Bringing in professional management is a fundamental change for a company: it introduces structured management practices to improve efficiency, sustainability and competitiveness, aligning the business with a model based on specific skills.
A professionally managed company evolves from an organization run on instinct into a solid, organized structure, able to face today’s challenges with shared, measurable decision-making.
The Lumberjack case shows how a company can come back thanks to professional management, embracing a cultural and operational change that consolidates growth and resilience.
Professional management: what is it?
Professionalizing a company’s management is a process that introduces structured, professional management practices to make decisions more efficient, effective and sustainable.
In other words, it is the company’s evolution toward a management model based on specific managerial skills, moving beyond a more instinctive, less structured entrepreneurial approach. It serves to handle the growing complexity of markets and to keep the company competitive and growing over the long term.
It means turning a company run solely on the instinct of its founder (or of the most charismatic partner, who is not always the founder or the CEO) into a structure that relies on modern, adaptive management systems, processes and skills.
More necessary today than ever
Bringing in professional management matters more today than ever. Departments (marketing, production, sales, administration, accounting and so on) now depend so much on one another that decisions made in one office quickly and heavily affect the work of the others. That calls, if not for full predictability, at least for full awareness on the part of decision-makers, especially in markets where a lack of planning can lead to mistakes that hurt the company in the short and the medium-to-long term. So as not to leave the outcome of decisions to chance, emotion or other uncontrollable factors, companies can, and in light of recent case histories must, bring in professional management: every function must have a single decision-maker (a person or a group) who is given delegated authority over precisely defined tasks whose results are as measurable as possible.
In this sense we speak of a structural process, because it runs through every department from the foundations, in depth (at every decision level within a function) and in breadth (in the relationships between one function and the others). It matters especially in organizations facing deep change, such as a generational handover, expansion into new markets or the need to weather an economic crisis.
As a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on transformative leadership stresses, the ability to lead significant change depends on adopting structured management practices that make it possible to meet today’s challenges, such as technological innovation, environmental sustainability and growing regulatory complexity. Professional management is the answer to that need: it introduces clear governance, effective delegation and shared decision-making that support a long-term vision.
Another crucial point is the need to move beyond the rigidity of traditional company structures. In some cases, statistically more common in small and mostly family-owned businesses, decision-making can be highly centralized or, at the extreme, effectively in the hands of one person.
That is not something to condemn in itself, but too much responsibility in one person’s hands can hurt both daily operations and, worse, the quality of long-term strategic choices. Many companies, especially the family-owned and very small ones mentioned above, rely on inflexible hierarchies that limit their ability to adapt and innovate.
Professional management means a radical shift toward a more dynamic, varied structure, where information flows quickly, communication between levels is transparent and continuous, and above all each decision-maker answers fully for their own area, with greater accuracy and depth.
Shared responsibility and involvement
Another key aspect of professional management is building a culture of responsibility inside the company. This approach is the basis of effective management, because it pushes each person to make decisions consistent with the business strategy and to own their KPIs (key performance indicators), contributing to long-term goals. It matters especially where traditional leadership, often based on centralized command and control, no longer works for today’s challenges.
As Harsha Jalihal has pointed out, it is time for managers to stop simply “getting the work done” and become real leaders, able to make their own decisions based on what their teams need. Building this culture is helped, without doubt, by trust between owners and management, by ongoing training (basic and additional, almost as a company benefit), by transparency (in the initial decision and in the discussion that follows) and, last but not least, by motivation to reach goals, which grows when employees are actively involved in decisions.
Companies that adopt a decentralized management model often see lower staff turnover and a stronger sense of belonging and job satisfaction. That is because employees see that their contribution directly affects the company’s success, and they see their ideas and proposals take shape and lead to concrete results.
Closely linked to professional management is the decentralization of decisions, which lets the heads of different areas decide better, sooner and with more awareness. Decentralization means giving managers the tools and authority to respond quickly to market changes without waiting for approval from above. As Adam Bryant suggests, managers need to be able to “lead from where they are,” acting autonomously and contributing to the success of the whole organization.
This approach reduces the so-called “frozen middle”, the layer of managers who often hold innovation back because they lack decision-making autonomy, and it eases the shift toward a more agile, dynamic company. Professional management frees the potential of these managers, creating an environment where every level of the organization can help create value.
Decentralizing decisions is also crucial for staying closer to customers and understanding local dynamics better, which can make the difference between success and failure in a global market.
Professional management as a driver of innovation
One of the most important effects of professional management is that it stimulates innovation inside the company. When managers have real authority and decisions are decentralized, the organization becomes more open to new ideas and faster at developing and implementing them. It creates an environment where innovation is not confined to research and development but becomes part of every function. Every employee, feeling like an active part of decision-making, is encouraged to propose solutions and improvements, contributing to the company’s constant evolution.
