Page 173 - Harnessing the Strengths

156 ■ Servant-Leadership in the Intercultural Practice

ment. This is not necessarily so. Innovative use of human
resources can lead to better and more dynamic strategies,
which lead to more consumer satisfaction, which in turn
leads to more turnover and, thus, the opportunity for share-
holders to reinvest.

Codevelopment
The servant-leader understands that to create a sustain-
able result it is necessary to improve internal processes by
involving the client. Codevelopment programs, where sup-
pliers strategically align themselves with their clients, are
an excellent example of this. Applied Materials, a large
chip manufacturer, is one company that has effectively
used this approach. Its existence is completely dependent
on the codevelopment of systems with AMD and Intel. This
departs somewhat from the idea of “balance” in the Bal-
anced Scorecard. Where the Balanced Scorecard assumes
that value is added by scoring high on each of the four per-
spectives, Applied Materials believes in creating a win-win
situation through the mutual integration of values of the
past and future, and from the internal and external values.
(See Figure 11.4.)
The servant-leader is helped by an Integrated Score-
card to overcome the linear limitation of the Balanced
Scorecard.
Bang & Olufsen also rose to the challenge to get insights
into the evolving market in order to use this knowledge to
remodel its products. The problem was that creativity and
technical expertise had dominated the company’s attention,
while it had lost sight of development costs and commercial
aspects.
The board members of Bang & Olufsen formulated the
dilemma as follows: