Witold Wisniewski's personal story

Years ago, I worked in a small consulting company. We helped our clients with preparing business plans, marketing strategies and dealing with management affairs (both on a strategy and operational level).

The clients were happy, however I was not. Why? The traditional business planning approaches were as follows:

• They took a lot of time and effort,
• They only worked well when the business, and its environment, remained unchanged.

Also, although clients could build an understanding of different options to solve problems, as well as how to approach them, they were not always able to execute or develop this understanding by themselves. So, I was not happy; from my perspective, It didn’t work well. The organisations did not become better organisations. Ultimately, there was no transformation process which could help them improve.

I have always been interested in building better organisations. Those who provide better value to clients, create more value for owners and provide space for personal development for employees. I’ve also always had a passion for the process of change; the transition process of becoming a better, more sustainable, flexible, effective organisation. A traditional business planning approach and managerial approach did not support this well.

In 2011, I came across some agile approaches to strategy and business design based on experimentation, and modelled on evidence-based decision-making processes. This was the shift in paradigm I was looking for. Here was something which cured all my pains; it sped up the process, innovated where possible, allowed me to pivot smoothly if needed, make better decisions and really involve people in the process.

But something else was missing. I quickly realised that a company can have a great, validated strategy and still not be able to execute it. This is because… well… there is a very human element in business. Of course, people are the most important part of a business – this is a well known truth. However, I fully realised there is another meta-level of ‘human-ness’ in business which needs to be designed and looked after as carefully as strategy: organisational culture. Here, a new space opened up for me. I had previous experience and intuitively, I understood this aspect well, but when I realised it fully, I was able to test a new systemic approach for this area of the organisation.

Personally, I’m a fan of a specific type of culture. This is a culture which offers the participants possibilities of co-creation, allows them to understand each other on a human level, focus on facts and merge freedom with accountability. With this culture, an organisation can become a platform of true collaboration and growth. I think this type of culture allows people within an organisation (and at the same time the organisations themselves) to thrive over time. And it doesn’t matter if we speak about insurance brokers who focus on sales, a startup who focuses on exploration of innovation or a software development company – these will all universally contribute to the future commercial success of the organisation.

In my profession, I’m interested in both aspects of the business: strategy and organisational culture. A proper execution of both, can secure long-term growth of any organisation. Personally I think that we (entrepreneurs, business owners) are continuing to face greater challenges.

We should not only think about profitability and building a better business, we should be able to see it in a broader context. By this I mean not only a specific model in the business environment, but a business ‘vehicle’ that affects the environment. We need to be able to design and implement businesses in a sustainable way. This is why my third area of professional interest is Sustainable Business Design.

We are also on the threshold of a technological revolution, which could completely change our world. Due to this, we need a human-centered approach even more, so as not to lose ourselves in technology, and make sure that it works to our advantage.

My clients choose me because:

✅ I work as their partner – I’m not a consultant. I am a person who stays with their business, accompanies them in transition and helps them to deal with anything which comes up.

✅ I am a status quo annihilator.

✅ I won’t tell you what you need to do in your business, but I will work with you to find out what needs to be done and will be your supporting partner in the process.

✅ I build organisational competences in such a way, that they will stay in an organisation, and I’m always looking to engage/facilitate what is already in the organisation, in order to build on it.

✅ I can partner with you to exploit (develop) your current business model or to explore new possibilities.

Let’s contacts with me, to see how can I help your organisation!