Module 3: Leading the Organization & Change – Designing Systems, Enabling Change
Leading with Confidence and Strength
The frequency and intensity of the turbulence that leaders must navigate in their organizations continue to increase. It is becoming ever more challenging for leaders to keep their organization strategically on course while remaining sufficiently flexible and not becoming personally overwhelmed by the challenges.
And as if the “day-to-day business” weren’t demanding enough, leaders increasingly need to think about tomorrow and prepare their organizational units for the future. This means they must be able to implement changes proactively.
Through two shifts in perspective, this course provides you with the tools needed to meet the often contradictory demands of everyday leadership and to master your responsibilities successfully, with strength and confidence.
Inspired by the Military: Leadership as the Art of Letting Go
The common instinct in such challenging times is to “tighten the reins” – to give clear directives and, if necessary, take matters into your own hands. However, following this instinct can have significant negative consequences.
In this course, we take a shift in perspective to explore a different, less intuitive, but far more effective approach. We turn to the world of the military: an environment that has long dealt with extreme turbulence and has developed management and leadership practices specifically suited to such conditions.
From the military, we can learn that, especially in highly complex situations, it is often wiser to “loosen the reins” rather than tighten them. The course covers exactly how this works, along with many other easily applicable, “battle-tested” agile leadership principles.
A Scientific Perspective: Leading Change as an Experiment
In addition to agile work within the existing system, leaders must be able to position their areas of responsibility for the future. Here, classical change management increasingly reaches its limits. To work effectively on the system in an increasingly complex world, more flexible methods are required.
This calls for another shift in perspective, this time into the world of science. In science, the experiment is considered the gold standard for generating and applying knowledge. Experiments allow for “testing realities” in an open-ended and low-risk way, providing potential for unexpected insights.
This logic can be applied to organizational change: by creating “experimental spaces” within the company, leaders no longer need to know everything in advance. Solutions can be tested openly and with minimal risk. What proves effective in the experimental space can then be scaled more broadly across the organization. This approach eases the burden on leadership while generating solutions that truly work in a complex world.
Key Learnings
Based on these surprising shifts in perspective, you will acquire leadership skills for turbulent times and practice the art of letting go:
- Principle of Subsidiarity: Learn how decision-making and action can be effectively delegated to lower levels within existing structures – a central question for any agile organization (or one aspiring to be agile). You will gain a practical, hands-on approach to achieve this.
- Self-limitation in Leadership: Learn to focus as a leader on what truly matters and to let go of everything else.
- Understanding the System: Gain insight into organizations from a systems-theoretical perspective, laying the foundation for appropriate leadership and design behavior in a complex world.
- New Approaches to Change: The complex world demands new methods for organizational change. You will learn to apply a forward-looking and easily manageable approach.
- The Human Perspective as a Game changer: Reflect on your own view of human nature and understand its central importance for truly effective collaboration within the organization.
Keyfacts
- Date: Thursday, 22. January - Saturday 24. January 2026
- Next start: October 2026
- Fee: € 2.500,-