Case Study:
CSC Germany

Context

Facing poor financial performance, CSC Germany, a division of the $17 billion worldwide IT consulting firm, tried to increase control and efficiency as a response and experienced a further decline. Then, the division’s leaders relaxed control and gave employees the freedom to do things as they saw fit, based on The Management Shift approach, advised by Professor Hlupic. The outcome was tremendous success.

Implementation

Responding to an initiative by its parent company to rethink management practices, CSC Germany experimented with a relaxed control approach (based on The Management Shift system) within the 60-employee Enterprise Content Management (ECM) unit. To encourage the development of a

knowledge culture, the division began using peer group supervision and relying on in-house coaches to do both one-on-one and team coaching at all levels. The results were so impressive that CSC Germany took the approach to its 34-employee IT Architecture Consulting unit.

Several months after the new initiative was implemented, ECM’s revenue rose sharply and continued upward. IT Architecture Consulting, which had been performing poorly, showed marked improvement on a productivity measure known as utilization in the months after control was relaxed.

Outcome

Achieved substantial increase in profit (from loss to 700% profit increase in about 12 months), increase in billability (from 55 to 75%) utilization (from 75 to 90%), increase of number of employee (from 38 to 49), some staff members re-joined two units after culture change was implemented. In addition, the client reported outstanding productivity improvements and employee motivation and engagement.