(CLP) Programs

Appleton Greene corporate training programs are all process-driven. They are used as vehicles to implement tangible business processes within clients’ organizations, together with training, support and facilitation during the use of these processes. Corporate training programs are therefore implemented over a sustainable period of time, that is to say, between 1 year (incorporating 12 monthly workshops), and 4 years (incorporating 48 monthly workshops). Your program information guide will specify how long each program takes to complete. Each monthly workshop takes 6 hours to implement and can be undertaken either on the client’s premises, an Appleton Greene serviced office, or online via the internet. This enables clients to implement each part of their business process, before moving onto the next stage of the program and enables employees to plan their study time around their current work commitments. The result is far greater program benefit, over a more sustainable period of time and a significantly improved return on investment.

Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. All (CLP) programs are implemented over a sustainable period of time, usually between 1-4 years, incorporating 12-48 monthly workshops and professional support is consistently provided during this time by qualified learning providers and where appropriate, by Accredited Consultants.

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Executive summary

Effective Coaching

Effective Coaching might be understood differently depending on our own experience with Coaching, but the idea behind it is clear and simple.

It’s about enabling people to deliver at their best and to be effective. If you want to lead at your best and have your team deliver the best possible results, then effective Coaching will be highly relevant for you. Deciding not to make use of effective Coaching in your organization, either through training and upskilling leadership teams directly or by working with experienced external Coaches creates two types of risk.

One risk is related to falling behind other organizations that use effective Coaching to improve the way their leadership teams deal with “the human aspect” in the various problem-solving activities they are involved in.

A second risk is related to falling behind in attractiveness as an employer for top-talents and team members who want to be coached professionally throughout their career.

By properly applying scientifically proven and tested Coaching skills and methodologies, you will be able to apply effective Coaching in your organization and for your team. Being coached effectively also helps you to grow personally and to learn from your mistakes. In a world that gets more complex due to an increase of knowledge and technology day by day, being able to identify mistakes and correct them remains a major leadership requirement. And while self-reflection and emotional intelligence are still considered as a waste of time for some people in leadership positions, the thinking is shifting. From a way of thinking that views emotions as useless and hindering rationality and productivity to a thinking that takes them fully into account and recognizes their value in problem solving and decision-making processes.

This doesn’t mean that you will learn how to apply psychological and neuroscientific knowledge as a medical skill. It also won’t turn you into a psychologist. Instead, it will enable you to better understand human emotions and how effective Coaching helps to solve business problems by addressing the “human aspect” first.

The training addresses one of the most significant business processes of all, the problem-solving process itself. This process is relevant for everyone working in a leadership position, from (top) management to department head and team leader. At the broadest level, every problem-solving process consists of three major phases: Problem – Solution – Implementation.

The bad news is: The process fails a lot of times in a lot of organizations around the world – both for small scale problems and for large ones. And it can fail in any of the three phases – the problem phase, solution phase or implementation phase.

Looking at the business aspect, a failed problem-solving process can cause an organization to lose ground to its competitors, to fall behind in innovation, to not adapt to new technology or to lose money through loss of productive time and high employee turnover.

Looking at the human aspect, a failed problem-solving process causes frustration among those involved. This often leads to fighting over arguments, resources, decisions, mistakes and responsibilities, just to name a few consequences.

While the business aspect of a failed problem opens up a huge area of different topics and processes, the human aspect of a problem always leads to an emotional core. And despite a future outlook with more automated business processes, there are no signs that human emotions become less relevant overall. And with human emotions remaining a crucial component for leaders to actively deal with, the question arises how to do so most effectively?

This question leads to the purpose of this training program, which is to enable leaders in organizations to become better at mastering the emotions involved in the various day-to-day problem-solving activities. Both their own emotional states through self-reflection and being coached and the emotional states of their team members through leading teams and coaching others. This matters to organizations because better problem-solving results and increased employer attractiveness lead to better business performance.

In the first part of the program – month 1 to 7 – you will be introduced to the underlying psychological processes of Coaching and how (neuro)science explains the difference between a random Coaching and an effective one.
This includes an introduction to the different emotional states and leadership styles connected to those states. The training then moves on to the EFFECT principle of successful problem-solving results.

The first step is the inner Effect – our inner thinking and our own emotional responses to a challenge. These responses are either working for or against us in any given situation and they can be influenced to work in our favor. The outer EFFECT consists of identifying the core of a problem (Core Effect) and the best approach to solve a problem (Result Effect).

These two are closely connected as even the best solutions become ineffective if they solve an unimportant problem.

The output of the first part of the training program is a personal “Challenge Map” for each participant. It included a list of challenges with priorities and where these challenges currently stand in the problem-solving process.

The second part of the program – month 8 to 17 – is all about skill development and learning the various coaching skills.

The program is designed in a way to focus on those Coaching skills that help you and your team become more effective problem solvers. The skills include questioning skills, emotional resources and regulation and inner team leadership. In order to master these skills, two guided practice workshops have been planned into the program.

