Alice in Wonderland?: A Different Approach To Organizational Change
Alice in Wonderland?: A Different Approach To Organizational Change
Alice in Wonderland?: A Different Approach To Organizational Change
1. Company’s Background
2. Emma’s Background
3. Managing People and Strategy
4. Improvements Made
5. Another Challenge?
Companies Background
Business Progress :
- Acquired by Dutch National Airways in 1928 and Further acquired by
Royal Neerlandia (engaged in container shipping services) in 1986 for
the purpose of providing one stop transport services to its clients.
1986
- Appointed Peter van Dijk as Managing Director in 1986 and improving
the financial condition, but later transferred to Transuni, another
Neerlandia subsidiary;
1997
- Later merged with Norsun Container Shipping, as a result of loss from
over capacity of sea container shipping, to improve operational efficiency
Companies Background
Family Background
• Born in 1959 in the Netherlands
Not the real person
Intended only for illustration • Father is a technical engineer and mother is a social worker
• At age 18, Emma went to Seattle for an exchange program and worked
at a shipyard
• Signed up for the Maritime Technology studies at the TU Delft.
• During her study, also had her own engineering company
• Stay for one year to work for the Indonesian government halfway of her
studies
• Professional Background
• First heard about Neerlandia during the company’s Spice Race, a sailing
adventure
• Apply for Management Trainee and only interested if she could go abroad
• Started as MT in 1986, moved up as Trade Manager Neerlandia Lines in
Hong Kong in 1989, Commercial Manager in Singapore in 1990, and GM
in Rotterdam from 1992 to 1995.
Emma’s Background
Profile
- Listener type of person
Strength
- Low profile & easy going
- A person who love new challenge and adventure
- Insightful woman
- Straight forward
- Integrity
- Great Commitment to the job
- Strong in logical thinking (as an engineer)
- Sensitive and strong in intuition
Weakness
- Impatient
- Opinionated
Not the real person
- Conflict avoidance Intended only for illustration
Managing People and Strategy
Emma’s concept in focusing on people
“People are not asset. People are people and they are especially important in a business
like ours. They are the most important part of business”
Emma’s started a program to build trust and bring the people of LVV together.
– Align LVV Managerial personnel who shares the same vision
with LVV team vision
• Change several managerial personnel who are not share the same vision
• This management team reshape is intended to build trust within the
management team
• Trust is an foundation for LVV management to work as a team
Culture changes must be start from top management and gain
commitment from top management for the changes process in LVV
– Building trust between LVV people
• Emma’s encourage LVV people to be straight forward and share his
feeling (Feeling are fact’s)
• Emma’s give and example and become a role model of being a straight
forward person
By building straight forward culture will help to create transparency, build
trustworthiness between employee, bring up any existing issue and solve
the problem on the spot
Managing People and Strategy
– Training on self assessment
• Organized a seminar in behavioral issue to start a self awareness process
by their own account
• Started a change process in LVV by inviting consultant to facilitate the
difficult meeting lying ahead
To support re-shaping organization culture into trustable environment
– Improve LVV strategy
• Created a new service slogan “LVV: A pleasure to do business with”
• Break the tradition and increase LVV service price.
• Improved LVV service quality level by training and re-educating sales and
marketing people
• Focus in appropriate customer segment
Price increase supported with improvement in quality level make
LVV to be a price maker no longer a price taker in the market.
– Finding the balance
• Prioritize company objective and goal
• Develop a flat organization “People should be able to challenge their boss”
Build an open communication culture between subordinate and boss
Improvement Made
Improvement in Business
• Turnover LVV to a profitable companies
• Develop new image of LVV into a service business with customer in mind
“LVV: A pleasure to do business with”
• LVV became creative and innovative company, with Internet package
tracking and tracing service.
• Have 41% or market share in 1999.
Proposed Solution
1. Prepare internal LVV managerial to be independent
2. Develop an internal system for LVV to strengthen current culture to be a
core value of LVV
3. Being positive with the changes with a possibility to integrate broad network
of PAG with LVV strong position in Benelux
4. Taken a Merger with Post AG as new challenge to move up for the next
career ladder