You've introduced AI – but nothing has really become faster or better in the overall results.
The structures and ways of working have largely stayed the same. Now you're also paying for tokens and there's quite a bit of confusion in the organization about who is responsible for what the AI does...
everyone is talking about the AI Operating Model, but what is that supposed to be?!?
How I help
How I helpMy offer for companies
A transformation package tailored individually to you.
What's included?
- Training sessions
- Workshops
- Implementation inside a running initiative
- Materials
- Coaching
What it brings?
- more meaning & motivation
- more adaptability & future readiness
- more efficiency, lower cost & less waste
- more clarity & fewer conflicts
- less stress & less mental overload
You do NOT need me if …
Your organization does NOT need a transformation if the majority of these points are already lived reality for you:
- It is crystal clear what winning looks like, and missing targets always has consequences.
- One team or a group of several teams covers the entire end-to-end responsibility, with the customer at one end and the innermost backend at the other.
- Whether your teams build software or data solutions: the teams are small, have business experts on the team, and either the engineers talk directly with the customers/users/citizens or another person on the team does this — or actively works on finding out what customers/users/citizens want and need.
- For every initiative, hypotheses and kill criteria are formulated and regularly checked through experiments at short intervals, so the direction can be changed quickly if the assumptions do not hold.
- Even if you woke someone up in the middle of the night: everyone can recite the strategy in two sentences at most.
- Processes and structures are lean and customer satisfaction is rising steadily.
- Workflows are efficient and at the same time flexible enough to react quickly.
- Managers work as a team and are jointly accountable for the results of several teams.
- Clear, narrowly defined directives set the direction and are measured against KPIs in short iterations.
- Every software or data solution is understood as time-limited, with a rather short half-life.
- All initiatives across many teams are limited in number, so lead time is short and measurable results are delivered regularly.
- The learning of individuals is shared within the team and the learning of teams is shared across the organization.
- Everyone is clear on how AI can be used for the benefit of the customer/user/citizen in daily work.
- Motivation is high and comes from ambitious goals, the freedom to achieve them as a team, and clear ground rules that everyone follows.
- Career paths, incentives and workflows are all aligned along the value chain.
- All roles work on deepening both their business and their technology understanding.
- Lived rituals that fit the organization make the culture visible.
When you need me
Checklist — what are the signs that tell you your organization needs a transformation? The more of these symptoms you recognize, the more urgent your need to act:
- From the moment a helpful improvement for the customer, user or citizen is identified to the moment that improvement is live in production, weeks or months pass.
- Between an engineer and a customer, user or citizen there are several layers of managerial, coordinating and leading roles on several hierarchy levels.
- You can effortlessly fill a workshop with more than 30 people, most of whom want to have a say in what gets built — without the people carrying delivery accountability for it.
- In your organization, a career means climbing the hierarchy — leaving a team and managing people.
- Ask several random team members about the current strategy and you will get different answers.
- A major strategic change of direction is hardly possible spontaneously anymore due to historically grown structures and requires a long, laborious and exhausting effort — and by the time it happens, the strategy is outdated again.
- The org chart and the actual process organization together form a kind of matrix.
- There are tasks many people want to do, so several roles are already stepping on each other's toes — and then there are tasks nobody wants to do.
- A few people carry an excessive amount of responsibility, while most have a small fragment of responsibility, cut out of a larger context.
- Coordinating and leading roles from different areas sometimes have different or contradictory goals or ways of working.
- Classic project management methods are applied by gut feeling and individually.
- Classic project management methods turn into bureaucratic administrative overhead.
- Nobody wants to hear the word agile anymore; Scrum was introduced, but the agile values are not lived.
- Your teams only know a handful of methods and apply even fewer of them.
- Most delivery teams consist mainly of engineers or technical roles.
- There are strong dependencies between teams.
- Becoming a team lead is still an important career step in your organization.
- There are some conflicts in your organization that have become a real obstacle.
- Team members cannot resolve conflicts on their own.
- Sick days and turnover are high.
- In your organization, strategy means there are slides and meetings, but nothing beyond that.
- Managers hardly understand what engineers do.
- Engineers hardly understand what managers do.
- Terms like “failure”, “problem” or “mistake” are part of everyday language.
- The prevailing problem-solving strategy is to call a meeting with more than 10 invitees.
- The same topics keep coming up and the same problems are discussed again and again.
- Team members work on several things at once and are interrupted several times a day.
- Almost everyone feels that too much is happening at once and that calm and focus are missing.
- Reviews are either very technical, so business colleagues feel they get no value from them, or reviews are more or less just slides, so engineers feel they get no value from them.
- A Planning in your organization feels roughly like this, taking a restaurant as a metaphor: the restaurant guests order a four-course menu and are irritated by the construction noise, because alongside the restaurant operation a winter garden is being built. After the waiter had to ask several times because of the noise, the chefs first have to go shopping, because the menu included a dish that had not been discussed beforehand, so the ingredients are missing. Two chefs set off, while the other chefs get bored and therefore have to help on the construction site. As soon as the ingredients arrive, total hectic breaks out and nobody knows exactly where they are assigned. In the end there is too much meat and no sauce (nobody was responsible for it and it was not explicitly on the menu). By now the vegetables have been cooked to death. The restaurant guests are horrified: the food was not tasty and the construction site was an imposition. They disappear quickly, do not come back and prefer to order fast food. The construction site keeps growing and conflicts arise in the kitchen and between kitchen and service.