In the third part of the program – month 18 to 24 – we will apply effective Coaching on real leadership challenges that a participant faces. This way the program is much more than academic theory related to how effective Coaching works. It’s the application of skills in real business situations and thus with real consequences. You will see results right after your first Coaching process and will be able to take adjustments to improve your skills.

Instead of being stuck with emotional struggles between team members or departments, more management attention can be shifted to the business side of the problem. And business problems can be solved with more ease and confidence as soon as the emotional barriers and blockades in people’s heads have been addressed in an effective way.

Once you see the positive outcome this approach has for yourself and your team, you can consider passing the skills on to those in your team who are leading others. And whenever you are stuck in the process or something doesn’t work as you had expected it, you have access to tutorial support and coaching.

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Curriculum

Effective Coaching – Part 1 – Year 1

1. Part 1 Month 1 Neuroscience & Coaching
2. Part 1 Month 2 Needs & Goals
3. Part 1 Month 3 Leadership styles
4. Part 1 Month 4 Emotional states
5. Part 1 Month 5 Inner Effect
6. Part 1 Month 6 Outer Effect
7. Part 1 Month 7 Challenge Map
8. Part 1 Month 8 Relationship assessment
9. Part 1 Month 9 Non-verbal communication
10. Part 1 Month 10 Person-centric Coaching
11. Part 1 Month 11 Questioning Skills
12. Part 1 Month 12 Practice Workshop I

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Effective Coaching – Part 2 – Year 2

1. Part 2 Month 1 Emotional Resources
2. Part 2 Month 2 Emotional Regulation
3. Part 2 Month 3 Inner Team
4. Part 2 Month 4 Timeline Coaching
5. Part 2 Month 5 Practice Workshop III
6. Part 2 Month 6 Encounter the problem
7. Part 2 Month 7 Find the core
8. Part 2 Month 8 Focus on solutions
9. Part 2 Month 9 Evaluate solutions
10. Part 2 Month 10 Commit to a decision
11. Part 2 Month 11 Take Action
12. Part 2 Month 12 Group Supervision

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Program Objectives

The following list represents the Key Program Objectives (KPO) for the Appleton Greene Effective Coaching corporate training program.

