Change starts small.
It only sticks if it comes back every week.
The year programme
Your company runs.
As long as you do.
An operating system for owner-led companies with 10 to 200 employees. Introduced within twelve months — until your leadership team runs it without us.
How you notice it
The company has grown. The structure has not.
Seven sentences from first meetings with owners. If you recognise three of them, this page is for you.
Everything lands on your desk
Including the decisions you handed over long ago. Your door is open, and so someone is always standing in it.
Two versions of the truth
Ask five managers where the company stands and you get five answers. Every one of them is honest.
The plan lives in a file
The annual goals sit in a presentation from January. Monday does not follow it.
Five meetings, little outcome
Topics are discussed and postponed. You hear what mattered afterwards, in the corridor.
The numbers arrive too late
The accounts show in April what went wrong in January. By then the quarter is over.
Holiday only with the phone on
Two weeks away would be possible in theory. In practice you stay reachable — and you know exactly why.
Two bosses, two directions
There are two or three of you at the top. Staff know whom to ask to get the answer they want.
This is not a leadership failure. It is a missing structure — and structure can be introduced.
What is different afterwards
After twelve months
Five levels. On each one you recognise the difference by something concrete — not by a feeling.
You as the owner
You work on the company instead of in it. You take fewer decisions, and the ones you take are the ones only you can take.
Your leadership team
One goal, one definition of success. Everyone knows which result belongs to them and to no one else. Conflicts are settled in the room, not afterwards in the corridor.
Every employee
Everyone knows the number their work is measured by, and what counts this quarter and what can wait.
Your week
One leadership meeting instead of five. Ninety minutes, same agenda, same time. Topics are closed instead of postponed.
Your numbers
Five to fifteen metrics, weekly, each with a name behind it. You spot problems in the week they arise.
The goal is not that we stay. The goal is that you no longer need us.
How it works
Six components, one year, one rhythm
A company runs on six components. In the first year we make each of them strong — in this order.
1
Vision
Where to, what for,
by which rules
2
People
Who owns
which result
3
Numbers
Five to fifteen,
weekly
4
Issues
Solved instead of
discussed
5
Processes
Six to eight workflows,
written down
6
Execution
90 days, rhythm,
completion
The year
Beforehand
online + ½ day
Assessment: the three places to work on first
Start
3 days
Vision, accountability chart, roadmap, scorecard
Quarter 2
1 day
Close goals, solve issues, forecast, staffing check
Quarter 3
1 day
As in quarter 2, plus documenting the processes
Annual planning
2 days
Review, sharpen the target picture, set the next year
In between: monthly one-to-one CEO sparring · hotline at no extra charge · facilitated leadership meetings until the rhythm runs on its own.
Expectations
An operating system cannot be delivered
It is introduced, and the larger part of the work happens between the meetings — at your end.
ODC supports you
- Preparation, facilitation and follow-up of all meetings
- Tools, templates and materials for the team and its meetings
- Straight feedback, even when it is uncomfortable
- Hotline — a short line, at no extra charge
- CEO sparring, monthly and one to one
Your leadership team delivers
- Full attendance, all day, without side meetings
- Filling in the scorecard every week — by the people accountable themselves
- Actually closing the quarterly goals within 90 days
- Running the weekly leadership meeting yourselves, including without us
Why not a workshop
A workshop brings the issues to the surface. Nothing more.
What holds is the weekly rhythm afterwards — and it only holds if someone from outside follows up for a year. That is why we do not sell workshops. We introduce a system over a year.
Investment
How much it costs
Two figures, so you know the order of magnitude before we talk.
Assessment
€500
Survey online, evaluation in half a day. Credited in full against the year programme.
Year programme
€1,750 / month
€1,500 for the first year; €1,500 starting in the second year. All workshop days, CEO coaching, and hotline support are included.
Deep-dive modules and interim work are billed separately. You get the overview when we talk.
Who does this
Oliver Dietrich
Managing owner of ODC Management GmbH. More than 25 years as a employee, interim manager and consultant. Co-founder and CEO of FreshDetect GmbH — seven million euros raised, twenty employees, international sales, and closed down in the end because the technology did not scale.
Anyone who has never watched a good plan break against reality underestimates how much structure a company needs to survive something like that.
Frequently asked questions
What owners want to know first
Who is this not for?
Companies with more than two hundred employees. Owners who want to delegate the programme instead of taking part themselves. And teams with unresolved employment-law conflicts — those belong settled before we start.
How much time does it take?
Seven workshop days a year, spread over four dates. Plus ninety minutes a week for the leadership meeting. That meeting replaces meetings you already have — usually more fall away than are added.
What happens after the first year?
Ideally nothing that concerns us. The team runs the system alone. Those who want to book a second year with fewer dates; those who do not still have everything they need.
We have been through strategy processes that led nowhere.
Probably because nothing followed them. The difference is not the workshop, it is the rhythm afterwards — and the fact that someone from outside follows up for a year.
Does the whole leadership team really have to take part?
Yes. An operating system only the owner understands is not a system, it is one more dependency. Four to ten people is the right size.
There are several shareholders — does this work?
Yes, and usually that is exactly why things are stuck. The condition is that all shareholders active in the business take part. A shareholder who is not in the room but objects later will topple any structure.
What if it does not fit?
Then we say so after the assessment. It costs €500 and commits you to nothing. We prefer a clean no to a year nobody wants.
One conversation. Thirty minutes. With you alone, to begin with.
We clarify what this is about for you and whether the programme fits. If it does, ninety minutes with your leadership team follow. After that you decide whether the assessment follows, and only then whether we go through the year together.
Or write me one sentence about what is stuck: info@odc-management.com