Industry 4.0 experts Forte in search of 3 new top experts (m/f/x)

Forte is one of Participium’s companies. Forte is the customer intimacy specialist among B2B management advisory companies and offers an end-to-end range of services, from strategic advice, sales & marketing planning, to sales, communication, staffing and training. Forte has noted that Industry 4.0 will shake up several sectors. And that this will thoroughly change the role of sales & marketing. Are you also convinced of this and do you want to make the changes happen?  Then this is your chance to jump on the Forte train …

Forte is looking at short notice for:

Transformation Architect. You have experience in B2B sales and marketing, you’ve held a middle management position in a division or business unit of an industrial organization for several years, but now you feel that the corporate world can’t provide you the freedom you need to really have impact in the coming years. Then this vacancy is worth your attention. The Transformation Architect ensures that our customers can (continue to) take the lead as Industry 4.0 shakes up their sector. You outline the transformation plan with which we redesign the strategy, the sales & marketing functions and even the internal organization of our clients.

We will gladly give you more information about this top job and the responsibilities that go with it, if you send a mail with a short motivation and very brief CV to diether.claeys@forte.eu

Change Lead. You have experience in B2B sales & marketing and you are an expert in getting the board members on board of a change process. At Forte, change processes starts from the market. We ensure that companies remain relevant and can take the lead, as Industry 4.0 thoroughly shakes up their sector. It is essential that you know how to lead a mixed team of colleagues and employees at the customer to results, regardless of the DNA of our customers. You will be responsible for planning the change project, monitoring and anchoring the changes, achieving and visualising the quick wins, adjusting the plan to a changing market and competition, etc. It is your responsibility that the margin of our strategic customers increases drastically over a period of two to three years.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. We will gladly provide you more information on this top job and the responsibilities that go with it, if you send a mail with a short motivation and very brief CV to diether.claeys@forte.eu

Business Developer “Utility Building & City Infrastructure”. Do you want to become our Mister or Misses Network? If you know the ins and outs of the intriguing new ecosystems “Utility Building and City Infrastructure”, this is your chance to help the leading mid-sized players in the world to stay relevant, now that Industry 4.0 thoroughly shakes up their industry. At Forte you can offer them a unique combination of customer intimacy, technology and advice. You are supported by the strong quality brand Forte to help you achieve that one goal our whole organisation is passionate about: increase the margin of the customers drastically in a few years’ time.

We will gladly provide you more information about this top job and the responsibilities that go with it, if you send a mail with a short motivation and very brief CV to diether.claeys@forte.eu

Are you our next business leader (m/f)?

Participium is on the lookout for two business leaders, for the recently created venture Idlegcy, and for Funky & C°, the new company that we are about to create to complete the branch that now holds the product company FunkyTime.

What is a business leader?

A business leader leads a business. Focus is on clients (and the adding of value to them) and people (and the motivation to lead them towards adding value for clients). Leading is inspirational, not hierarchical. We don’t like a boss at all. We like coaches and leaders.

What is important before considering to apply/forward?

You (or the person to whom you would consider to forward this post) should really like the idea of setting up an organization that creates a self-steering responsible culture. Results are important. Trust too. Passion even more.

Looks interesting (for the person you have in mind)?

• Here is the Idlegcy blog post for the business leader that is going to grow the company that has the technology to ensure all online accounts of a person are closed when a person dies.
• And here is the Funky & C° blog post for the business leader who wants to sketch the business plan for this new venture together with us, and then make that business become true.

Thank you for considering and sharing.

We are looking for a business leader (m/f) for Funky & C°

About Funky & C°

Funky & C° is on the drawing board, and we are looking for a business leader who wants to help us design, create, and start Funky & C°, the final corner stone of our “Funky” branch of companies.

Funky & C° wants to help services-focused companies, that are now introducing new ways of organizing and structuring their operations. Funky & C° wants to develop the software tools, dashboards, and cockpits that are required to allow teams to self-steer. Todays preferred sectors for Funky & C° are engineering & architecture, ICT, consulting, legal & finance, R&D services, marketing services — but of course, while drafting the business plan, we might discover that there are better market segments.

What’s so new? This kind of self-steering support software is far away from the classic ERP systems. That’s why a lot of modern companies are now basing their internal information flows on Excel. We want to provide them with much much better tools, and gradually create our own portfolio of software products that are needed for the self-steering organizations of tomorrow.

