We recognise, respect but are not conditioned or constrained by the organisational habits of our clients and the behavioural patterns of their professionals. As an independent outsider, we are less dependent on office politics and less distracted by power dynamics within organisations of our clients. Our exceptionally strong relationships with our clients and partners afford us a deep understanding of their operations. All this enables us to provide neutral observations, alternative views, objective advice and unbiased second opinions. Furthermore, ambitious professionals of our clients often spontaneously learn from our professional standards and copy our exemplary behaviour.

We remove communication barriers: Being positioned as an external facilitator, we (informally and discretely) act as a proxy between individual stakeholders. This allows us to introduce, intensify and revive constructive relations between stakeholders and to (re)gain their commitment. Having actively built a large (in)formal network enables us also to (after everyone’s permission) introduce contacts to each other from similar industries, disciplines and seniority levels.

We conduct professionally

We abide by the guiding code of professional conduct which is meticulously defined by an internationally recognised trade organisation and centred on the following professional values:

• Competence
• Reliability
• Carefulness
• Professionally independent

We act transparently

We nurture the long-standing and close relations with our clients and believe that such relations rely on transparency. This means that we:

• offer our services with the most value for money for the client; not necessarily the lowest initial price.
• continuously manage mutual expectations with our clients by remaining in close contact with their directing contact persons.
• constructively challenge our clients with any relevant topic, including controversial and/or delicate ones.

We are practical

• To save lead-time and resources, we rather reuse best practices and proven out-of-the-box solutions, than reinvent them.
• We accelerate the progress and minimise manageable delays of our assignments, proactively or at least as soon as possible reactively.
• We work iteratively, whenever suitable.
• We intrinsically enjoy helping clients not only with defining, but also with actually applying practical managerial solutions.
• We avoid monolithic reports and one-way presentations, as they have at best only a superficial and temporary impact.
• We consider the soft side of organisational improvements (occupational psychology, organisational behaviour, work culture, team atmosphere, etc.) to be both the biggest threat AND opportunity for improving organisations sustainably. Addressing this practical and crucial aspect of organisational changes is integrated in all our work.

We start with the end

• Constructive relationships with stakeholders are absolutely essential for any organisation. So, properly managing these relationships deserves the highest priority. We take “sustainable delight of stakeholders” as the true north for our ambitious clients and use this end-goal as the starting-point for organisational improvements.
• We first help leaders with making their business more effective and then help managers with running that business more efficiently.

We deliver lasting solutions

• Whenever our work has or may have significant ecological and/or social impact, we feel it is our responsibility to address this with our client.
• Whenever we recommend managerial workarounds for urgent symptomatic relief, we also recommend solutions which address the underlying root cause.
• We help our clients (for example via management coaching and training) to continuously improve themselves and thus remain or as soon as possible become independent from providers like us.
• We make improvements stick for example by letting stakeholders (not us) implement and institutionalise these improvements. We define, analyse, involve, enable and engage the stakeholders, while we monitor their stakes throughout the transition process.
• We offer after-care (evaluation of the impact of our services, some period after we finalised an assignment).

We add extra value

We intentionally maximise our customer value and scale our impact, for example by:

• resourcefully anticipating major law changes and applying (innovative) technologies.
• promoting a culture of professional excellence in clients,
• contributing to the professional development of our clients’ managers whenever reasonably possible during their involvement in our assignments,
• spontaneously pointing out hidden business risks (also outside the scope of our assignments) and
• shared knowledge crunching, collective learning and joint scanning of business opportunities of sufficient net present value.

We offer economic terms

• Optimally using our network and public sources, we periodically monitor the competitiveness of our terms (for example regarding availability, responsiveness and continuity).
• We actively balance our budget for transportation, housing, marketing, sales, public relations and managerial overhead to keep our financial terms reasonable.

We manage the quality of our services

We control and assure the quality of our services, for example by:

• offering our clients (besides the operational connections with our professionals) a managerial single point of contact who is responsible especially for sustainable customer satisfaction and innovation,
• explicitly securing a constructive feedback loop with our clients, monitoring their satisfaction and following up on this most appreciated feedback,
• internally organising structured forms of reflection (for example via coaching, peer reviews and independent intervision),
• systematically applying (service specific) standards and (tailored) managerial best practices,
• assigning only (a high performing team of) absolute professionals for the delivery of our services and
• periodically evaluating our quality standards.

During our assignments, we identify members of typically these types of stakeholders:

• Advisory Board
• Business partners (referrers, …)
• Certifying bodies
• Competitors
• Customers
• Neighbours/ society
• Government (authorities/regulators, permission and subsidy providers, tax authorities, …)
• Investors (shareholders and lenders)
• News media
• Politicians
• Social media (influencers, …)
• Special interest groups (branch organisations, …)
• Staff (temporary and permanent employees, works councils, unions, …)
• Suppliers (incl. their subcontractors)
• Warranty funds
• …