BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION CONSULTING
Taking transformation in hand.
Somewhere between the decision and day-to-day business, your organisation is losing momentum. That is where my work begins: assessing the situation, developing the target model, supporting implementation until it holds in daily operations. At executive level, I work as a sparring partner in decision-making and reflection.
VITALITY IN PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS
A call to action for transformation.
Imagine an organisation that draws its strength not from pressure but from aliveness. People take responsibility not because a rule demands it, but because they have a stake in what is being built. Ideas reach the places where decisions are made. And decisions reach the people who are meant to carry them.
Most organisations operate far below this potential. Not for lack of talent, but because people have adapted to narrow expectations and rigid structures. Anyone who has learned over the years that initiative is risky will bring only a fraction of their energy to work.
The key is investment in self-reflection: in people finding a new grip on their role, and in teams working on how they work together.
That means giving key people the room to grow confident in a changed role. Letting teams examine their own collaboration in facilitated retrospectives. And meeting with leadership teams in regular off-sites to work not only in the organisation, but on it.
Vitality is not a soft goal. It shows up hard in the business: in decisions that get made instead of circling. In commitments that hold. In an organisation that leads change rather than suffering it. There is a path to that state, and it begins with the decision to take it.
SITUATIONS
When companies engage me.
My work does not start with a topic. It starts with a situation. Four that come up often:
Two units were merged. The collaboration wasn’t.
On paper there is one organisation; in practice there are two. Responsibilities overlap, decisions stall, and the leadership team spends its energy on alignment instead of on the business.
The company outgrew its own steering.
What worked with thirty people no longer holds with three hundred. Priorities compete, commitments become unreliable, and executive management decides things that should long have been delegated.
A new leadership team must become effective.
After changes at the top, a team stands together without a shared way of working — and is expected to deliver immediately, under scrutiny.
The transformation was approved and isn’t moving.
The target picture exists, the presentation has been given — and nothing changes in daily operations.
HOW I WORK
The individual transformation process.
Assess the situation
I establish how decisions are actually made in your organisation: through conversations with the people involved, observation of ongoing leadership meetings, and a review of the existing steering documents. The result is an assessment concrete enough to argue with.
Develop the target model
Together with the leadership team, the picture of future collaboration takes shape: roles, decision rights, governance bodies, escalation paths — in a form that is ready for decision, not open to interpretation.
Support implementation
I stay until the new order holds in day-to-day business, and work with the people responsible wherever it doesn’t.
Verify effectiveness
What stands at the end is not a concept paper but an organisation that decides differently than before — verifiable against the very issues that used to stall.
EXECUTIVE COACHING
Senior leadership is lonely. What is missing is a place where a decision can be thought through before it is made.
In these conversations I bring no content of my own: I ask questions, structure the reflection, and keep the process open until clarity is reached. The answers come from my client’s situation and apply to that situation.
ENGAGEMENTS
Consulting mandates in practice.
Selected consulting mandates, anonymised — from situation to analysis to outcome.
Decentralising a corporate region
Situation
A heavily centralised, bureaucratic corporate region was deciding more slowly than its market required. Responsibilities overlapped between the region and its country organisations, decisions were delegated upwards, and agreements often carried no consequences.
Mandate
The leadership team was to shape the transition to a more decentralised organisation: moving decisions to where the market and subject knowledge sits, while strengthening accountability. Decentralisation was not to be secured by additional control, but by the quality of the leaders and their capacity to act accountably.
Approach
In a series of off-site sessions, the leadership team worked on real escalations and decisions from its own day-to-day. Together they established which questions genuinely require the centre, where leaders were handing their responsibility upwards, and why agreements remained without consequence. Out of this came clearer decision spaces, and an objectives system that names owners, dates and the priorities that matter.
Outcome
The region now decides more questions within its own remit, closer to the operating business. Fewer issues are escalated unnecessarily; commitments in the leadership team are tied to one person and one date. The decentralised organisation increasingly rests on leaders capable of accountability rather than on bureaucratic safeguards.
Tom Klein & Co.
No one succeeds alone. We are a network of experienced masters and young, highly motivated colleagues who have worked together for years and bring transformation initiatives to success together.
About Tom Klein
As an entrepreneur, CEO, HR director, managing director or owner of a mid-sized company, you know that today’s business challenges demand unusual answers — sometimes up to a change in the very way you succeed.
At Tom Klein, we accompany exactly these processes. We are the right partner when you want to set yourself up for the modern world: fast, flexible, light on your feet. I have personally supported German, American and French companies in 40 countries through successful transformations. Our colleagues bring additional international experience.
