Workshop cascades push the discussion of one or more topics into the depths of the organisation in a top-down cascade. Usually, these workshops do not all have the exact same content and also take place in different formats. In an ideal case, the participant of a workshop can subsequently moderate a workshop on the next lower level. To ensure the necessary impact and sustainability, the results must be communicated in a bottom-up manner in order to define concrete action items.

Change Management Training enables managers and executives (program and project leaders, department and location branch heads) to shape and spearhead the change process within their sphere of influence. The training discusses the fundamentals of change management, the interaction of change management and change communication, the development of a change organisation and the methods and measures of change management.

Project Manager & Executive Training enable managers with operational responsibility and their teams to achieve better results in change processes. By conveying proven procedures and methods for resolving conflict as well as the critical analysis of individual working methods – with consideration of the “outside perspective” – goals are defined, conflicts resolved, potential for optimisation identified, motivation generated, specific know-how developed and practical implementation guidelines provided.

Top Management Coaching helps board members and managers in leadership positions to meet the demands of their responsible position in change processes. In terms of their expertise, managers are usually unimpeachable. However, they have not always learnt what qualifies as good leadership, they may not be familiar with the demands that extensive change projects entail and they would like to communicate more and better, but get stuck in their old routine. Whatever the situation may be, coaching means developing skills relating to – and the strategic demands of – the company’s situation.

Controlling & Monitoring measure the progress and success of the program. The progress can more or less be measured by inherent indicators, such as reaching milestones on time and on budget. The success, however, manifests as the change of indicators that exist independently of the program, such as KPIs. To be able to assess the success of a program, these indicators need to be defined and measured before the program starts, and where necessary – if they are not tracked – with a neutral point measurement.

Branding & Campaigns give a face to the change process and get to the heart of it, combine individual elements to form a bigger picture, create a recognition factor and convey emotion. They are immediately understandable, have a broad impact and are adaptable to many channels.

Stakeholder Management requires the consideration of the goals, expectations and needs of all internal and external stakeholders, and to align them as much as possible with the goals of the change process. The more successful this is, the lower the risk is when implementing a project. Resistance to implementation can only be avoided if the project has considered the political dimension.

Employee Mobilisation is crucial in change processes, since the program will fail if a critical mass of employees is not reached, not convinced of the changes or not gained as supporters. The employees must be convinced using rational arguments, moved emotionally, and they need to be willing to gain enthusiasm for the program.

Enabling leadership is an important success factor in change processes. Leaders not only need to carry the program together, but also need to carry it into the organisation and ensure that all colleagues understand the content, reasons and targets, and are willing to implement them. Enabling leadership means that managers are provided with the tools and abilities to meet their responsibilities.

Corporate principles reflect a company’s self-understanding, what goals it wants to achieve, and with what culture and based on what philosophy. It is often the case that, although the content is understood, it is not practised in daily operations. Corporate principles are not self-fulfilling. Rather, they require the employees in order to be perceptible. They must work to live these principles, and the inherent promise of such principles will only be put into effect if their content is made available at all points of contact. Changing a mentality means that the people who are supposed to take on the new way of thinking must be accompanied along the path to change. The content can only become part of daily operations and offer its contribution to corporate success if an understanding is reached of what a value or vision means for a unit, country or person.

Project Organisation & Leadership should be as lean as possible and as broad as necessary. It must be lean to ensure the project’s agility, and broad in order to collect the perspectives of key stakeholders in the core team and the steering committee, and to imbed the project in the organisation.

Change Design & Strategy describes the path and methodology of change from the current state to the target state. They define the general direction, delineate the change story and the big picture, and explain general design criteria for the development of concrete measures.

Every change process begins with a Survey & Analysis. Only those who know where an organisation stands, and where their explicit and secret pain points are, can apply the right leverage from the right angle with the right amount of force. Parts of the survey area normally include paradigms of the organisation, the corporate culture, the willingness to change, the general mood in the company and any other specific issues.

No communication measure can replace the immediate impression of an experience. Thus, an event is an effective corporate communication tool. It thrives on the dramatic composition of the key actors, the location, the visual presentation, and the light and sound effects. All this must naturally be in alignment with and support the aim of the content.

In the larger sense of the term, external communication is the communication between an organisation and its external stakeholders. This includes business partners, customers, investors, suppliers, journalists and politicians. The aim is to install a coherent, believable and positive perception of the company, which influences commercial success, customer acquisition and customer retention. In special situations and change processes, this image is generally threatened and questioned. Thus, external communication would no longer be consistent ambient noise and would have to deliver the right messages to the right people in the shortest time possible.

A communication infrastructure is the entirety of all internal and external media that a company uses as well as the resources available for development and distribution (measured in manpower and budget). In special situations and change processes, this infrastructure is often not quantitatively and/or qualitatively powerful enough, and thus needs to be expanded, at least temporarily.

Strategy & Conception is the basis of all impact-oriented communication. They define the target groups, the messages, the measures, media and channels, the roadmap and content. They assign responsibilities and imbed communication in the strategic and operational context. The respective corporate history and culture must be considered.

Visual communication is of great importance for the overall success of communication. Consistent, effective and well thought-out visual vocabulary creates emotions and identification, provides content with stories and increases the recognisability of a program or an initiative. Design covers all tasks relating to creation and implementation, from basic corporate branding to individual advertisement materials and appearances.

An increasing number of project leaders are becoming pioneers for change processes, as they not only carry over new structures, processes, approaches and models, but also offer interpretation aid and provide new value systems and behavioural patterns in a time that is shaped by uncertainty and ambiguity. Project communication supports the implementation of change, the development of a capable team that is able to provide information immediately, the conveyance of reasons for the project, its goals and results to the company, and effects the buy-in of all relevant external stakeholders.

Internal communication defines how informed employees are, and to what degree they understand decisions and can put them into action. To a large extent, it defines how people in the company understand change and special situations, how they handle them and how they react to them. Due to their specific role and responsibility, the managers of a company usually form their own target group of internal communication, who are often informed at an early stage – more extensively and in greater detail –about current events and decisions, and the majority of employees are prepared for future developments. One of the reasons for this is that the managers themselves shape a large part of the internal communication themselves.