Consultancy
“MANS looks beyond the issues with which you’re struggling as a group”
An initial discussion at MANS resulted in the advice to Anky Veldman, member of the Executive Board of the ROC Aventus (Regional Education Center), that she had contacted the right consultancy but not the right ‘department’.
“We first thought of starting with Jane Zuidema”, explains Ankie Veldman, whose responsibilities include human resources management, marketing, communication and education. ‘But a detailed discussion showed that it would be best first of all to look at the organizational aspects with Huub van Heeswijk and Remco Liefting. We didn’t even have to change our ambitions so much, but we found that we had to approach a number of aspects differently. For example we saw that better contacts with the second management layer would lead to operational improvements. The original idea was that the Executive Board had to leave the contact with the management teams to the local directors. We’ve now given up that idea and that appears to be working well.”
“Did this process mean a shake-up for our organization? Yes, but it wasn’t too harsh. What MANS is good at is showing you new ways to work while you’re still in control of what’s happening yourself. During the sessions we never had the feeling that the people from MANS were walking around and just telling us what we were doing wrong.”
The next step is the implementation of the changes in the organization. Anky Veldman: “Sixteen directors have to work in a changing organization, in which different competences are required for their functions. We’ve just started on this phase with MANS, and we’ve already seen all the expected reactions.”
Switching quickly
Looking back on the partnership with MANS, Anky Veldman is ‘very satisfied’. “MANS is able to look beyond the issues with which you’re struggling as a group. Huub and Remco have the know-how to quickly identify problems, even if they aren’t familiar with your specific working field. They can also switch quickly between issues like ‘How do you feel about it yourself?’ and ‘What’s good for the organization’.”
ROC Aventus is a regional education center with locations in The Netherlands in Apeldoorn, Deventer and Zutphen at which a staff of more than 1,400 provide MBO (intermediate vocational education) courses to more than 15,000 students.