Organisation are more than the sum of their parts. Focusing on separate functions as well as structural and process elements amplifies nicely the illusion of controllability, but often hampers the optimisation of the organisation as a whole. To reach strategic goals, we help to involve all stakeholder groups (departments, hierarchy levels, projects, etc.). Because: Only organisations that are aware of their own patterns can start to modify them.
We strive to make our clients a little bit better every day. But furthermost, we want to make sure that we soon become redundant and that the newly created knowledge remains sustainably disposable in the organisation. We believe that our own super lean business model (with independent free-lance professionals only) credibly allows for that. We often experience other external service providers who use their proprietary information to sell questionable projects to clients – only to secure their own capacity utilisation.
therefore serves as a guarantee for our clients: Irrespective of commercial considerations, collaborating must make sense to us in any way. We don’t shy away to articulate uncomfortable truths and are prepared to end an assignment at any time.
Tough decisions and dedication to attain sustainable results do not rule out a humanistic approach. In contrary: We strive to be respectful at any time and to counter the omnipresent tendency towards degradation.
Yes, we have what is called a decent formal education and broad experiences. But the number one reason why we can perform our creative and often innovative interventions is that we do NOT follow a lifestyle like most top managers, lawyers, or consultants. We are more like artists. And, body, mind, and soul are equal sources of our inspiration.
Those who want to please only will not change anything. We are therefore not always nice and sweet, but hopefully extend comfort zones.
We support your organisation wherever we can and act as catalysts for productive developments. And: We always stay in the background!
We fundamentally believe that only jointly developed solutions will survive – both between multiple stakeholder groups within the organisation and between the client system and us. Our know-how serves as seeds to grow something new.
We are having a plan and a number of proven process models at any time. But we also know about their limitations and hence always develop the best solution for each case. Our individual selection and orchestration of old and new instruments rather resembles the work of a theatre director.
It is naive to think anyone could forecast precisely the result of an organisational change process. Typically, an intermediate “working goal” is sufficient to get started with regular reflection loops to improve your “rolling planning”. Effective organisational learning happens in daily life and not in trainings. Our interventions are therefore mostly embedded in a “hard” work context and are only later often perceived as (indirect) skill development. Many elements of our long-established method mix have become known as design thinking or agile management to a broader public in the last 10 years.
Whoever wants to make an organisation better should understand the various interests of the different stakeholder groups. Yet, we would never serve only one of them.
Depending on the specific setting, we know how and when to adequately execute different roles.
From generation to generation, human beings and organisations have passed on their know-how about acting effectively within social systems. It is somewhat astounding and frightening how little of that is present in organisations today. We want to help re-discover and develop it.
Collaboration does not always have to be fun, and of course it includes challenging each other sometimes. But if the chemistry does not even feel right in the beginning, better not start at all. Throughout our collaboration, our approach to generally trusting the process shall serve as an inspirational role model.
Real progress can never be realised without true commitment and personal time investment starting at the top level.
It needs a fundamental understanding for the duration and the “curves” of organisational changes and hence the willingness to engage in a lean collaboration with us for at least a couple of months. Together with the client system, we regularly define transparent cut-off points in order to avoid any kind of possible dependency on us. Inversely, our clients need to bring the willingness and patience for true and sustainable change to the table.
Real improvement in organisations only happens outside the comfort zone – and only if the top management team lives by example.
Everybody talks about communication, but it is certainly not popular in top management. Terribly time-consuming, and you cannot delegate it. But it seems that there is no alternative.