- You dream of a Planning running like in a star restaurant: the menu is well thought out, the restaurant guests order, the processes are clearly regulated and within no time the menu is ready. The guests are delighted, come back regularly and recommend you.
Test it yourself
Request my free guide to hypothesis-based risk management and use an AI of your choice to apply it to your initiative. The effort for you is minimal and you get an immediately applicable benefit.
Request the free guide to hypothesis-based risk management
For me, transformation includes
Mindset
Mindset is the beginning of everything. Our attitude determines how we shape the world of work, and we often hold inner beliefs we are not even aware of.
People at the center
People have to be at the center — the customer, the user or the citizen. Whatever software, data or AI initiative I run: losing sight of the customer is the beginning of the end.
Shared values
An organization needs shared values. Better a few of them, but lived every day in the culture.
End-to-end ownership
End-to-end ownership is the basis for good processes. As soon as I choose a structure that is not mapped end to end, structures slowly and steadily emerge over time that cost time, money and nerves without delivering any value.
Method repertoire
Everyone working in software, data or AI should have a repertoire of methods, ways of working and schools of thought to choose from. Choosing the right tool at the right time is the precondition for effectiveness and efficiency.
Learning organization
The goal is to become a fast-responding and learning organization. The outside world is volatile, complex and changes permanently. If an organization can no longer react to the outside world in time, it will eventually go under.
Organizational design
The organizational design has to enable and reflect all of this. Software, data and AI will soon be indispensable in every area. Any org chart that does not deliberately reflect points 1 to 6 will eventually become a real obstacle.
These are my topics. Whenever I say something about software architecture, data modelling or AI engineering, I always relate it to these seven points.
Getting to know each other, with added value
Choose a format in which we get to know each other better while you take away real value for your company:
What do we stand for in the AI age and what are our values?
A clear picture of the roots, the vision and the shared values of your company — and with it a clear orientation on what exactly you need in terms of AI, what has priority and what does not.
Learn more →AI strategy thought through from the customer
You know whether you are mentioned in AI at all and how different AIs reflect your company. And you have a clear picture of what your AI strategy would look like thought through from the customer, as the basis for aligning your internal processes.
Learn more →Identifying end-to-end processes, with AI and for the customer's benefit
Your end-to-end processes, from the customer to the deepest technical layer, are identified and made visible — including the places with potential for optimization and the question of where AI makes these processes better for the customer.
Learn more →Lean in practice: streamlining workflows and organizational structures
A first impression of how you can apply Lean in practice: on one or two real end-to-end processes, with the places where waste occurs and an idea of what a system looks like that continuously learns to improve itself.
Learn more →Leadership teams for agile ways of working
You understand how to shape your organization with simple means so that everyone works in the same direction: with cross-functional teams and leadership teams that jointly own the dimensions of leadership, which leadership dimensions would have to be distributed how, and who would be part of the leadership team. That takes load off managers and enables far faster decision-making.
Learn more →Timeless leadership and project management methods
An overview of the methods that matter for your company — and a basis for deciding which of them you want to integrate into your existing ways of working.
Learn more →Hypotheses and experiments for becoming a learning organization
In the workshop we look at an area of your organization that is difficult for you to plan, and brainstorm experiments that cost little but bring you real insights. We work out how you can integrate this practice to become a learning company. At the same time, this reduces the fear of mistakes, because by repeatedly practicing work with hypotheses and experiments, you as an organization build more trust in yourself and your employees.
Learn more →Would you like to learn more about the workshops?
How does it work?
Free initial call
You share where you stand. I listen, ask questions — and we find out what you need.
Introductory workshop
Pick one of the formats and I tailor it to your company. You leave the workshop with insights and materials for implementation and can get started right away.
Want to continue working together?
You tell me what you want and I put together an offer with a concrete scope, concrete outcomes and a binding price.
Have questions?
My offer for individuals
Do you find these topics interesting, but your role does not allow you to commission a transformation? That is not a problem! I will soon also offer training and coaching for individuals.
Test it yourself
Ask an AI of your choice whether it could put together a training course on “Stakeholder management for engineers”. Then request my free training on that topic and compare the quality.
Request the free training “Stakeholder management for engineers”
About me
About me
Bianca J. Schulz
Easy to work with, friendly but direct. I'm someone who takes ownership.
Self-employed for 20 years. My clients have included Microsoft, Allianz, Qualcomm, BMW, AstraZeneca and the public sector. You can find a full list of my projects here.
Updates
UpdatesLearn more
It Is Crystal Clear What Winning Looks Like – and Losing Always Has Consequences
An AI-ready organization knows what winning means for its customers and what happens when an initiative loses. A look at platforms, football, and seven disciplines.
Read article →
Let's start exploring how we can build AI-ready organizations
My mission is to make complex organizations AI-ready. A restaurant metaphor shows why that takes more than AI tools – and which seven disciplines belong together.
Read article →Can you do simple maths?
Why limiting work in progress is basic mathematics – and why data and AI organizations should start doing less at the same time.
Read article →