Revolution at Oticon A/S - the Spaghetti Organization - publié le 13/07/2010

Résumé du document

Lars Kolind has been hired in Oticon at a very delicate moment of the company's life. After being very successful in their niche market, in the 1980s, the company is losing money and market shares to its competitors. The board of directors decided to take action, and hired this guy, who never had worked in the industry of hearing aids, Lars Kolind. Lars Kolind has made miracles as the the head of the company. He cuts all the costs he can, reduces losses and makes the company profitable in just 6 months. Empowered by his success, Lars Kolind decided to go further and propose a brand new vision for the company, not on the short-term basis, but on a long-term view. Lars put in place a whole new management structure that permits people to share information as fast as they can, to give the best to every one by working on different projects at the same time, and being rated not in their position in the hierarchy, but in the work they have done, and what they bring to the company.

Extraits

[...] Revolution at Oticon The Spaghetti organization 9 By this quick description about the way of managing people of Lars Kolind, let's try to identify to which kind of leadership does it report. Figure The Leaderships8 If we have to put Lars Kolind in a case, it will certainly be “Leader achievementorientedness”. In fact he feats the entire requirement to be a leader of this class. He sets goals that were challenging for the company, with a complete change of management organization. [...]

[...] Even if in the mind of Oticon everybody feels equal, I do not want to be equal to everyone. It could seem that it is a very individual vision of working, but there is none. I mean by this sentence, that I like to be rewarded for the work I have done and by fact being more important in the company and taking decisions that impact the company more and more during my career evolution. I will do the same for the people I work with, so it seems to me that it is an individualistic point of view IMD (1994) Revolution at Oticon the Spaghetti Organization (Condensed) p Revolution at Oticon The Spaghetti organization 15 Conclusion By implementing its vision Lars Kolind makes the company profitable again and regain its market shares lost to competitors. [...]

[...] Moreover, in order to definitely succeed to his project, Lars decided to build a whole new building, that everything inside is think to create interactivity between people at every levels. As say before, we can read in the study case 2 IMD (1994) Revolution at Oticon the Spaghetti Organization (Condensed) p IMD (1994) Revolution at Oticon the Spaghetti Organization (Condensed) p 11. Revolution at Oticon The Spaghetti organization 7 II. How would you define leadership in an organisation like Oticon? As says in the presentation of Alice D. Peinado4, leadership is a concept that embraces more than management practices. [...]

[...] This company also known, as the Spaghetti organization is Oticon. This company present in no more than 100 countries is selling hearing aids to people who need it. This company has been in the past very successful, but has known a reverse in the 1980's finishing by the election of a new CEO: Lars Kolind. This new CEO come to the company with a vision for it, that lead to the surname the “Spaghetti organization” due to the flexibility he implement in the company. [...]

[...] When Lars enter the company, he first have a short term vision that was in order to make the company profitable again, in order to be able to implement his long-term vision that he has for the company. Lars has a long-term vision for the company that go through a redefinition of the way of doing business and managing people. Kolind want to improve creativity (see question and to reach his goal put in place a whole system designed to raise creativity. This point of view corresponds directly to the first sentence that use the “full utilization of the knowledge in detail and skills of 9 Alice D. [...]