Effective Coaching – Part 1 – Year 1

1. Part 1 Month 1 Neuroscience & Coaching – In this Workshop participants will be introduced to the current state of neuroscientific research with regards to why and how Coaching is effective. The key topic is the human brain and the neural processes that take place within different areas of the brain. Understanding that the emotional system of our brain is always active and participating in decision making and problem-solving processes creates the relevance for this training program.
2. Part 1 Month 2 Needs & Goals – Building on the first Workshop, the objective of the second Workshop is to help participants understand the fundamental concepts relevant to everyone working with people and leading teams. The concepts of needs and goals. Distinguishing these two elements helps us to better understand a team member’s behavior in relation to the problems and challenges they face. While we are capable of creating as many goals as we can think of, psychological needs can be broken down into to a few elements – based on the Scarfs model that I use, these elements are Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness and Spirituality.
3. Part 1 Month 3 Leadership Styles – As a next step, we will draw a connection between our individual preferences for each psychological need and our way of leading people and ourselves. By matching each psychological need with a specific leadership style, workshop participants can view their own behavior – I call this a person’s “leadership baseline” – from a potentially new perspective. Doing so enables them to better understand their own emotional (default) reactions towards problems.
4. Part 1 Month 4 Emotional States – By understanding emotional states, participants are able to recognize if an emotional reaction with regards to a problem is functional or dysfunctional. Functional means that that the emotions that follows an event leads to effective action towards the problem. Dysfunctional means that the emotion that follows an event leads to ineffective action towards the problem. This provides a very useful perspective of looking at emotions based on the results they produce, instead of ignoring them or categorizing them into “good or bad” emotions. Understanding one’s own and a team members emotional state with respect to a problem is a key prerequisite when it comes to applying an effective Coaching approach.
5. Part 1 Month 5 Inner Effect – The Effect principle consisting of three elements in total – an inner effect, a core effect and a result effect. The inner effect is a set of questions and practices that focuses on self-leadership. It invites us to think about personal Ego states related to a problem, focus points we’d like to set, focus questions related to these focus points and the entry-level into the initial problem-solving conversations. Going through one’s own Inner Effect related to a problem helps us set the appropriate mindset for successful problem solving.
6. Part 1 Month 6 Outer Effect – The Outer Effect consists of a Core Effect and a Results Effect. The Core Effect is a set of questions and practices to identify the root cause of a problem. Based on my experience a core can be traced back to Emotions, organizational processes & structures, skills or experience. Emotions are always related to the “human aspect of a problem” while organizational processes & structures are related to the “business aspect of a problem”. Skills and experience can have both a human aspect and a business aspect. The Result Effect is caused by a specific approach to a problem and there are “Best Practice approaches” available for nearly all business problems from which one can learn. An effective Coaching approach is an ideal approach to deal with the “human aspect” in the problem-solving process. That means all problems that are related to an emotional core can in principle be solved using this approach.
7. Part 1 Month 7 Challenge Map – Building on the content from the previous workshops, participants will be asked to create their specific “Challenge Maps”. In a first step these maps capture all current problems and challenges related to a participant’s leadership role. In a second step the task is to weight each problem with regards to the different core elements: Emotions, organizational processes & structures, skills and experience.
8. Part 1 Month 8 Relationship Assessment – Strong relationships are the fundamental basis of applying any effective Coaching. If there is no trust at all or not sufficient trust between people, sharing of any sensitive or emotional piece of information won’t take place. To avoid that a team member feels trapped in an uncomfortable situation (“I don’t want to be coached”) building mutual trust is key.
   By conducting a relationship assessment, we are able to identify the interpersonal relationships that allow for effective Coaching to take place.
9. Part 1 Month 9 Non-verbal Communication – Following the relationship assessment, participants will learn how to interpret non-verbal elements of human interactions. This is a crucial skill as words can be manipulated easily while non-verbal communication is by and large an honest source of information. We will focus mostly on facial expressions as muscles in this region of the body are directly related to the emotional centers of our brain. By taking a closer look at micro expressions, participants will be able to identify a set of emotions that provide important insights into the otherwise invisible feelings of a person. This is especially helpful to ensure that a team is pulling in the same direction during a problem-solving process.
10. Part 1 Month 10 Person-centric Coaching – Equipped with an enhanced ability to interpret non-verbal expressions, participants will learn how to lead conversations using micro thesis to identify the emotional core related to a problem. Leaders who expect their team members to “leave emotions away from the table” cannot benefit from the insights that emotions provide to them. The prerequisite to applying person-centric Coaching is thus an atmosphere of trust to share this type of information. At the same time person-centric conversations help build trust between people.
11. Part 1 Month 11 Questioning Skills – Questioning skills are relevant for each step of the problem-solving process (WS 18-23) and for all three Effect principles that were introduced in Workshops 5 and 6. When applying the Inner Effect, asking the relevant questions helps us to set the tone right. For the Core Effect, a set of questioning techniques helps us to become more effective at obtaining additional information related to a problem. Questions at this stage are also needed to separate facts, opinions and emotions. This is not easy to accomplish for many problems as these elements can easily get mixed up in heated situations and discussions. For the Result Effect, relevant questions help to stay focused on finding, evaluating and implementing solutions.
12. Part 1 Month 12 Practice Workshop1 – In this Practice Workshop participants get the chance to practice the skills from the previous Workshops (Questioning Skills, non-verbal communication & Person-centric Coaching). By doing so a “learning effect” can unfold.

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Effective Coaching – Part 2 – Year 2

