Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG’s president and chief executive Gerard Schulmeyer has been busy since joining the company in November last year. Not only has he presided over the company’s continuing move back into financial health, which, in truth, had started before his appointment, changed the company’s official language into English in an attempt to make Siemens Nixdorf more globally aware, but he has also overseen the introduction of a new motto: We will make it happen!. This jolly statement, where the ‘it’ is interchangable depending on what particular area the company is addressing, is just one obvious manifestation of the Siemens Nixdorf Culture Change Programme, an elaborate business process reenginering scheme aimed at pulling the company together into a cohesive, world-wide force. Schulmeyer, who says employees are a company’s most precious asset, has also wholeheartedly backed the programme, which started in July last year when 30 members of staff were picked randomly and trained how to run a large conference. Faced with continuing, albeit reducing losses, Siemens Nixdorf turned to its staff to see if they had any insight into how the company could reverse its fortunes.
Upper echelons
It found that the staff’s biggest complaint was lack of communication between the upper echelons and the rank and file. And so the company asked the 30 members of staff to tell it how Siemens Nixdorf should be run, based on what their colleagues told them. The 30 facilitators, with input from the staff, identified 19 areas that the staff thought needed changing. In November, 300 opinion leaders were randomly selected from the staff, and briefed on the 19 areas. This group was then asked to think of tasks that could change the company within 90 days; they came up with 59 that would have almost immediate effects. Also in November, senior management was asked to sign up to be responsible for one of the 19 areas, and there are now 75 business leaders. One major development has been the selection of 21 employees, called Change Agents and all identified with badges that bear the We Will Make It Happen logo. Currently they are in the US for a 13-week course at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they are being taught how to lead fundamental change in a business. This group was nominated and is sponsored by its senior management and will also spend some time with US computer companies before returning to Germany to galvanise the company further.
By Maya Anaokar
For the rest of the staff a new development is the fortnightly hierarchy-free meeting, the Friday Forum, at which employees can discuss concerns and ideas. Each week all employees get an update from management on how the changes are going, part of management’s committment to improving communications. Each division of Siemens Nixdorf also gets regular visits from management, when staff are encouraged to express their concerns; Schulmeyer said that these meetings are not merely a matter of hearing good news but fora for some tough discussions, including the on-going redundancy plan. Last February, Nixdorf offered all its German employees a reduction of up to 50% in their working hours, with smaller cuts in pay, in attempt to cut the equivalent of 5,000 jobs without laying off any employees (CI No 2,345). But in November Siemens Nixdorf said it would still have to cut 2,000 jobs this fiscal year (CI No 2,542). Schulmeyer reckons there are around 1,000 members of staff seriously involved in the cu lture change programme and it definitely seems to be an exercise in changing the company without incurring the wrath of the still mighty German trades unions. Running through the changes at CeBIT a couple of weeks ago, Schulmeyer was keen to point out that one of facilitators came from the company’s works council. Schulmeyer said the company is through the culture change mobilisation phase, that is deciding what ought to be done and getting everybody used to the idea that change is coming, and is now working on the bu
siness baseline; that is concentrating on what it believes are its core competencies and businesses. Once this phase is completed, Schulmeyer said the company will have set objectives and deadlines to create the Siemens Nixdorf Vision. In the first quarter of 1996 these targets w ill be converted into hard budget figures. And while Schulmeyer and his team have worked hard to change the attitudes of those working for the company, the company itself has also been changed. Schulmeyer said: We had to make a major change because customers didn’t understand what the company was about. He said Siemens Nixdorf now understood what customers wanted and that this was basically a unified approach from all areas of a company.
Unbroken
The company has identified another four areas that it wants to develop: core competencies; delegation of responsibility and accountability to the lowest possible level within the company; unbroken processes; and to ensure that all customers have the same access to the company’s resources. There are now regional companies that function as independent units and are responsible for their own profits and losses. Schulmeyer is keen to push the company as a global one, shifting the emphasis away from its strong German base, to the rest of world. North America is a key area for Siemens Nixdorf now that it has bought Pyramid Technologies (CI No 2,615); Dick Lussier, former chief executive of Pyramid, will head this regional unit. Asia is another key area for the company, and it has a joint venture for manufacture of personal computers in China with Top Victory Electronics Ltd. The 10 business units, eight of which have had new directors in the last year, have been charged with helping the regions to gain market leadership. And things do seem to be picking up for Siemens Nixdorf: the first five months of this financial year have seen orders rise by 18%, faster, said the chief executive, than the rate at which the market was growing.
