In times of a dramatically changed security environment, the German MoD has the reputation of being extremely complex, slow to act, inflexible, and very hard to reform. In this exercise, we will have a closer look at post World War II organizational reforms, root causes for historically grown complexity and the question why current reforms seem to fail and how this possibly could be changed. We will start by looking at the history of reforms in post World War II German military, analyze motivations and their goals. The most recent reform in Germany will be compared with historic to recent similar initiatives e.g. in UK, NL or Switzerland, reflected with the goals set in white papers by these organizations. In a block exercise facilited in PwC Strategy&’s Experience Center premises in Berlin, we will then analyze critically the result of Germany’s latest reform, including persisting historically grown organizational complexity, complexity along key military and supporting decision processes, and critically assess the resonance and impact of the reform. To further identify root causes for unremoved complexity, we will deep dive on underlying cultural aspects and compare them to principles and requirements of agile organizations as well as agile methods in military (“Military Design Thinking”) and their requirements. We will conclude by summarizing our findings and deriving key change implications to answer the question: can the German MoD be reformed?
- Kursleiter*in: Dr. Germar Schröder