1. Part 2 Month 1 Emotional Resources – The next skills required to apply effective Coaching are about strengthening emotional resources in teams and on the level of the individual team member. If the root cause of a problem (core) is related to organizational processes & structures, then the relevant resources will most likely be organizational resources such as time, workforce or financial assets. For emotional root causes, the relevant resources will most likely be of emotional nature. As such, they are directly related to the emotional states introduced in Workshop 4 and can be feelings or attributes such as joy, passion, persistence or relaxation.
2. Part 2 Month 2 Emotional Regulation – Once we have taken a look into emotional resources, the next step is to demonstrate the basic principles of emotional regulation in a 1 to 1 Coaching setting. One goal is to enable participants to apply the techniques on their own. A second goal is to provide them with an understanding of the techniques should they chose to delegate the Coaching to others. Whichever choice a participant makes with regards to a particular challenge, what’s important is that the emotional regulation takes place in a timely manner to ensure the team member can perform at his or her best. This is to say without an emotional barrier or a dysfunctional emotion that prevents top performance.
3. Part 2 Month 3 Inner Team – Involving the Inner Team – the different ego-states we all have – is another skill that can be used in effective Coaching processes. Having an Inner Team related to different roles and emotional states is a perfectly normal human condition and not to be mixed up with serious mental problems such as dissociative identity disorder. Taking our own or a team members Inner Team into account opens a new door to problem solving by creating an advanced understanding of our own or another person’s behavior.
4. Part 2 Month 4 Timeline Coaching – Involving the personal timeline of a team member benefits the problem-solving process by harvesting the learnings from past experiences. Instead of or in addition to using Inner Team work it can at times be useful to look into the past to identify situations where the relevant mental and emotional strength had been activated. It’s also a useful tool to identify emotional resources that are needed to solve challenging problems, especially in times of crisis or major setbacks.
5. Part 2 Month 5 Practice Workshop 2 – In this Practice Workshop participants get the chance to practice the skills from the previous Workshops (Emotional Resources & Emotional Regulation, Inner Team and Timeline Coaching). By doing so a “learning effect” can unfold.
6. Part 2 Month 6 Encounter the Problem – Implementing the process starts by realizing a problem exists and is relevant. Realizing a problem is real means it’s emotional for someone, otherwise it couldn’t be interpreted as a problem in the first place. Participants will apply the Inner Effect to evaluate their personal relationship towards the problem and create a suitable strategy on how to approach the problem-solving process for the key challenge they currently face.
7. Part 2 Month 7 Find the Core – Participants will apply the relevant techniques from the Skill Development phase to identify the core of each problem from their personal Challenge Maps – the tool introduced in Workshop 7. A core of a problem could for example be a fear of losing a certain client that prevents a team member from building more profitable client relationships. Up until the point is reached when a problem can be clearly described, a team leader would most likely guess what the root cause of a problem is and might spend a lot of time and money on skill development thinking it’s a lack of skill that prevents the team member from being more successful. Being as clear as possible about the core of a problem sets the path for the next steps in the process.
8. Part 2 Month 8 Focus on Solutions – Once shared agreement about the core of a problem has been reached, the focus shifts to guiding team members to create powerful solutions related to each core problem. Taking the example of a team member’s fear of losing a client could lead to a solution related to a bolder behavior (desired emotional state) when negotiating client contracts. A key in finding solutions is to make use of emotionally attractive goals. Once a goal is emotionally attractive and within the skill-set and reach of a person, solution finding will take over naturally without much further leadership input needed. What a leader needs to ensure is that enough resources are available so that the team member can confidently plan and present the solution he or she came up with. This can include organizational resources as well as emotional resources. To recall, an emotional resource is linked to the psychological needs we all share and could be about status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness or spirituality. To stick with the example above, let’s assume a team member comes up with three bold proposal ideas to expand the current client relationship.
9. Part 2 Month 9 Evaluate Solutions – Fantastic solutions are never the end of the process. Instead, they indicate that it is now time to make a decision between alternatives and commit to the consequences. Decision making is the link between a new solution and taking action. The key difference between a top-down decision and a decision made by a team member is that the internal commitment of the team member is measurably higher in the latter case. At this point in the process, effective Coaching is directly related to the power of intrinsic motivation. Nevertheless, a leader could still reject a proposed solutions or decide on a different approach to reach a result. However, the usual way is that a coaching based problem-solving approach leads to a solution that a team member develops and feels fully responsibility for.
10. Part 2 Month 10 Commit to a Decision – To emphasize the responsibility for delivering results, a commitment to time, effort and resources into transforming the solution into a measurable result is needed. This can look like a minor step in the process, also because it doesn’t take much time. Nevertheless, it’s an important one and could be done simply by writing down what has been agreed and who owns the responsibility for implementation.
11. Part 2 Month 11 Take Action – Based on the decision made and the commitment expressed, it’s crucial to agree on specific action steps that team members will take in a defined time frame to implement their solutions and deliver results. Taking action is the last step of the problem-solving process. By applying an effective Coaching approach, participants will look for practical ways that a team member can implement to stay in contact with the necessary emotional resources and commitment. Alongside the “business aspect” of problem solving, which consists of elements such as milestones and project plans, the “emotional elements” have a huge impact on results. If we take our example of the bold proposal from our fictional team member, let’s assume this person had been on a hiking adventure in Nepal ten years ago. It could now be an effective “implementation booster” to find a picture from that trip that brings up the desired emotional state (feeling bold). A specific action would then be to put that picture on the team member’s office wall to support the implementation process with regards to the client proposal.
12. Part 2 Month 12 Group Supervision – The objective of this Workshop is to reflect on successes and pitfalls during the implementation of effective Coaching throughout the different problem-solving processes. It’s also an opportunity for participants to ask any remaining questions related to the skills and tools learnt in this training program. Additionally, it’s a chance for participants to have discussions among each other about want went well and how to improve one’s Coaching and leadership skill-set.

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Methodology

Efficient Coaching

The scientific basis for Process Planning comes mainly from the fields of neuroscience and psychology. Especially neuroscience is a relatively new field of studies, with only a few decades of research. It explores the way the human brain works in detail and the more scientists find out about the complexity of the brain, the more unanswered questions they have. What’s certain about the human brain is its buildup of different “departments” that have developed throughout the course of evolution.

Moving beyond simple cell division, living species developed a brain stem that is responsible for regulating basic bodily functions such as breath and body temperature.

As human evolution progressed, emotions developed in our limbic system to provide meaning and guidance to what the senses experienced. The youngest “department”, the human prefrontal cortex, is where functions such as rational problem-solving abilities and complex thinking and language skills are located.

