A lot has changed for us in recent years. We are continuously developing our managers and employees, have continued to develop our service areas and have grown to a healthy level to around 80 colleagues. 

At the same time, our focus on people and the culture in our agile company has remained the same. We attach great importance to the personal development and self-determination of each employee. This means that employees are responsible for finding the right manager (we call them "partners") who can best develop them within the framework of our coaching leadership. 

Another effect is that we no longer get used to one manager and both managers and employees have to deal with themselves and a new partner again and again - this keeps us fresh and agile! The free choice of managers has been in place since 2018, when we reorganised Alpha IC into an agile company. In 2020, following the initial set-up in 2018, we had the election process technically supported for the first time by our sister company Serthoro GmbH with a specially programmed app. This ensured a fair and, above all, balanced election.


Although there have always been individual partner changes from 2020 to the present day, we wanted to completely reshuffle ourselves and extend the process to the employees of Central Services. We therefore conducted another election in May 2024 using our enhanced app. The weighting of the criteria of interdisciplinarity in the teams, different profile levels and cross-location collaboration was determined by the colleagues themselves in one of our quarterly future dialogues back in 2020. In addition, the management span of max. 6 employees per manager should not be exceeded. However, the most important criterion remains the individual manager desired by the employee. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

The expansion to include employees in Central Services was a logical consequence of our management culture of coaching management. This means that these colleagues can now freely choose their coaches in addition to their disciplinary managers - the leads. This is the next step in the personal development of all our colleagues.



Partner selection process

Two weeks before the selection process, the partners were able to introduce themselves and their leadership style and personality to the employees in a joint online meeting lasting just a few minutes. This enabled our colleagues to decide who would be their preferred manager.

On 13 May 2024, each employee then had the opportunity to put the managers in their preferred order using a QR code and smartphone. The app's algorithm then automatically assigned the most suitable team combinations, taking personal preferences into account. It was another very exciting moment when the new team constellations gradually appeared on the screens in real time!

With Alpha IC, however, it is the person who decides and not the algorithm. This means that if a colleague was not satisfied with the manager's automatic assignment, he or she could subsequently adjust it in a personal discussion. We are pleased that this was only implemented in just under 10% of cases, as it means that the technical support provided by the app worked very well for the most part.



What happens after the election? 

The new interdisciplinary and cross-location teams will now take effect from July 2024, so that the partners still have enough time to get to know their new team colleagues and to discuss the requirements and developments of the former team members with the employees' previous partners.

We would like to thank everyone involved, especially Serthoro GmbH for their support in this election process and our colleagues, who have shown the necessary trust and willingness to change and are enthusiastically following this very unusual path. These are essential parts of our values and our corporate culture, which we live so consistently.

We are confident that we are constantly developing our agile structure, our cooperation and communication with each other through regular changes, including our choice of partners. 

Through our external communication, we want to bring innovative impulses for company development to the industry and encourage you to try out new approaches yourself. If you are curious or have any questions, just get in touch! We are happy to share our experiences!

 

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Richard Weller, Managing Director Alpha IC