Fundamentals
Systemic organisational consulting: what it means
Systemic organisational consulting treats companies as social systems and looks at strategy, communication and decision-making together, not in isolation.
Read moreHow insight becomes change
Guidance for anyone who wants to understand and shape transformation.
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Key ideas for your organisation, short and clear.
116 articles
Fundamentals
What is organisational transformation?
Transformation as organisational development: how strategic self-renewal connects with structures, culture and leadership.
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Fachartikel
What is organisational resilience? Meaning and practice
Organisational resilience meaning: how companies pick up signals of change, deal with shifting conditions and actively shape their own development over time.
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Fachartikel
Overcoming silo thinking: start with collaboration
How interfaces, decision paths and shared routines change the way we look at silos.
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Fachartikel
Leadership systems: leadership as an organisational function
Leadership as an organisational function: how roles, expertise and the six tasks of the leadership wheel turn uncertainty into shared decisions.
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Fachartikel
Understanding and developing corporate culture
What the rules people actually live by have to do with strategy, leadership and change.
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Fachartikel
HR strategy: developing the capabilities you will need
An HR strategy links where the company is heading with the skills and roles it needs, combining strategic demand, role profiles, staffing and development.
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Fachartikel
Family business succession: roles and handover
Succession in a family business touches family, ownership and management at once. How to look at all three together and plan the transition with foresight.
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Fachartikel
AI and the world of work: shaping change
The questions a company has to answer when AI changes work and value creation.
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Fachartikel
Reducing organisational friction and inefficiency
Waiting times, duplicated work and coordination effort tie up time and resources. How to use them as starting points for developing your organisation.
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Orientation
Strategy process: how it works, step by step
From the starting situation through future options to implementation: the steps and decisions of a strategy process and how they fit together in practice.
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Fachartikel
Customer segmentation by needs, not just firm data
Needs-based customer segmentation: how to distinguish customer groups by what they expect from you, and which business decisions follow from the segments.
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Fachartikel
Value proposition: built from the customer's view
How customer expectations, your own capabilities and positioning come together in a robust value proposition that your organisation can actually deliver.
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Fachartikel
Strategy map: linking strategy and execution
A strategy map connects finance, customers, processes, and learning and growth in one shared picture of strategy, linking objectives with their prerequisites.
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Fachartikel
Strategy effectiveness: actions done, but is it working?
Strategic management means telling apart action status, goal achievement and leading indicators of impact. How to judge whether your strategy really works.
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Fundamentals
Third mode of consulting: working on change together
The third mode explained: how the factual, social and time dimensions of a transformation architecture fit together, and why they are planned jointly.
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Fachartikel
Learning transfer: why training often changes little
Why training often changes little at work, and how learning goals, opportunities to apply them and leadership can be planned as one development task.
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Fachartikel
Performance vs potential in talent management
Potential vs performance: why strong performance today does not fully explain suitability for a future role, and what talent management must distinguish.
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Orientation
Coaching or organisational development: which fits?
Coaching or organisational development? How to tell individual development issues from recurring organisational patterns and choose the right support.
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Orientation
First 100 days: taking on a new leadership role
Your first 100 days as a new leader: how to consciously clarify your mandate, expectations and working relationships when leadership changes hands.
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Fachartikel
Decision-making culture: from decision to joint action
How information, participation and follow-up decisions shape leadership work, and what a decision-making culture needs so that decisions are implemented.
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Orientation
When does external organisational consulting help?
When does external consulting help? How to clarify the occasion, the brief, internal responsibility and the right kind of support for your organisation.
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Fachartikel
Employer branding that matches everyday working life
How the employee value proposition, actual employee experience and communication come together to form a credible employer brand that holds up day to day.
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Fundamentals
Ambidexterity in business: run the core, build the new
Ambidexterity meaning and practice: how leaders combine exploitation and exploration to run the core business and develop new business at the same time.
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Orientation
Agile organisation: when does agile working make sense?
Uncertainty, customer feedback and clear decision frameworks: criteria for choosing agile ways of working that suit the task and your organisation.
