the perfect tool for the two generations that fall into the talent category, as it provides an honest and sharp mirror, which they consider essential. MPG’s talent management development programmes are structured in different categories such as “leader”, “specialist”, “money-maker”, “pillar”, “new business developer”, “motivator”, but also new categories are developed in the course of the collaboration, tailored to the business goals and expectations of our partners.
Mentors & Partners Group is also a partner in the design and implementation of talent management strategies, as well as in the complex management of individual and team-level talent development programmes, i.e., the complex support of the entire process.
Complex Organisational Mentoring
Mentors & Partners Group can support specialised development projects in many fields, but the firm can also sustain more complex organisational development projects tailored to company needs. Organisational development is no longer a one-dimensional HR task. Organisational development is the construction and management of the organisation needed to achieve a company’s specific business goals. It means assessing the organisation’s current state, evaluating the state against its goals, defining its development opportunities and threats, and managing them. Based on these goals, MPG can create programmes that address an organisation’s weaknesses, including the recruitment of necessary specialists. Organisations must adapt to the current market environment and social, labour, and economic changes that intensified in 2020. For this, they need defined strategies to manage these changes within the organisation, including any requisite internal and external communications strategies. For MPG, it is important that the organisation we develop is more successful and effective in measurable terms, and that its members are happier and more satisfied. MPG’s complex organisational development mentoring provides all this for our partners.
COMPLEX SMALL BUSINESS MENTORING
The role of complex small business mentoring
Business mentoring provides complex support for the development of a company as defined by its primary decision-maker, with all the consulting and implementation activities executed by a single consultancy, in tandem with the primary decision-maker’s development!
Business mentoring is the newest professional development solution in the organisational development profession, but has been in use for more than ten years. The international and domestic preference for this specialised, complex form of organisational development has been motivated primarily by dissatisfaction with business coaching and traditional consulting. Business mentoring combines the advantages of these two areas, building on each other and applying them in parallel to help partners and their businesses succeed.
For business mentoring, the starting point is the primary decision-maker: the business owner or chief manager. Organisational development can be implemented in many ways, but for us, the most important thing is that the results achieved are perfect for our partners. Many people still believe that a true chief decision-maker is a true manager only if they want to make more and more profit, so development must advance this goal. But in many cases, our partners’ objectives are very different. For some, at this stage of their lives, maximising profit is the most important thing. Some partners want to make a profit, while others want to feel good about their company and want their colleagues to enjoy working there. Some people want to be famous. Some are attracted to starting a company, but when it comes to operational work, they want to move on to the next venture. Some want to work in the company they have built. Some cannot wait to leave day-to-day company management behind. Some want to build their company to a point where they can exit, and some never want to sell their company. This is why it is of utmost importance that business mentoring “coaches” begin and execute consulting projects so that the partner fully achieves and exceeds their goals!
The process of complex small business mentoring
Business mentoring is a complex organisational development solution. A domestic company needs this complexity, because if it can concentrate organisational development tasks in one area, it can expect significant cost savings. Moreover, as the mentor defines their individual strategy, and consequently the business strategy of their company, any mentoring programme led by the mentor will be a development programme based on the partner’s individual goals. Business mentoring programmes are structured in different ways to meet individual objectives, but they have common elements. In all cases, it starts with the definition of ownership/management goals, which takes place in an interactive workshop. Once these objectives have been defined, they are then compared with the partner’s capabilities and capabilities, current market opportunities (via a domestic and foreign market analysis), and the suitability of the current organisation. This information is then used to draw up an organisational development programme plan, which shows the client the exact tasks that need to be carried out in order to meet their goals.
Depending on the objectives, the business mentoring programme may include:
- Defining the owner’s objectives, building the owner’s strategy
- Developing a product concept (turning the owner’s/company’s knowledge into a product, making it marketable)
- Organisational development (designing a motivation system, intra-organisational turnover, redundancies, hiring, designing an organisational development programme plan)
- Complex recruitment and headhunting
- Setting up, management, and training of the sales unit
- Management training, sales training, team-building sessions, back-office training
- Development, modification, and adaptation of the corporate image (logo, slogan, design, web creative, social media, etc.)
- Communication work (building the owner’s brand, creating PR materials, etc.)
All our programmes include: private mentoring, which allows the owner/chief manager to ask questions, seek advice, consult with the consultant/mentor during the business mentoring process.