It’s thanks to our prefrontal cortex that we can solve complex problems and challenges – from solving a math equation to organizing Olympic games. The prefrontal cortex is however, not detached from the older areas in the brain. Instead, it has many direct and indirect connections to the limbic system where storage and evaluation of our emotional experiences and responses takes place.

Neuroscience can demonstrate that even the most rational decision making and problem solving needs those emotional experiences and responses to provide meaning to those decisions and solutions. An emotional response can lead to under- and overarousal in our brain and vice versa in our body through the interconnected nervous system. Under-arousal describes an emotional state that can be best labeled as “numb” and overarousal can be labeld as “panic-struck”. Principally speaking, each over- and under-arousal hinders effective problem solving by either under activating or overwhelming the prefrontal cortex.

Simply speaking, Effective Coaching helps us and others to be able to solve problems by reaching a balance between prefrontal activation and limbic arousal. This state is also referred to as “zone of performance” of flow. And while some people are consistently able to enter this zone on their own, many people struggle to do so.

To better understand our own “zone of performance” and the zone of our team members in different situations, we will draw on scientific insights related to human psychological needs. We will then turn to the concept of self-awareness as the ideal starting point for problem-solving activities (inner Effect). From a theoretical point of view, the idea of the Inner Effect is closely related to Howard Gardener’s concept of intrapersonal intelligence.

When we finish the Process Planning part of the training program, Workshop participants will be able to create a “Challenge map” that contains all emotion-laden problems within their role and team and the emotional states connected to each problem.

Participants can then use the different challenges they face to relate all upcoming Skill Development Workshops to those specific challenges. We will also use the Challenge map for the Process Implementation Workshops. Throughout the course of the training program, participants will update their Challenge Maps with problems being solved and implemented successfully, with shifts in priority and with new problems entering the map.

Skill Development takes place under the assumption that an effective Coaching will have a positive result on the problem-solving process, if done properly. The condition for this assumption to be true is that the problem has an emotional core and that this emotional core leads to over- or under arousal.

From a methodological perspective, Workshop 8 deals with the relationship element of Coaching. Research indicates that it is the quality of the relationship in a Coaching setting that has the largest effect on the success of the Coaching process. Therefore, a key rule of effective Coaching is that the relationship is more important than the skill. This means that if the relationship is not based on mutual-trust, then even the most skillful Coach will not be effective. A relationship assessment is therefore crucial to decide where a Coaching approach will be effective and where other approaches such as pure consulting yield better results.

Workshops 9, 10 and 11 on non-verbal communication, person-centric Coaching and questioning skills help participants to explore and challenge the emotional states connected to a business challenge. Either by tuning into another person’s mental world based on non-verbal indicators such as mimical expressions (WS9) or verbal indicators (WS10). Or by asking relevant questions (WS11) that can help to shift thoughts or change perspectives.

Workshop 12 will provide an opportunity for practicing the skills acquired in the previous workshops.

In workshops 13 and 14 participant’s will be introduced to the techniques of shifting an emotional state into an appropriate level of arousal. Appropriate means that it’s within a “zone of performance” and thus aiding the problem-solving process instead of blocking it.

Workshops 15 and 16 are designed to apply the techniques of emotional regulation in a more complex setting. One setting involves the different aspects within a person. For example, when a team-member cognitively thinks he or she should follow approach A, but feels approach B is right. The other setting involves learning from past experience to solve a current problem. In Workshop 17, participants will be provided with an opportunity to practice the skills from the previous workshop.

Methodologically, in the third and last part of the program we break down a typical problem-solving process into six different steps:

Encounter the problem, find its core, focus on solutions to solve it, evaluate solutions, commit to a decision and take action to implement the chosen solution.

Each Workshop focuses on one of the six steps, the most relevant Coaching skills and the process implementation progress of each participant. With an updated version of the participant’s “Challenge Maps”, this part of the training program gets to be highly interactive and practical. Participants will be able to connect the theoretical insights and practical skills while step by step applying effective coaching to selected leadership challenges.

The last Workshop (or the last two depending on a client’s preferences) will focus on a structured exchange of learning among the Workshop participants. By doing so, participants can learn from the successful and unsuccessful attempts of their peers. They will also have time to reflect on the process and their personal Coaching and Leadership style.

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Industries

This service is primarily available to the following industry sectors:

Industrial Manufacturing

Manufacturing can be described as the use of assets and technology for the mass production of finished goods. It is at the heart of the economy. We purchase products and services and most of the products we buy are the result of a (mass) production process. Manufacturing creates wealth through direct jobs and indirect jobs in related fields such as the transportation and hotel industry. For centuries production was a labor-intensive individual work by a craftsman. Handmade goods dominated the markets of the villages and towns throughout the world.

With the industrial revolution taking off in Europe in the 19th century, companies started to use machines in the manufacturing process. Thanks to economies of scale the cost of an additional production output unit decreases the more units are being produced. Thus, a competition for output began and consumers were able to afford products that were previously considered a luxury for few people. The race for output led to the introduction of the assembly line in 1901. One of the first to build on this new feature was Henry Ford, who further improved the system by using moving platforms for the production of automobiles.