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Fundamentals
Strategic self-renewal: take in signals, decide, embed
Variation, selection and restabilisation: how an organisation keeps working on its future development through strategic self-renewal alongside daily business.
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Fachartikel
Strategic positioning: what value will you deliver?
Low cost, product performance, total cost or individual solutions: how to tell strategic options apart and understand their organisational consequences.
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Fachartikel
Culture development: from analysis to everyday practice
Culture development explained: how strategic goals, lived decision-making patterns and concrete changes to structures and collaboration are connected.
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Fachartikel
Change communication: what's decided, what's still open?
How leaders organise orientation, participation and feedback during change, and why it matters to separate what has been decided from what is still open.
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Fachartikel
Resistance to change and the routines behind it
Why change meets resistance: understanding organisational defence patterns and making relevant information workable for decisions taken together.
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Fundamentals
Facilitation: enabling joint problem-solving at work
How internal facilitation can support groups as they work through problems and decisions, and how it helps build in-house capability to support change.
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Fachartikel
Sustainability strategy: connecting goals and delivery
Purpose, Planet, People and Profit as strategic perspectives, connected with stakeholders, processes and capabilities in one sustainability strategy.
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Work 4.0 and New Work: the modern world of work
Work 4.0 and New Work at a glance: how they differ, what defines the modern world of work and what it demands of leadership and of the organisation.
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Cultural due diligence: assessing cultural fit in M&A
Cultural due diligence assesses cultural fit before an M&A deal: definition, what to look at, process, duration and how to handle cultural conflicts.
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Why digital transformation fails: 7 reasons and fixes
Seven reasons why digital transformation fails, why corporate culture is often the biggest bottleneck, and what the consequences of failure are for a company.
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Iceberg model of corporate culture: seen and unseen
The iceberg model of corporate culture shows how visible and hidden elements are connected, and why culture can only ever be changed indirectly.
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Leadership culture: shaping and developing it
How companies align their lived understanding of leadership with strategy and organisation, and so strengthen both their culture and their performance.
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M&A process: a guide to mergers and acquisitions
The M&A process in six steps: from strategy development through due diligence and closing to post-merger integration, with timeframes for each phase.
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PESTEL analysis: using external factors for HR strategy
PESTEL analysis captures external factors systematically and shows what they mean for your HR strategy, your HR processes and your priority areas for action.
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Systemic team coaching for high-performance teams
Systemic team coaching creates the conditions for high-performance teams: goals, perspectives, process and approaches for better team dynamics.
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China consulting: services, talent and skilled staff
Consulting for companies with business in China: cross-cultural collaboration, an office in Shanghai, and recruiting and developing talent locally.
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Carbon neutral (CO₂-neutral): a guide for companies
CO₂-neutral, greenhouse gas neutral, climate neutral, net zero: what the terms mean and which requirements they create for companies in practice.
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CSRD explained: EU sustainability reporting
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) governs sustainability reporting in the EU: its aim, the ESRS, related rules and opportunities.
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Scope 3 emissions under the GHG Protocol explained
Scope 3 emissions arise along the value chain: the GHG Protocol's Scope 3 Standard, its 15 categories and their minimum boundaries explained.
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Corporate carbon footprint: measure and cut emissions
A GHG inventory records a company's direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions: scopes, standards and the steps to follow under the GHG Protocol.
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Double materiality assessment (CSRD) in four steps
A CSRD materiality assessment applies the principle of double materiality to determine, in four steps, which topics a company must report on.
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Doing business in China: practices and strategy
Business practices in China: how institutions, relationship networks and culture interact, and the principles on which a coherent China strategy is built.
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Innovation capability: a matter of structure and culture
Innovation capability depends on structure and culture: exploration and exploitation, five success factors and the path from idea to scaling the business.
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Measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty properly
Why customer satisfaction says little about loyalty, how the threshold value serves as a better yardstick and how transformis approaches the analysis.
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Next Generation Leadership: approach and programme
Next Generation Leadership combines systems theory, neuroscience, learning architecture and blended learning in one development programme for leaders.