So now, we are looking for someone who wants to take the lead from the very early stage of the creation of this company.

Could that be you?

Do you want to start from (almost) scratch? Do you have the guts, the experience, the attitude, and the skills to create and run a venture and make our joint vision come true? The business leader of Funky & C° is not standing alone. He or she reports to the investment company (Participium), and is supported by our company creator Jan Lagast to build a great services team and design a future-oriented software portfolio.

We have two products already in another company of the Funky branch, and that’s where we also have a some early-stage clients. This allows you to scale-up much faster and run positive on a shorter term, than you would be able with a start-from-totally-zero start-up. Even more, we have the network to get in touch with self-steering companies, from day one, and there is Forte, that is also addressing your potential clients with a portfolio of advisory services that urge many companies to switch to self-steering mode.

About the role of the business leader

The business leader will first help us design the business plan, check the market, and assemble the first team. After the creation of the company, he or she ensures the Funky & C° potential reaches the clients and keeps our small team focused on making the promises come true. After a while, the business leader will hire more commercial people (in more countries), grow the team, and imply more and more partners to get more and more clients motivated. But first, we want you to develop a battle plan together with us and start rolling up the sleeves.

Are you an inspiring leader or a classic manager?

Our investors at Participium are promoting self-steering organizations. So they want the company Funky & C° to be organized accordingly, and proof that self-steering brings results. That means there is no classic hierarchy, no command & control structure, no boss-to-boss-to-boss reporting. We want the individual co-worker to be a team player and understand his or her responsibility in relation to the purpose of Funky & C° – leading to all of the collaborators to love their work.

Do you have the right experience?

You’d have to feel at ease with the combination of advisory services and IT project management in a services and knowledge worker business environment. You’d better also love adopting modern technologies of the web, such as web services, blockchain, and APIs. We need a hands-on start-up mentality at first, but beware, we also need you to grow the team and the business towards financial profit on a short term.

Sounds interesting? Get in touch with paul.indekeu [at] participium.com.

My search for participation and a self-steering organizational structure

Today, prof. Jan De Visch has given me the opportunity to tell my own story. My 50 years of searching. Searching for the right company structure to make people love their work. It has not been an easy search. Today, it seems bon ton to dislike Taylor and classic company hierarchies, but that was not the case when I started my business experience.

Over the years, I have been working on many of the levels of maturity that are described by Frederic Laloux in his book “reinventing organizations”. Red — the maturity level of the medieval lord who is the dominant boss of a group of power seekers — is great when you need a high quality and a high control over a very small team. Great for fast start-up, yet weak for scaling-up. That’s when the “amber” level can be much more successful. In amber, everyone has a rank because he or she got to that rank. Great for creating large churches and armies, but not great for output-driven organizations. We tried some of that by allocating people to a rank, but soon we discovered there were more ranks than people. Orange works better for knowledge workers, since that level rewards people for their merits. This is thé level for Industry 3.0 companies in which bosses design the organization and have workers do the job that was designed for them. Not a great system for knowledge work, though. The boss cannot be everywhere controlling everyone’s work. We experimented with ‘green’, by introducing co-ownership and having people feel they own part of the business. That worked much better. We had our people take responsibilities over the client’s results and take team responsibilities over the long term. But, when times were bad or changes were needed, this level of maturity stalls the company. So, I almost went back to “red” out of frustration, until I read about the color “teal”. And that’s where I felt back on track. This is the organizational concept that we are now looking into. And that’s why the journey organized by the Argonauts is so important for us.

Self-steering looks promising, but we are not there yet. We have a lot to discover, learn, and try. But what I already learned, is that there is no text-book always-right model for company organization. I also discovered self-steering is more wrongly than rightly understood. Self-steering is about getting and taking responsibility. It has nothing to do with ‘go as you please’. Although there is no daily boss or chief in a self-steering organization, for everyone from cleaning lady to general manager, there are much more people to take into account and ask for their opinion than ever before.

Forte vision creation

Today, we have the core staff of Forte in our meeting rooms. Goal is to understand the activity and added value of each team in their relationship with the market, as well as with their colleagues. Lego-expert Marc Sonnaert helps us to visualize these abstract concepts.

