The art of crafting Bechtle’s Vision 2030.
Visions have multiple stakeholders, including customers, vendor partners and shareholders. In essence, however, it is a company’s employees who transform this envisaged future into reality. Ideally, they identify with the vision’s aims and are involved in creating it.
At Bechtle, 40 participants from various departments did just that, representing a slice of our staff’s diversity. Attendees at the kick-off event, held in the monastery in the southern German town of Bad Wimpfen, worked together with the Executive Board to lay the vision’s foundation.
What time period would the vision span? By when should it be fully formulated, and what aims should it contain? Should it specify figures or forge a strong sense of purpose—or, better yet, both? After two intense days, they had cleared the path for six working groups to begin their sessions. During these sessions, ideas for the vision were brainstormed and evaluated. The results were consolidated and crafted into a vision “prototype” by the Executive Board. This was then returned to the working groups, who tested and honed it to perfection. Some six months and 12 rounds of optimisation later, 60 hours of work had been completed. One final round was undertaken to finalise the vision. Each word was carefully weighed to ensure that Bechtle’s Vision 2030 was flawless. The Executive Board then shared it with Bechtle’s employees in a live stream on 14 December 2018.
Bechtle has been consistently setting new goals for itself. We have formulated a forward-facing vision every ten years, starting in 1988. These visions have always been challenging, but we have met each one with astounding accuracy.
Company visions don’t generally define a target margin. But since when has Bechtle followed the crowd? Moreover, Bechtle has always set quantitative goals. A 5% EBT margin provides security, as it allows us to freely shape and invest in our future. With no-one to answer to.