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Non-profit value strategy with the Delta Model
How non-profit organisations can use the Delta Model by Arnoldo Hax to segment their stakeholders, create value for them and achieve a system lock-in.
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Operational excellence: value strategy and organisation
Operational excellence after Treacy and Wiersema: best total cost for the customer, how it differs from cost leadership, and what it means for the organisation.
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Outside-in analysis: customer view as strategy input
Outside-in analysis feeds the views of customers and the market into strategy work and reveals what an organisation tends to overlook on its own.
Read moreOrientation
Types of consulting compared: which fits your situation?
Expert consulting, process consulting and the third mode compared: what each form delivers, where its limits lie and when it is the right fit for you.
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Chemical industry transformation: a change of course
How mid-sized chemical companies can balance cost discipline with investment: the causes of the crisis, dual transformation and re-dimensioning.
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Customer orientation: internal and external customers
How organisations strengthen customer and service orientation: three practical tools for customer-supplier relationships, both internal and external.
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New Work: principles, areas for action and leadership
New Work in organisations: the five principles of the New Work Charter, eight areas for action, and the role of leadership, ambidexterity and culture.
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Strategy review: testing positioning and implementation
A strategy review tests your market positioning and how far the strategy has really been implemented: six areas to clarify, fourteen key questions, six steps.
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Study: employability of Chinese university graduates
A study by transformis and ECNU: what German companies in China expected from graduates in 2015, and which skills were missing in everyday work.
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Systems theory in practice: a mindset for dynamic times
Systems theory in practice: how leaders stay able to decide in dynamic times through second-order observation, working hypotheses and course corrections.
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Strategy work in three to six months: Zukunfts-Forum
The Zukunfts-Forum is a compact strategy format that helps leadership teams secure or realign their core business: process, results and success factors.
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Strategy under uncertainty: setting future direction
Strategic planning under uncertainty: how leadership teams stay able to decide with a vision of the future, a strategy team and a regular strategy review.
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Marcus Wittig on DVVision: a foresighted organisation
Marcus Wittig, Chairman of the DVV management board, on why DVVision was launched, how it has progressed, its results and what it means for customers.
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Robert A. Sedlák: profound change needs equal partners
Robert A. Sedlák, CEO of transformis, on DVVision as third-order change, what it takes to succeed, and the role played by joint consulting systems.
Read moreFundamentals
Four types of change in organisations
The four types of change: crisis management, continuous optimisation, profound transformation and foresighted self-renewal, and what each demands of management.
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Case study
From efficiency programme to forward-looking organisation
How a utility and infrastructure group tackled questions about its future across company boundaries.
Read moreCase study
Strategy development in a chemical park: from offering to customer value
A company-wide strategy process brought together market positioning, leadership and organisational design.
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Generational change: developing a shared vision of the future
How a business family brought together succession, strategic options and new roles.
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Developing logistics: combining diagnosis, leadership structure and capability building
A multi-stage change process that moved from vague complaints to new leadership routines.
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Embedding sustainability in the organisation
How separate initiatives became a jointly managed cross-functional task.
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Developing strategy and organisation together in a trading group
How a trading group turned new market requirements into a vision of the future, clear functions and new ways of working together.
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Strategy check in industrial services: reassessing markets and customers
An anonymised case study: the starting point, process and results of a strategy check at an industrial service provider.
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Culture development at WIKA: surveying the lived culture worldwide
How the WIKA Group surveyed its corporate culture across all regions with its Strategy 2030 in mind: using a survey, interviews and the Systemic Culture Compass.
Read moreWhite paper
Chemical industry: changing course in rough seas
How mid-sized chemical companies can cut costs, invest and realign their business when difficult market conditions are here to stay. A white paper.
Read moreWhite paper
Strategy development for the core business: Future Forum
The Future Forum is a compact strategy format that helps leadership teams secure or realign their core business in three to six months. A white paper.
Read moreWhite paper
Strategy under uncertainty: setting future direction
How companies stay able to decide under uncertainty: new basic assumptions, a shared vision of the future and a regular strategy review. A white paper.