Another major step in Manufacturing was the introduction of lean methods in Japan by Toyota in 1948. A few decades later the system was also adopted in the United States and Europe and began to spread outside of automobile manufacturing in the 1990’s.

Today’s manufacturing innovations are mostly related to digitization and advanced robotics. Looking at robotic, we see production processes where robots are responsible for moving semi-finished products from one workstation to the other. It’s very likely that such automated processes will replace human labor in many more tasks that are today widely performed by humans.

Focusing on Germany and looking at the numbers (source: Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs & Energy, 2017 data) shows that manufacturing remains the engine of the economy contributing more than 20% of total GDP.

With a market size of about €1.8 trillion it’s a huge industry and about 90% of the industry is made up of the so called “Mittelstand” – companies with less than 250 employees. In total, more than 6 million people are directly working in this industry.

The largest industrial sectors are Automotive, Mechanical Engineering, Metal, Chemical/pharmaceuticals, Electrical and Food & Beverage.

The key challenges for manufacturers are similar:

Industry X.O

Robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT) and additive manufacturing will shape the production facilities of the future.

Robots can provide valuable feedback, for example for quality control of parts, if they get programmed and trained on what to analyze and how to communicate the results.

A different type of robot learns from itself or from other robots rather than by following a coded script. For this to happen a robot needs to be fed with information, for example through a sensor or a different stream of data. A key challenge for robots is their ability to collaborate with humans. For example, a human worker might have the robot run on 100% automation with the ability to switch back to various degrees of automation if needed.

Connected to the Internet production data can be digitally mapped and used for production scheduling or Sales and Operations planning. When entire products (for example a house) are digitally modelled, additive manufacturing can be used to physically produce them. This process is also known as 3D Printing.

Considering that artificial intelligence (AI) can process data much faster than the human brain, we can expect more and more use-cases for robotic data analysis, predictive analytics and additive manufacturing.

Green transformation

Manufacturing companies play a crucial role in the transformation from a fossil-economy to a renewable economy. That’s because production processes are energy intensive and thus emit high levels of CO2 into the atmosphere. From a business perspective, energy traditionally has a significant cost impact on a manufacturer’s bottom line.

A key challenge for manufacturer’s remains to align sustainability goals such as reduced CO2 impact of supply chains; reduced C02 emissions of factories; more circular economy processes and improved waste management with profitability goals (bottom line results).

From procurement of raw materials to production processes and sale of finished goods, there are significant challenges ahead.

Overall, manufacturing companies from all industries can expect to benefit from my effective coaching approach. That’s because the more automation will be adopted to various problems, the more focus needs to be put on the human side of problem solving as well. While this might sound counter-intuitive at first, it becomes obvious when human made decision making and automated decision-making take place simultaneously in major business processes.

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Automotive

The basis for cars was introduced around 4000bc with the invention of the wheel.

Around 6000 years later, dating back to the year 1839 the first electrical vehicle was built by Robert Aberdeen. And a few decades later in 1886, the first automobile was invented by Carl Benz. Thanks to its internal combustion engine, this invention was a technological breakthrough and cars were soon replacing horses as the preferred way of travelling from one place to the other.

However, in the year 1900, the few cars that were operating in the United States at that time were mostly powered by steam and electricity (around 40% each) and only 20% by petrol. Only a decade later, electric cars were forced out of the streets entirely. A 100 years later, they started their global comeback.

The reason for their set-back in the early 20th century was due to the combustion engines higher reach and the cheap price of oil at the time. Even the oil price crisis of the 1970s did not change the dominance of petrol fueled cars. During the 1990s many car manufacturers such as Daimler-Benz, VW, GM and Honda started to experiment with electric vehicles, but didn’t enter into mass production. Only Toyota introduced their Prius model in 1997 that operated on a hybrid solution. It took a new player on the market – Tesla – to significantly improve the quality of electric vehicles, both in terms of battery reach and fast charging infrastructure. With Tesla’s success, the established players had no choice but to start adopting as fast as possible.

In terms of numbers for Germany, the Automotive industry has a market size of €436 billion with more than 800.000 people working in this industry (source: bmwi, data for 2019)

Today’s challenges for automotive manufacturers are complex. While these companies share some of the challenges with other manufacturer’s, other challenges are specific to the automobile industry. Three of the main ones that stand out are:

E-Mobility

Car manufacturers are currently transforming their production facilities to meet the increased demand for electric vehicles. The shift from petrol fueled to electric vehicles is a major transformation in the industry.

Two elements are significant for future development in this area:

Companies are under increased pressure from the public, governments and non-governmental organizations to reduce their carbon footprint.
Companies are competing against each other for market share and profitability that will be re-distributed in a new world of mobility. This new world will be shaped by autonomously driving vehicles.

