SPARK

Companies invest heavily in strategies, transformations, governance and new structures.

Even so, the impact achieved often falls short of expectations. Decisions take longer than planned, new structures create additional coordination effort, and change delivers less impact than intended.

There is often an unexpected gap between what is designed and what actually emerges in the organisation.

The SPARK Reality Scan examines the factors that shape this gap and makes the organisation’s effective logic visible.

We analyse the factors that determine how the organisation actually makes decisions, collaborates and acts.

This includes, among other things:

• Decision pathways
• Responsibility logics
• Role understandings
• Governance and steering
• Informal influence structures
• Tensions between competing expectations
• Formal versus lived reality

The organisation’s effective logic

The Reality Scan shows:

• What actually drives the organisation
• Which tensions shape the organisation
• Where formal and lived reality diverge
• Which factors influence the ability to act and steer
• Which levers have the greatest impact

After the SPARK Reality Scan, there is clarity about:

• Why certain challenges persist
• Why change often has less impact than expected
• Where the capacity to act and steer is being lost
• Which levers have the greatest influence on the organisation
• What should be addressed first

The SPARK Reality Scan creates a shared understanding of the organisation’s effective logic as the basis for targeted and sustainable change.

The Reality Scan makes visible which factors actually drive the organisation.

SPARK Impact works on the identified levers. It begins by prioritising those levers and translating them into concrete workstreams.

Together, the work focuses on the issues that have the greatest influence on the organisation’s ability to act, decide and steer.

The aim is to reduce the gap between formal and lived reality and strengthen the conditions for effective decisions, responsibility and change.

SPARK Impact addresses the levers and tension fields identified in the Reality Scan. Depending on the mandate, individual, several or all levers are worked on.

Which topics are prioritised and in what order the work proceeds is defined jointly in the working design.

Typical workstreams:

• Decision and responsibility logics
• Steering and governance issues
• Collaboration across areas and functions
• Tensions between stability and change
• Tensions between speed, quality and risk

At the end of the collaboration:

• The prioritised tensions have been addressed
• Recurring problems lose their influence on the organisation
• Contradictory demands are managed more consciously and effectively
• Decisions, responsibility and implementation work together more coherently
• Relevant changes are implemented more robustly
• The organisation has a sound basis for its next development steps

After SPARK Impact

• Prioritised tensions can be addressed productively without triggering the same discussions again and again
• Contradictory demands can be taken into account at the same time without losing decision-making capacity
• Change remains workable even when different interests and expectations collide
• Difficult decisions can be made without causing lasting damage to collaboration
• The organisation remains capable of acting and steering even under high complexity