We stand for the strength and the capacity to act that become possible in a culture of freedom and responsibility. Shaped by it ourselves, we take your leaders and your people along the same path.
Expertise
Creating the organisational frame for a highly motivated performance culture
Setting up people and teams so that they carry change on their own strength and keep developing it
Selecting the steering and working formats for open, flexible, accountable collaboration — and anchoring them in day-to-day business
Laying the ground for the organisation to keep developing from within — including its internal structures and responsibilities.
A CALL TO DECISION-MAKERS
Raise the vitality of your organisation.
You have been inside a company like this. Perhaps on a visit: you walk through the door, and before anyone explains anything, you can feel the difference. The conversations are about customers and possibilities, not about who is responsible for what. Responsibility is taken before it is assigned. Perhaps it was your own company, in the years when it was small enough for decisions to be made where the work was done.
Then came growth, and with it the usual trade: safety for speed, cover for initiative. That trade is not inevitable. The companies that hold on to both follow a principle that is simple and demanding: a few things are settled bindingly together, so that everything else can be decided freely. Freedom needs a frame that carries it.
Working with me, that culture gets its backbone: joint planning that produces commitments which hold. Reviews where results count, not reports. Retrospectives in which teams work on how they work together. Objective systems that clarify priorities instead of lengthening lists. And, increasingly, AI-supported decision processes that add speed without blurring responsibility. Which of these instruments come into play follows from your situation. They are introduced inside the initiative itself, on your real decisions.
And because structures only carry what people carry, the two belong together: room for key people to grow confident in a changed role, and off-sites in which leadership teams work not only in the organisation but on it.
The decisive question is not which problems need solving. The decisive question is what stands in your organisation’s way.
Vitality is not a soft goal. It shows up in decisions that get made instead of circling, and in commitments that hold. Your company once knew this state. The point is not to become small again. The point is to be large and still decide that way. If you want to take this path: let us talk about your organisation — about what is holding it back, and about what it has in it.
What satisfied clients say
about Tom Klein
"Tom Klein has accompanied me personally and with my management teams for over 15 years in various professional with my management teams and has been a reliable sparring partner for me throughout this time, valuable source of ideas, but above all a trustworthy listener and sounding board for my topics. As intensive as our sessions were, the next day it always felt as if I had taken an important step towards. I had taken an important step in solving my issues or on my personal path."
"Looking back, there have been a handful of people in my career who have made a real impact on my personal development. Tom is definitely one of them. His manner strengthens any group and team development - however, his true value to me personally lies in the "one on one" coaching I have been able to utilize in my various leadership roles. By providing perspective and not just advice, he enables me to continuously self-reflect, always appropriate to my particular situation. With his inimitable personality, he always encourages me to focus on the individual and the specific circumstances rather than on tools and methods. A truly unique coach!"
I have worked with Tom for over a decade and I can confidently say that this collaboration has been one of the most valuable investments in my professional and personal development. Tom has an unparalleled talent for developing customized strategies that are perfectly suited to my individual needs. He is a master at facilitating both individuals and teams to successfully navigate their own learning journeys. What I particularly appreciate about Tom is his ability to stay ahead of the curve of the developing needs and challenges of our times. His support and expertise have been invaluable to my success and continued development. I am incredibly grateful to Tom for the lasting impact he has had on my professional and personal journey.
Companies I have had the
privilege of working with
Baerlocher
BASF
BBraun
Blanco
Babbel
BMW
BorgWarner
Branding Science
BDR Thermea
Continental
Credit Suisse
Daimler
DQS
Danfoss
Deka Bank
DZ Bank
Eberspächer
Fuchs
Fellowmind
Rundfunk
Hyperbole TV
hinderer+mühlich
ID-Ware
Knorr Bremse
Kostal
KSB
Krebs&Riedel
Kroll Discovery
Lanxess
L-Mobile
Mann+Hummel
Markem-Imaje
Gesellschaft
ResponsAbility
Roland Berger
Sopra Steria
Sparda Consult
Synthesa
Schöpflin Stiftung
Tehalit
Union Investment
Vaillant
Vesta
Weber Hydraulik
Zotz-Klimas
What I do not offer.
I run no open seminars, no courses with a fixed curriculum, and no certifications. There are no teaching materials and no examinations.
My work takes place exclusively within a company’s mandate, on that company’s specific situation — and its content follows from that situation.
Request an initial conversation
Schedule a no-obligation initial conversation — a chance to get to know each other and to look more closely at what you need.
Get in touch
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Tom Klein
Schwalbacher Str. 36
Bad Schwalbach D-65307
VAT ID: DE 164380197
Contact
Tom Klein
Tel +49 172 6711284
mail@tomklein.de
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