We are pleased that our company's 20th anniversary celebration, already planned for 2021, could finally take place during our Christmas party this year. We used the festive setting to review "20+1 years of Alpha IC" and to say thank you to the founders of the company and to all those who have accompanied and supported us on our journey so far.
In an appreciative speech, Richard Weller, who has been Managing Director at Alpha IC for five years, thanked the company's three founders for their courage and willingness to embrace constant change. Special thanks go above all to Arno Hölzlein, who had founded his own engineering office in Bamberg in 1969. For Arno Hölzlein gave his son Sebastian and his partner Thomas Kohmann not only his trust, but also active support and capital for their plans to start a consulting company for facility management in Bamberg. Laudator Richard Weller paid special tribute to his father not only for this start-up help, but also in particular for being able to "let go" after the early years by stepping down as a partner in 2007. By then, the two young entrepreneurs had already founded Alpha Immobilien Consulting GmbH and then Energy & Environment GmbH in 2008, thus laying the foundation for the topic of "sustainability" as an essential goal and foundation of their own work. As one of the first consulting firms in Germany, Alpha logically and with an eye to the future entered the field of sustainability consulting with LEED, and other systems followed.
In addition to the trust of the father, it naturally also needed the trust of the customers in such a start-up, as one would say today. This is exactly what Sebastian Hölzlein and Thomas Kohmann experienced with their first customer from the real estate industry, Martin Buhl, with whom they are still in good contact. And that remains a guarantee of success and trademark of our Alpha IC to this day: long-term business relationships based on trust.
The Alpha IC, readiness for change as a guarantee for success
Today, around 80 experts at Alpha IC GmbH in Bamberg, Nuremberg, Munich, Cologne, Mannheim and Zurich provide interdisciplinary consulting services to all players in real estate management in nine product areas. The original consulting field of FM has long since been expanded to include topics such as Green Building, REM Strategy & Organization, Commissioning Management & Energy Optimization, Energy Design & Simulation, Working Environments, Digitalization, Audits & TDD and currently ESG & CSR. Thomas Kohmann is responsible for the IT area as authorized signatory, Sebastian Hölzlein is responsible for sales, marketing and finance as managing partner and in 2017 Richard Weller joins as second managing director. He is responsible for human resources, CSR and organizational development.
And it is precisely this divisional thinking that Sebastian and he then want to move away from. In 2018 - as Richard Weller put it in his speech - the fourth phase of the transformation of Alpha IC begins after the foundation, orientation and consolidation. The two are starting a comprehensive transformation process towards an agile organization. "A leadership culture based on trust with a partner model, without hierarchies and with a consistently hybrid way of working was the key to success for us," says Sebastian Hölzlein. This willingness to change has brought Alpha IC resiliently through the pandemic situation over the past three years. From this own successful change experience with good communication and participation, the organization can advise with conviction from the inside out, so to speak as inside consultants, to successful change. It is only logical that with the repositioning in 2019, Alpha Immobilien Consulting was also renamed Alpha Inside Consultants GmbH.
And as if that were not enough challenge and change, the years 2019 and 2020 saw the purchase of Ifes GmbH in Cologne, a consulting firm with a focus on simulations and sustainability, which, with its great colleagues, was a wonderful fit for the portfolio and team and today forms the basis for the Alpha location in Cologne. And last but not least, Sebastian Hölzlein founded the digital start-up Serthoro GmbH with its procurement platform Beestate together with Roger Krieg, as well as the successful Alpha IC Schweiz AG two years ago, which now has seven colleagues. And the Mannheim location, which opened in March of this year, is also growing and thriving. We are pleased and grateful.
Our Future Dialogues - Working Together on the Future of Alpha IC
"Our form of organization requires a great deal of personal responsibility, communication and commitment," Richard Weller and Sebastian Hölzlein make clear in their annual review. That's why the Partner:innen are deliberately given a lot of time for mentoring and coaching their teams. This in turn creates the space for identification and innovation.
It was precisely these aspects of participation and personal responsibility that characterized the so-called "future dialog" that took place during the day before the anniversary Christmas party in the evening. All (healthy) employees of our locations in Bamberg, Nuremberg, Munich, Mannheim and Cologne including the Swiss colleagues of Alpha IC Schweiz AG with their managing director Roger Krieg had come. For all others there was the possibility of digital participation. And also the colleagues of Serthoro GmbH were invited to the event. There is always enough time for exchanging ideas and getting to know new colleagues personally, but also - and this is the principle of the "Future Dialogs" that take place four times a year - an agenda for working together on future topics for the company.
The content of the current future dialog focused on the realignment of the CSR strategy for Alpha. In small workshop groups, we used our swarm intelligence to collect and develop current measures and possible future sustainable development measures for Alpha IC based on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Thanks to our colleagues Andrea Ekker, Daniela Merkenich and Nadine Flüß for their inspiring guidance.
In addition, at the last Future Dialogue of the year, employees who have celebrated an anniversary are traditionally honored, the so-called "Wegbereiter Award" (Pioneer Award) is presented, and the annual donation project is decided in a democratic voting process. The award is chosen from suggestions made by employees for special social and collegial commitment within or outside the company or for projects or organizations that work for the common good.
With a large majority of votes, our Senior Consultant Markus Henning was awarded the Wegbereiter Award 2022 for his special commitment as a sponsor for the integration of refugee families from Ukraine and for his unceasing support in word and deed, which he still does. There was also great unanimity in the decision regarding this year's donation from Alpha IC. The amount will be divided into three parts and donated to the Tafeln Germany, as support to the organizers of the world scout meeting "Jamboree" in South Korea in 2023 and for further support in concrete projects of the Ukraine aid.
So what is the "alpha style"?
Why are we the way we are? That was the opening question in the review by our two managing directors, Richard and Sebastian, of a very successful fiscal year 2022 and ultimately also 20+1 years of successful company development. Here are their thoughts on this:
- We are a consultancy with an ecological conscience, value-oriented, innovative.
- We are agilely organized, with a partner model, diverse, agile.
- We work interdisciplinary in flexible teams, across locations.
- We offer development opportunities and want to learn.
- We encourage and demand personal responsibility and self-determination and thus also risk questions and missing guardrails. Therefore, we need a culture of communication and transparency.
- We are ready and open for change.
- We have courage.
- We question ourselves again and again.
- We live a trust-based and appreciative leadership culture: leading by example instead of pretending, from should to want, from pressure to enthusiasm, from control to freedom.
- We see a common purpose in what we do: to protect and preserve our planet for future generations. This motivates us.
- We are grateful and humble.
