“Movement underlies all becoming” [Paul Klee]

Leadership & Culture

Change is difficult. Our brain likes what it is familiar with, which is why few people are positive about change. This is true in every community, in every organization and also in our private lives. But serious changes make change processes necessary. This applies equally to all change processes, whether caused by pandemics, increasing digitalization and the use of artificial intelligence (AI), hybrid working environments, climate change, global competition and the resulting dependencies, planned company succession or mergers and acquisitions. Likewise, new customer needs, social and technological developments, disruptive innovations, etc. require organizations to be able to adapt quickly and rapidly change strategies, mindsets and behaviour. Business models, urban economic strategies, leadership principles, corporate culture, living and working together must be reconsidered, readjusted and, if necessary, repositioned and new skills must be acquired – at the organizational level, the management level and the personal level of each individual.

More than 70 percent of change processes still fail.Many fail in the initial phase, others do not achieve their goal or the effect is not sustainable. The reason is usually that the key factors for successful change are not taken into account. These include the professional and active involvement of those responsible and all those involved (participation).

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
[Buckminster Fuller]

We support our clients (companies, cities, islands) in change processes as consultants, moderators, analysts and strategists, facilitators, trainers and coaches. To ensure that change is sustainable, we start with attitude and empowerment – so that potential, strengths and newly acquired skills can become the basis for success in the long term. Every change needs a goal and a purpose … and the expected result should promise something “better” than the previous and past. That is essential.

We also know from our many years of experience that managers and their teams not only want to know and understand the “why?” and “where?” of change. They need the personal confidence that they can change; they must be able to recognize the personal significance of the new for themselves. That’s why we don’t just look at the processes, we develop a customized change project design and provide our clients with effective and goal-oriented support throughout the entire change process. After all, the organization, the city or the island should be noticeably better (and “fit for the future”) after the change than before the change. Together with our clients, we work out and sharpen the change objective and develop the participatory design and the cultural change story, without which no change process can succeed. Our work is based on decades of practical expertise as well as scientifically sound methods and success factors.

We support you throughout the entire change process, right through to implementation and anchoring. Please contact us: contact@markenfactory.com

CHANGE – actively adapting to changing environments & actively shaping the future

Resilience: Organizations have learned one thing in this 21st century: that they cannot prevent crises and serious changes.Often they cannot even predict them.Consequently, they need to build up skills that make them resilient.Resilient, however, not in the usual sense of robustness, namely the ability to “jump back” to the initial state, as it were, because that would be a step backwards, as the environment has evolved in the meantime. In our training courses and workshops, we promote the forward-thinking ability and power of dynamic, agile resilience to ensure your own performance, innovative ability and health: we call it “Resilience Empowerment”.

Companies: making strategic & foresighted decisions about the appropriate degree of adaptation, developing and implementing change strategies so that they can become effective.

Cultural Change & Transformation: Successful leadership of change, e.g. in the implementation of new business models or working environments.

Digital Leadership: Lean, agile development program consistently aligned with the central challenges of leadership in the digital age.It is part of the future strategy to align the organization with the future and enable the necessary cultural change.
Remote Work: Leading & working in hybrid working environments – in presence and remotely.
Company succession: The change of a successful succession begins before the nomination of the successor and ends with the successful implementation of his or her strategies.

Event industry: Success in a disruptively changing environment. Increasing digitalization and hybridization are forcing the event industry to reposition itself and rethink rental and events, among other things.

Cities / islands / regions:
Strengthen identity. Develop and promote assets. Develop a vision and use it as a guiding star. Develop tailor-made strategies. Successfully shaping the transformation.

  • Smart Island: FORWARD Project. Madeira “Lighthouse of Research & Innovation” (Case Study) (Report)
  • Smart City
  • Citizen Participation
  • City of the Future

CHANGE – Acquiring change skills

Resilience Empowerment: Resilient organizations are proven to be more successful. They have the ability to be productive and innovative at an organizational, leadership and personal level, even in crises or phases of major challenges, to recognize and seize new options for action and to actively shape the future.

Change Empowerment & Performance: goal- and topic-focused empowerment of departments, management teams, project teams and employees.

Change Agents: the change agent as change facilitator.

The Learning Company: The concept is not new, but it is rarely implemented. Organizations can only hold their own against the competition and adapt quickly enough to new environments if they are able to learn. (see also our method “Bench-Learning live”)

Digital Fitness: Targeted use of digital technologies to create added value and increase effectiveness and efficiency. Skills + mindset.

Team building “Agility”: Agility has become a buzzword, but it is the prerequisite for productive work in practice – and not just in times of major change.