darTZeel
One man’s passion
The situation
darTZeel is one of the leading manufacturers of high-end audiophile amplifiers and associated equipment, with customers and distributers all over the world.
The company is known for its innovation in all areas of product development and design, as well as its uncompromising, passionate approach to bringing and emotional and human experience to the center of music reproduction.
The company is growing, it is successful, and the brand darTZeel encapsulate powerful assets, most notably the philosophy and attitude, values, and culture of the company, and off course the technical knowhow and IP.
As the company is growing, the management team has identified a need to manage the company in a more efficient manner.
The challenge
We realized we faced 3 practical challenges:
- There was a need to work on several topics: Roles, Process, Strategy, Governance and Culture. Either we work on all on a high level, or we pick on subject and go deep, in both cases it may not lead to action.
- As long as the roles in the team are not clear, the team will struggle with the task to build the management system. On the other hand, as the management system does not exist, the roles will not be clear.
- The team appeard a bit hesitant to engage, possibly because of a real and relevant concern that imposing rigor could stifle the culture of the company, which is the foundation of success up until today.
The solution
First, we listened. Trying to impose a standard approach of management in a company like darTZeel would not work.
We defined together what strategic management and planning could mean to darTZeel, and how efforts in this area could be designed to have a direct impact on short terms results.
The idea in brief was to take the key principles of management and apply them in a very practical and loosely structured process. We started small and connected the planning conversation to real situations at work.
We also decided to take an approach of learning by doing: During a one day off site we went through the motions of a high-level cycle of planning, designing, deploying and performing a first round of execution of planning both the long-term directions, and the short-term actions.
The impact
In one day the team:
- Changed the conversations and the way the exchanged on key topics of their business.
- Created a draft plan, with the cornerstones of what the future business will look like.
- Identified large and small actions to take immediately that advance both the business and the planning practice.
- Re-enforced a common vision of what the company will look like in the future, and what needs to be done to get there.
While there is still work to do, darTZeel has now set off to build great management capabilities, to match the excellence in music reproduction.