Professional management also helps bring emerging technologies into business processes. Digitalization and automation, for example, can be handled more effectively when managers can make informed, strategic decisions about adopting new tools. That way the company not only becomes more efficient but gains an edge over its competitors.
It also encourages a systematic approach to innovation, in which ideas are collected, assessed and implemented in a structured way. That avoids scattering energy and keeps the focus on the innovations that really matter to the business. It also helps create the conditions for sustainable innovation, which takes into account not only economic results but the social and environmental impact of the company’s choices.
What it takes to survive: Lumberjack
Professional management is closely tied to a company’s ability to manage change and build organizational resilience. In a context of rapid technological change, economic crises and geopolitical turbulence, the ability to adapt and react quickly becomes decisive. One business case fits especially well to show the role of professional management as a tool, first, for rebuilding and restructuring a company from within and, then, for relaunching and consolidating it in its market. It is the case of Lumberjack, a historic brand of casual footwear created in Treviso, in northeastern Italy, in the early 1980s by the company 3A Antonini (chaired and run by the Antonini family).
In the late 1980s and early 1990s the company enjoyed great commercial success, and the brand became iconic and recognizable. In the 2000s, amid deep changes in the economy and in market trends in Italy and the rest of the globalized world, a period of deep structural crisis began that brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy.
In 2012 the company and the brand were acquired by new investors, and a deep process of internal restructuring and professionalization began. Within a decade the company regained the ground it had lost and established itself as an iconic, recognizable name in Italy and abroad.
This story of “success, fall and resurrection” hides some important lessons:
- the first is without doubt how critical the generational and managerial transition is, from a family- or owner-run company to a professionally managed one. The founding family brought an innovation never seen before to its market and had the merit and honor of building a company from scratch and making its brand iconic. The problems began when conditions started to deteriorate and the leadership did not have the sensitivity or awareness to see that the world was changing.
In small and mid-sized companies, and Lumberjack is an example, it has happened that the founders were excellent craftsmen and production experts (in footwear, in this case), but the problems that later emerged in very different areas of management were not met with the right skills and specific knowledge. Too much centralized decision-making, and the inadequate decisions that followed, may have been two of the main causes of the company’s decline in the 2000s;
- the second is the role professional management plays today. When new management arrived in 2012, Lumberjack first reorganized internally, identifying the functions and placing one or more responsible people in each. Redrawing the org chart by function was fundamental because it finally defined the company’s backbone, with the people and offices responsible for each function.
Make no mistake: redefining the company and professionalizing its management is unavoidable today if the goal is to grow and expand, because each area of management needs specific skills and knowledge to cope with ever-growing outside complexity. Delegation and accountability are, in the end, indispensable.
Professional management provides the tools and skills needed to meet daily competitive challenges, creating a flexible organization ready for change. It is thanks to professional management that companies like Lumberjack can now identify, for each area, the key elements of value (and the key metrics to measure them) and the people responsible for how each one performs.
Professional management as a competitive advantage
In an increasingly complex, fast-changing world, professional management is a necessary step for any company that wants to stay competitive and thrive. As at Lumberjack, it is not only about introducing new tools or processes but about changing the company’s mindset and culture, embracing a more collaborative, data-based view. Professional management improves operational efficiency and creates the conditions for continuous innovation, essential to the company’s long-term growth and sustainability.
Today Lumberjack has total revenue of nearly 40 million euros and can be considered a mid-sized company. Reaching and passing these milestones took more than ten years of work and a deep reorganization of functions, offices, people and internal processes. All of it was possible only by preparing the ground for professional management and putting in place a forward-looking structure, needed for future growth in production and sales volumes and values.
Professional management gave Lumberjack the chance to build a resilient organization, able to adapt quickly to change and seize new opportunities. This matters more than ever in companies where decision-making is still strongly centralized (small or large), as it was at the “first” Lumberjack. Professionalizing a company’s management means preparing it not only to survive but to thrive in a market that never stops changing, and to turn difficulties into opportunities for growth.
Finally, as the example shows, professional management is neither simple nor quick, but it is a strategic investment that pays off over time. By building a culture of responsibility, decentralizing decisions and fostering innovation and resilience, companies can withstand the changes to come and grow sustainably.
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Business strategy
Business strategy is the set of decisions through which a company chooses what to do and what not to do in order to reach its long-term goals, improve its competitive position and grow in a sustainable way.
Full definitionFrozen middle
The frozen middle is the situation in which middle managers, who should turn the strategy decided at the top into practice, resist change and slow down innovation.
Full definition