Every transformation has a named sponsor. Fewer have a clear decision-maker. The two are assumed to be the same and often are not: the sponsor lends authority, while the decisions that shape the work are taken further down, in parts, by people optimising for their own area. What results is a programme that is well sponsored and weakly owned. It is worth asking early — not who is accountable for the transformation, but who actually decides when two parts of it disagree.
Independent Executive Advisory
Better decisions.
Stronger execution.
Jens Hartmann Advisory advises senior leaders on transformation, governance and technology decisions — from someone who has carried them as a senior IT executive, not only advised on them.
From the executive career
- Transformation
- More than €150 million, SAP S/4HANA, six operating entities
- Cybersecurity
- A €100 million portfolio, 200 people, critical infrastructure
- Grounding
- Dr. rer. pol., Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; computer science
Measured by the decision, not the advice.
Most advice ends with the recommendation. This advisory is measured by something harder: whether the decision actually got better — and whether it held up once it was put into practice.
What the work offers is independent judgment — nothing to sell on afterwards, no method to defend. It is taken on selectively, where an outside view will change the outcome rather than just confirm it.
When a question can no longer be settled in-house.
Four situations come up again and again. In each of them, the organisation can no longer settle the question with its own people alone.
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Transformation outgrows its steering.
The ambition is set and the work has begun, but the structure meant to carry it has not kept pace.
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Governance no longer matches the change.
The scale of the change has outgrown the decision rights and oversight that were set up for a steadier state.
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Technology choices now shape the operating model.
A technology decision is no longer technical: it settles how the organisation will run.
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A decision needs a view with no stake in it.
A critical phase calls for a discreet outside view — one with no stake in the internal version of events.
Judgment formed inside the role.
The judgment on offer was formed while accountable for executive decisions — not only while advising on them. It stays with the quality of the decision rather than the volume of activity, and keeps strategy tied to the conditions it will be executed in.
Behind the advisory is a career as a senior IT executive — more than fifteen years of group-wide IT strategy, governance and large-scale transformation in regulated, asset-intensive organisations.
From practice.
A numbered register of structural patterns, each set down under Jens Hartmann’s own name. One of them:
For a first, confidential conversation.
Jens Hartmann Advisory takes on few mandates at a time. If a decision now in front of you would benefit from an independent view, a direct email or call is the place to start.
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Or by telephone: +49 69 34877122