Read moreWhite paper
Organisational transformation: changing at the core
How profound organisational transformation succeeds: third-order change, genotypic transformation and foresighted self-renewal. A white paper by transformis.
Read moreWhite paper
Sustainability transformation for companies
What sustainability means for a company, what ESG regulation and the financial markets require, and how the transformation to a sustainable business succeeds.
Read moreWhite paper
Sustainability strategy map for corporate development
The Strategy Map with Purpose, Planet, People and Profit: six perspectives, guiding questions, key questions and the steps of systemic strategy work.
Read moreWhite paper
Strategy review: testing positioning and implementation
A strategy review tests your strategic positioning against current market requirements and shows how far the strategy has been implemented. A white paper.
Read moreWhite paper
Organisational ambidexterity and agility explained
Organisational ambidexterity and agility: when agile working makes sense and how leadership manages the balance between exploitation and exploration.
Read moreWhite paper
Systemic Culture Compass: corporate culture development
What corporate culture means from a systemic view, how the Systemic Culture Compass makes it measurable and how culture development runs in three phases.
Read moreWhite paper
Culture change: systemic corporate culture development
Why corporate culture matters, how to measure it, and how to develop it deliberately with eight orientation points and eleven success factors.
Read moreWhite paper
Employer branding: developing the brand systemically
Employer branding as identity and organisational development: the employee value proposition, five steps, five elements and the key success factors.
Read moreWhite paper
New Work: principles, areas for action and leadership
What New Work means, the five principles behind it, and how strategy, leadership, culture and organisation turn it into areas for action. A white paper.
Read moreWhite paper
Systems theory in practice: leading in dynamic times
Why a systems-thinking mindset helps leaders in dynamic times: blind spots, second-order observation, working with hypotheses and handling complexity.
Read moreWhite paper
Customer orientation programme: Keys to the future
How a programme of three tools makes customer and service orientation something you can work on, and paves the way for a customer-focused culture.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Systemic change management: key success factors
Systemic change management: why change initiatives fail and the four success factors managers need to keep in mind when leading change in their organisation.
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Breakthrough strategies: making new routines stick
Breakthrough strategies interrupt organisations’ self-referential loops: a breakthrough goal, a team, an event, 30 days of follow-up and an evaluation.
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Executive coaching: the premier one-to-one consulting
Executive coaching for senior leaders: self-reflection, handling your own limits, contracting, stakeholder analysis and a 100-day programme. A background paper.
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Family businesses: family, company and shareholders
Family businesses have to manage the family, the company and the shareholders at the same time: transitions, governance, shareholder skills and succession.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Leadership assessment with 360° feedback
Leadership assessment and development with 360° feedback: competency model, facilitated feedback meeting, development plan and 100-day programme at a glance.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Family business succession: managing generational change
Succession in a family business needs long preparation: the guiding questions of the succession process and ten prerequisites for an orderly handover.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Organisational immunity: why warning signals fade
Why organisations make wrong decisions even when the information is available: operational closure, autopoiesis and structural coupling explained.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Job profiles with validated personality profiles
How job profiles with validated personality profiles support recruitment and selection: requirements profile, validation and matching with candidates.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Competency model: how to introduce one, step by step
How to build a company-specific competency model: aims and benefits, basic factors, key jobs, core and specialist competencies, profiles and embedding.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Customer segmentation and value proposition design
Customer segmentation by needs and behaviour: five basic strategies, three steps to a value proposition and seven benefit criteria. A background paper.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Leadership and witchcraft: leadership as fence riding
Leadership and witchcraft: why organisations need fence riders at the boundary of inside and outside, and why leadership is a core organisational capability.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Learning architectures: linking organisation and people
Learning architectures link organisational development and people development in a single process: starting points, the linking structure and reflection.
