B CULTURE

Case study · Executive Team

Leadership reset in a Swiss industrial SME

An established Swiss industrial SME faced the situation many companies of this size experience after growth and succession: more topics, more people, the same leadership architecture as ten years ago. Everything drifted upwards. Little got decided.

Duration
9 months
Architecture fields
LeadershipDecision ArchitectureCulture
Industrie
Industrial · family-owned · 220 employees

01

Starting point

The executive team was capable — but overloaded. Topics were discussed at length and rarely resolved formally. Business unit leaders expected clarity without taking mandates themselves. Culture was called "good", but didn't hold under pressure: conflicts got postponed, decisions were quietly reversed, responsibility stayed diffuse.

  • 01Exec meetings routinely ran over four hours without binding decisions.
  • 02Unit leaders worked hard, but on topics without a clear mandate.
  • 03HR and leadership held different pictures of what "leadership" meant in this house.
  • 04Two strategic initiatives had been running for over a year with no traction.

02

Intervention

We didn't restructure. We clarified the architecture behind the structure — in four phases, together with the exec and extended leadership.

  1. 01

    Phase 1

    Mapping

    Interviews with exec team, unit leaders and board. Making the actually lived decision logic visible — not the official one.

  2. 02

    Phase 2

    Decision Architecture

    Who decides what, with what mandate, in what latitude, with what consequence. Role profiles for exec and unit leaders aligned with real responsibility.

  3. 03

    Phase 3

    Leadership format

    Rebuild of the exec rhythm: strategic, operational and cultural spaces separated. Clear standard for minutes and decisions.

  4. 04

    Phase 4

    Cultural anchoring

    Regular reflection spaces for the extended leadership. Language, rituals and expectations of leadership sharpened together.

03

Impact

Nine months later the same team led the same organisation — with visibly less friction, clearer decisions and a leadership culture that also holds under pressure.

−60%

exec meeting duration

1 level

less escalation in daily work

9 of 9

unit leaders with clear mandate

«We didn't get a new structure. We understood how our old one works — and what we needed to change so leadership could be leadership again.»
— Chair of the executive team · Industrial SME, Switzerland

Note — Anonymised. Figures are approximations from the mandate's internal reporting.

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