KVI as most important administrative measure

Today the ExCo meeting of Participium took place. Participium’s evolution is constantly observed through a number of parameters. One of these parameters is the particular status of the companies that it helps to grow.

The most important parameter is the Key Value Indicator (KVI). KVI is a method developed by the people at management consultancy Forte to check whether customers are satisfied with the added value that they were promised during the sales talk. The KVI not only measures ‘supplier delivery’, but also ‘client perception’.

Recurring business

KVI is the most important predictor of recurring business. After all, if customers realize that your company truly offers them added value, they will most likely want it again. This is so important for a healthy company that it is a crucial part of any advice Forte gives its clients. It is so important for a stable growth that Participium has decided to follow not only its own KVI closely, but that of every company it guides through growth.

Participium fixed capital fully paid up, ready for 2015

In December 2014, Participiums’ fixed capital is fully paid up. In the meantime the company has found –  in personal network – a few friendly financiers, who are willing to give financial support through a private loan with a term of 5 years. On the other hand, the umbilical cord that connected Participium to the parent company Forte was cut by buying back the shares.

Cautious growth

With those actions the company can finally start working on its own growth. In the first years, that growth will remain cautious. We consider this period to be the preparation phase for the real first growth spurt later on. During this preparation phase, the partners want to gain experience by rolling up their sleeves in some of the companies that were close to Participium from the start:

• management consulting and marketing agency Forte, which Participium wants to help grow strongly
• FunkyDev, software developer for specialized service providers and freelance knowledge workers

New companies

In the meantime Participium is working on business plans for three new companies. We are also open to collaborating with a company where we can realize the turn-around as an external partner. Moreover we dream of an investment fund that can leverage growth companies with a European dimension and a high level of participation.

Finally, we are going to further develop the Quarturn movement, to spread the Quarturn vision and inspire all stakeholders of companies with the idea that there is a different approach possible to investing, managing and working than the classical management theories inspired by Taylor. A lot of work to do in 2015, but Participium is well prepared.
Jan Lagast (chairman) and Herman Demarbaix (managing director)

The fastest grow happens when focusing on customer value

Participium was a guest at Forte with share#square on 23 October, where managing partner Jan Lagast explained the way Forte has been assisting the growth of companies for years. In essence, it comes down to this: if an organization from the highest top in the decision hierarchy, focusses on customer value, then growth can be achieved more easily. In fact, if the organization continues to maintain that focus and regularly communicates with its customers, then growth becomes almost self-evident. Forte’s earliest customers prove this case, because they have succeeded in realizing growth year after year.

Share # square itself is also starting to take off. With more than 30 participants, the place was stacked at Forte. It is becoming an interesting network.

Next year Participium is planning to have four editions. More news later on.

Free whitepaper on growth in b2b companies

At the end of last year, management consultancy company Forte published a whitepaper on growth for B2B companies. The document provides an effective way to reconnect with growth. Clue: it starts at the top, with a strategic focus on realizing customer value. On these few pages you will find out how your company can start thinking about growth again.

This whitepaper was given to all participants of the share # square event at Forte today. The document provided the attendees with a synopsis of the enthusiastic presentation of Jan Lagast (Managing Partner of Forte and Participium).

Quickly request your free copy!

An effective way to growth

On 23/10 Participium will be a guest of the management consultants at Forte. Jan Lagast will explain how a company can (re)connect with growth. A fascinating discourse of an hour and a half, with plenty of cases from Jan’s own experience.

Free inspiration for…

• entrepreneurs, managers and directors
• investment companies and bankers
• potential partners and external consultants
• representatives of government and civil society

Program Thursday, October 23, 2014

• 17:30 Reception and snack
• 18:00 Herman Demarbaix (Participium): Short presentation
• 18:15 Jan Lagast (Forte / Participium): Effective way to growth
• 19:30 Questions
• 20:00 Networking reception

Guest speaker

Jan Lagast is a partner and senior advisor at Forte. He regularly gives keynote sessions about growth based on his practical experience and, together with his team, he has realized growth doublings for numerous references.

Practical

Forte, Brusselsesteenweg 197, BE-9090 Melle.

Participation is free. Please do register in advance via e-mail.

After the registration, you will receive a notification of participation and the directions.