Read moreFachbeitrag
Transformation process: emerging stronger from crisis
Transformation as second-order change: preconditions, success factors, the six phases of the transformation wave and the key role of management.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Next Generation Leadership: new demands on leaders
Next Generation Leadership combines modern systems theory and neuroscience with learning architectures for individual and organisational learning.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Organisations as complex social systems: a systemic view
Organisations as complex social systems: from the image of the trivial machine to decisions, decision premises and leadership as an organisational function.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Performance Simulator: measure and develop competencies
The Performance Simulator as a media-based training tool: learning concept, scientific foundations, how it is built, blended learning and its benefits.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
People development audit: assessing effectiveness
The people development audit assesses L&D against ten success factors and makes its benefit measurable for senior management. A transformis background paper.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Smart Decision Culture: deciding well in organisations
How organisations make smart decisions under uncertainty: the Smart Decision Culture concept combines systems theory and neuroscience. A transformis paper.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Municipal utilities: managing the paradoxes
Municipal utilities sit between business and politics: why paradoxes are part of this type of organisation, and how leadership and strategy reviews handle them.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Strategy development and review as a leadership task
Strategy development and strategy review as a shared leadership task: the elements, six steps and benefits of the strategy process. A transformis white paper.
Read moreFachbeitrag
Strategy development: shaping an uncertain future
How companies make decisions about the future under uncertainty: strategy development as a shared leadership task for the management team. An expert article.
Read moreStudie
Study: employability of Chinese graduates
A study of 218 German companies in China: which skills they expect from Chinese graduates, and where the biggest gaps between expectation and reality lie.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
System lock-in and customer bonding: the Delta Model
System lock-in and customer bonding with Hax’s Delta Model: three basic options, eight strategic positionings and four strategic tasks. A background paper.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Value of Investment: managing L&D by its benefits
Herbert J. Kellner’s Value of Investment system: elements, six phases, Goal Navigator, goal alignment, and the people development audit as the starting point.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
ValueFinder: 60 sources of value in people development
The ValueFinder in the Value of Investment system: twelve benefit categories with 60 individual benefits for the company, its management and its employees.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Forward-looking KPI systems: spotting blind spots
Forward-looking KPI systems give early warning signals instead of hindsight: self-reference, the blind spot and a three-step KPI review. A background paper.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Foresighted self-renewal: organisational renewal
How organisations recognise early signals and secure their competitiveness ahead of time through variation, selection and re-stabilisation. A background paper.
Read moreFachbeitrag
Our consulting DNA: organisational capacity for renewal
The transformis consulting approach, version 3.0: transformation as the path to continuous strategic self-renewal, across eight fields of action.
Read moreHintergrundinformation
Strategy models compared: Porter, Treacy/Wiersema, Hax
Three classic strategy models compared, and the basic strategies they suggest for customer segments: goals, processes, people, organisation and culture.
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Topics at a glance
Eight topics, each with fundamentals, articles and case studies.
Topic
Organisation & collaboration
Organisational design, silos and working across departmental boundaries.
Read moreTopic
Leadership & decisions
Leadership systems, responsibility and effective collaboration in the leadership team.
Read moreTopic
Culture & change
The rules people actually live by, culture development and the capacity for change.
Read moreTopic
AI & the world of work
Technology, value creation and the changes within the organisation.
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The shortest route to change: Klartext.
For us, transformation is not an end in itself but the route to a lasting capacity for renewal. Our Klartext brochure explains how we work with clients and what sets transformis® fundamentally apart from conventional consulting.
Frequently asked questions
Answers to the questions we hear most often.
When can an outside view help?
When an important decision or a cross-departmental change has stalled.
How do expert consulting and process consulting differ?
Expert consulting delivers a specialist solution and supports its implementation. Process consulting treats change as organisational development and works on the framework for collaboration.
Is a new strategy enough for transformation?
It also needs the right decisions, capabilities, collaboration and day-to-day implementation.
What is the starting point of systemic consulting?
The specific task, and the conditions under which the organisation tackles it.
Prefer to talk directly?
What development lies ahead for your company? Let’s talk about your brief and sensible next steps.
Your initial call
Let’s talk about your situation and what you want to develop in your organisation.
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- Possible next steps