WÜRTH Taiwan | Employee-focused Strategy Workshops for a More Successful 2023
WÜRTH Group is a family-owned wholesaler of technical services based in Künzelsau, Germany with an annual turnover of 17.1 billion EUR (2021) and over 80,000 employees operating in more than 80 countries worldwide. At the end of 2022, the branch office in Taiwan asked us to run two Corporate Training Workshops for them during their annual end-of-year event: one whole-day leadership session for the leadership group of 40 and one inspirational, afternoon session for 300 personnel. As Corporate Trainers Scandinavian Designers’ roles included the whole range of Facilitation, Expert, Mentoring and Coaching.
Our job was to support the leadership and top management group to upgrade WÜRTH Taiwan to the NextStep©. We used our 40 years of experience as consultants, the conceptual strength of our ‘positive change management’ development models and our experience in corporate consulting and training to shift WÜRTH Taiwan toward a more empowered, effective, engaged and future-ready organisation.
To help strengthen WÜRTH Taiwan in the market, we focused on Value Creation in both the Leadership and Employee Sessions. To prepare for the events and help WÜRTH Taiwan to formulate their NextStep© Strategies, we did extensive background research on the company and operations in both Taiwan and the worldwide Group. We focused especially on company culture, brand identity and strategic goals as well as management structures, market positioning, employee engagement, future service profile and communication blocks and bridges.
To support the participants through steps of the Leadership Day we produced an 18-page workshop manual with exercises, inspirational material, change models, discussion points, a workshop map, and space for feedback.
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The Leadership Day: “Putting the Heart back in Würth Taiwan, Making a Better Future – Together” was structured as a ‘WÜRTH Clinic Day’ to engage the participants in identifying ‘Corporate Health Issues’ and ‘Communication Gaps’. Following the NextStep© methodology the aim was for participants to work in teams across professional barriers to find Future Focused solutions. The goal was to make MindShifts© together that would enable them to understand and close MarketGaps©.
In the morning section, after an ‘Icebreaking Game’ Scandinavian mentored the teams to analyse both internal organisation management and the external market ecosystem to identify and review issues. Teamwork spotlighted especially 1) Gaps&Shifts|Leads&Lags© and looked for Causes&Effects© between strategies and operations both worldwide and in Taiwan, and 2) challenges of FutureFocus© and issues of awareness, preparedness and actionability in Taiwan.
In the afternoon section we facilitated a shift from sales thinking to solution and strategic thinking. The Clinic Day ended with discussion of Scandinavian Designers’ step-by-step ‘5S + 1 Upgrading Grid’ roadmap to support the leadership group’s thinking when mapping strategies for the future.
The Employee Session: “WÜRTH Discovering the Brand Spirit | employee-focused strategies to reach the goals for 2023” was concentrated on facing Future Challenges, increasing Brand Value, and on transitioning MindShifts© that could support especially salespeople to create Added Business Value and the sales and marketing department to build new market niches.
Two important sections were 1) about responding to ever-increasing Market Stress for the salesforce with an explanation of the causes, and 2) sharing a simple sequence of NextStep© concepts to help employees upgrade the value of their daily interactions with clients and customers from a traditional ‘Products & Sales’ focus to an updated ‘Innovation Services’ perspective that can upgrade the WÜRTH message in the market. The session ended with an introduction to the new WÜRTH future-focused, ‘Sustainability Management’ strategy that outlines how WÜRTH plans to continuously innovate and upgrade its market to leave the employees with an inspiring vision of their company’s future.