Autonomous driving

There is a high likelihood that fully autonomous driving (level 5) will turn from fantasy to reality for the masses in the next two decades. For a car to be self-driving, three components have to be in place:

1. Cars have to recognize and interpret their environment
2. Based on the environment they have to adopt an appropriate driving strategy
3. They have to be able to properly execute the chosen driving strategy

For manufacturers of cars, the key in this challenge is to offer an attractive package of a physically appealing and safe product and a software on four wheels with a great user interface and functionalities. With no driver in charge of tomorrow’s vehicles, the focus will shift to new opportunities of spending time during travel hours.

For today’s car manufacturers it is thus a crucial step to find the right strategy for software development. One way of doing it is to partner up and form strategic alliances with tech companies.

Availability of rare earth materials

While on the one hand car manufacturers adopt to the increasing demand for electric vehicles this causes a major challenge to the supply chain: Availability of raw materials to keep up with global demand.

Electromobility currently needs permanent magnets that contain rare earth materials such as dysprosium (Dy) and neodymium (Nd). These materials are not only rare but also difficult to extract. Estimates indicate that around 50% of the global reserves for these materials is located in China. This adds a political dimension to the economic supply shortage, thus making it even more difficult to predict supply and prices.

Car manufacturers will have to meet the challenge and search for alternative materials. At the same time, they need to invest into research and development with regards to the re-use of electric motors.

Overall, automotive companies and key automotive suppliers will benefit from my effective coaching approach. That’s because effective coaching helps teams to successfully accomplish large change processes. And the automotive industry is currently undergoing a major change process in which the winners of tomorrow’s mobility concepts have yet to be determined.

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Food & Beverage

The development of the food & beverage market is closely connected to the development of humans in general.

While for millions of years humans were organized in tribes that hunted together, it was the invention of fire that allowed our ancestors to start cooking their food and to protect themselves from being the food of others. Another challenge that shaped the way we handle food and beverages is related to its storage. The challenge has always been to solve the dilemma that, with the exception of water and salt, all food has a biological origin that makes it prone to decay. From the earliest days of human hunting, answers to the challenge had been created.

A large milestone was achieved about 10.000 years ago when our ancestors started to settle down and shifted from hunting to farming. For the first time in human history, a significant surplus of food occurred that led to trade. Villages with a surplus of meat started exchanging their products with villages with a surplus of eggs and so on.

In the 19th century, the next milestone took place – the industrial revolution in Europe. With the invention of the steam engine and electric power, new opportunities for creating, storing and transporting food arose.

While durability of food had always been the limiting factor throughout the centuries, this changed dramatically with inventions such as refrigerating devices. And with more and more villages turning into cities, the demand for feeding people, who couldn’t feed themselves anymore, grew as much as never before in human history. With the introduction of railway tracks, transportation times for food and other goods from one place to the other decreased significantly. Despite huge progress in terms of technology, the early 20th century was still shaped by scarcity of supply in many regions and countries mostly due to two world wars.

This changed drastically in the 1950’s when food suddenly became a lifestyle product that most people in the Western world could afford in excess.

Looking at the numbers for the food & beverage industry in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) reveals the following picture.

Despite being one of the top5 exporters of food & beverages in the world, the industry in Germany is shaped by many small and medium size companies. Those companies create revenues of about €185 billion. From these €185 billion, €123 billion are consumed within the country and €62 billion are shipped aboard. Some of the famous German food products are its various local beers, breads and sausages.

The market size of the swiss food & beverage industry amounts to €39billion. (source: statista, data for 2018). In contrast to Germany and Austria, Switzerland is home to one of the major food&beverage players globally – Nestlé. With global revenues of about €87 billion (2018), it more than doubles the number of its home base Switzerland.

Some of the famous swiss food products are its various cheeses and its chocolate products.

The Austrian market has a size of about €18,5 billion (source statista, data for 2018).

Some of the famous Austrian food products are its Vienna Schnitzel and various flour-based dishes such as Marillenknödel.

Today’s challenges and trends for producers of food and beverages are diverse:

Challenge 1: Health-conscious consumers

One trend is clearly about more healthy foods as consumers are more aware of the effects of sugar and other ingredients on their personal health and the costs for society as a whole.

This element leads to consumers demanding more organic and less processed food. There is also a demand for “free of” products such as sugar, gluten or milk. This trend can be traced back to health conditions such as lactose intolerance on the one hand and to lifestyle reasons on the other. In both cases, consumers demand to know what’s inside the product they buy. Governments around the world have started to introduce various regulations in this regard. A popular example are traffic light food labeling systems that have the purpose to indicate how healthy and nutritious a product is.
Another aspect of this challenge is about replacing meat products by plant-based solutions.

Vegetarian and vegan lifestyles are becoming more popular, not only in prosperous urban centers around the world. And in terms of carbon-footprint, plant-based food causes less carbon footprint than animal meat.

Challenge 2: Food related waste

Directly related to sustainability is the goal of reducing food waste. Food waste is created either by throwing away available food or food packages that can’t be recycled properly. There is a growing pressure on companies to reduce the environmental impact of their products and packages – both by reducing the classical waste and by introducing more sustainable packaging solutions and recycling processes.

Challenge 3: Transparent Supply-Chain practices

Yet another large challenge almost all manufacturers, especially food & beverage producers, currently face is supply chains transparency. This topic can be broken down into two main elements. One element is the treatment of human workforces, not only but especially in the countries of origin of the raw ingredients (e.g., coffee, cacao, plant oil).

The other element is the treatment of animals (such as cows, pigs, chickens etc.) in the slaughterhouses around the world.

Challenge 4: Climate change in Supply Chains

Supply Chains not only have to be managed along the lines of efficiency and responsiveness, but also in terms of their carbon footprint. There is a growing concern in the public about the negative impact on global food supply chains. One concern is about the question how land is used? (e.g., as rain forest or as farm land). Another concern is related to the energy demand in transporting goods around the world based on cost efficiency reasons.

As the climate challenge continues, food and beverage manufacturers will need to rethink, re-evaluate and re-design their production and supply networks.

Challenge 5: Digitization

Digitization is a mega trend as it effects all industries, some faster and more visible than others. Key question for manufacturers of food and beverages are related to the use of more digitized production processes and also on how they can use e-commerce channels to strengthen their position vis-à-vis the retailers. With these various trends and pressures that food and beverage producers face, there is both a lot of opportunity for growth and risk of falling behind.

It will be those companies who can best adopt to the various requirements by aligning their business models and ways of working who will succeed in the decades ahead.

Overall, food & beverage manufacturers can benefit from my effective coaching approach by shaping leadership teams that effectively address these challenges, both from the business aspect of the challenge (how can we be profitable?) and from the human aspect of the challenge (how can we provide the best possible leadership?)

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Food Retail

Until the end of the 19th century inhabitants of villages and cities in Europe and the United States usually walked from their home to the places where they bought food. This could have been a long endeavor as they needed to stop in different independent locations depending on their product list of groceries to buy (dry groceries, meat, fish, vegetables etc.). And because they didn’t have refrigerators at home as we do today, they had to go out frequently whenever they needed new products.

A major change that shaped the transformation from small corner shops to large supermarkets was the introduction of brands by the food manufacturers and an increase of choice for consumers. Before brands existed, wholesalers were mostly concerned about convincing the local shops to buy their products that these shops would then sell to the end consumers. With the self-service concept and brands in the shelves, the decision making shifted to the end consumers.

What initially started as a concept in the US soon began to spread across Europe. As people became more mobile and driving a car replaced walking, larger markets opened outside the city centers. And while prices for consumers decreased, retailers started to introduce shelf fees as a lever to generate money from the competing brands of the manufacturers.

Another business model that shifted away from shelf fees and focused on low procurement cost came up with the introduction of hypermarkets such as Walmart in the US or Carrrefour in France. In a next phase hard discounters such as Aldi and Lidl entered the scene. A key difference that characterized these new players was an increased use of private labels as opposed to the brand strategies of hypermarkets and traditional supermarkets.

Looking at current numbers for food retailers in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), we encounter a high degree of concentration. In Germany, the five biggest players – Edeka, Rewe, Schwarz-Group (Lidl & Kaufland), Aldi and Metro account for over three quarters of the total market (source: Nielson Tradedimensions, data for 2019). The German market is characterized by a large percentage of sales going to hard discounters such as Aldi and Lidl (a little less than half) The size of the market amounts to €210 billion and includes non-food items that these companies sell in their stores next to the food & beverage products.

In Switzerland the market volume amounts to €26 billion (source statista, data for 2018). Switzerland’s two biggest food retailers, Zurich based Migros Group and Basel based Coop have worldwide annual revenues that are very close the overall market size in Switzerland.

Migros is also the biggest employer in the country with about 57k employees in Switzerland. The market size of the Austrian food & beverage retail industry amounts to €24 billion and is also characterized by a high level of concentration. More than 90% of the market belong to four companies – Spar, Rewe, Lidl and Hofer (part of the Aldi Group).

What’s shaping the development of the food retail industry today?

New technology

There is a lot of new technology emerging. Online shopping allows consumers to buy food products from the comfort of their own home and is already established in many large cities around the globe.

In addition, we can observe a trend from cash to cashless and in a next step eventually from cashless to purely digital money on a blockchain. In store check-outs will become faster and less labor intensive. Delivery approaches might shift to autonomous vehicles or drones that deliver the products to the customer’s door step.

Customer data

With the gold of the 21st century being data, retailers are focusing heavily on obtaining more data on their customers purchasing behavior. One way they do this is to interact with customers through Apps that prov