We still don't have the words to describe in detail how we experienced the Art of Hosting training in Leipzig at the beginning of May. Julia - the initiator - has already summarised it here: I had no real idea what to expect. It was intense exciting funny quiet loud brave sad hard listening [...]

In April, we asked you how you experience the current situation in your organisations. Not superficially, not diplomatically - but honestly. 16 teams from the civil society sector responded. We asked six questions: about stress in the team, psychological safety, the financial situation, personnel, networks - and an open question at the end [...]

In January, I was alone on the Atlantic coast in Portugal. No programme and no agenda. And at some point, a song by AnnenMayKantereit came to mind: „Three days by the sea and I know who I am again." I knew at that moment: that's exactly it. The sea brings me back to myself. And somehow [...]

Aktuell sehen wir, dass durch politische Entscheidungen jahrelanger Arbeit der Boden entzogen werden soll. Aus unserer Erfahrung wissen wir: Finanzielle Absicherung und Netzwerkerhalt sind nur dort möglich, wo die ???????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????? gelingt. Wenn das Vertrauen im Team bricht, wird es schwer für die Organisation.Wir wollen euch ????????????????- ???????????? ????????????????????????????ä???????????? anbieten, um in dieser Disruption psychologische Sicherheit zurückzugewinnen und […]

When organisations, SMEs or start-ups undergo change processes, the question often arises: Do we need consulting or support? Both approaches aim to successfully shape transformations and there are significant differences in their approach. Consulting: specialist expertise and strategy development Consulting focuses on supporting organisations with specialist knowledge and structured methods. [...]

What do a refugee aid organisation, an independent school and a media agency have in common? They all worked on their organisation with us at SOCIUS as part of INQA coaching - over 7 months, in a practical way, in small development loops and with a noticeable effect in everyday life. First things first: The INQA Coaching programme is funded by 80% from [...]

It was a Monday evening and I was nervous. In front of me: the screen with the zoom tiles slowly filling up with the faces of my peer group, and a script I had written myself - because English is not my first language and I wanted to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything important. I was about to go to the first [...]

Cultivating trust is one of the basic tasks of social development. Whether as self-confidence, as trust in relevant others, as structural trust or as deeply rooted basic trust and trust in God - without confidence in a sustainable network, social action remains groundless. According to Charles Feldman, trust is the decision „to submit something that is important to you to the behaviour of another [...]".

SOCIUS Organisationsberatung gGmbH - which was founded in 1998 and is now a subsidiary of SOCUS eG - has been represented by Christian Baier and Andi Knoth as Managing Directors for the past 15 years; from 2026, Lysan Escher and Andi Knoth will form this tandem. Why have we changed this “running system”? Shared responsibility per role board We [...]

For the new year, we wish ourselves and you a stable civil society. Courage to face contact and conflict Courage to face truths and bouts of courage. Plurality, mindfulness and resonance. Peace of mind and a piece of cake. I asked my colleagues what this means to them. Here are their answers: Julia - What act of courage would you like to provoke - [...]

My first encounter with the Viable System Model (VSM) came about when I was looking for the most cryptic diagram possible for a Power Point karaoke. What Stafford Beer put down on paper at the end of the 1970s is a fascinating imposition at first glance: very suitable for karaoke, but definitely too bulky for shirt-sleeved OE practice. [...]

Caught between departure and resistance I have been working as an innovation coach for over ten years and as a mediator for several years. In innovation processes, I accompany teams from both roles through lively and sometimes gruelling phases. On the one hand, they experience unimagined creativity and creative power; on the other hand, these processes are often accompanied by frustration and conflict. Again and again [...]

„What we practice on a small scale sets the pattern for the whole system“ - adrienne maree brown, emergent strategy / fractals The beauty of small things What strikes me in check-ins and conversations these days is the gap between the big picture and the small things of everyday life. It's a painful balancing act: we feel that [...]

I started my time-out 21 days ago. And although time is already running out, it feels like I've only just taken my shoes off and rediscovered what it feels like to no longer wear sturdy shoes every day. And in doing so, I'm observing what it feels like not to function at all. At the moment I am [...]

 How it all began The question with which Kerstin Gollembiewski provided the impetus for the first SOCIUS lab in Hamburg's Schwimmwestenfabrik was as open as it was inspiring: How do we nurture the firm belief in organisations that „A completely different world is possible!“? In times of small and large crises, in moments when we long for security and orientation [...].

Development is our passion. Our own organisation - SOCIUS - is also developing, of course! But we are usually quite cautious with big steps, trying to sense the organic. The big step we are about to take is one that has been in the pipeline for the last few years: Rudi, who founded SOCIUS in 1998, is looking for another [...]

"If, through dialogue, everyone involved understands how the current situation came about, then the desired development will also be collaborative and successful." Professional Over twenty years ago, my plan was to found SOCIUS Organisationsberatung gGmbH to provide consulting support primarily to non-profit organisations. That's exactly what I've been doing ever since - still with enthusiasm. But [...]

Katrin Schrader: I had been made aware of Socius by a friend, had looked at the website and tried to understand what is meant by organisational development, until a sentence in the „Socius Knowledge“ section literally startled me: „It is not possible not to develop yourself or an organisation.“ I wanted to know how Socius helps non-profit organisations to [...]

How it all began It all started with the realisation that non-profit organisations need their own specific type of "management consultancy". With this idea in mind, Rudi Piwko founded SOCIUS as a non-profit limited company in 1998 with the support of its legendary inventor, Prof. Artur Fischer. Concrete needs such as fundraising and public relations work were at the centre of this initial period. With the help of the Theodor Heuss [...]

Not everything has been said yet
On 13 June 2025 in Halle (Saale)

We don't have a map of the terrain ahead of us - but we can equip our ship to make the most of the wind and currents. Strategic roadmapping - I apologise for the drama - has had its day. Even its forward-looking relative, backcasting, looks increasingly dusty in the face of today's complexity and dynamics. Both methods rely [...]

In the run-up to the oe-tag, we were very uncertain and asked ourselves: how will this topic, which occupies us so intensively and at the same time seems so far removed from the context of „organisational development“, be received? How would our long-standing Berlin participants react to us going to Halle? And how are we ourselves able to „speak“ about this topic, as a group of colleagues, in [...]

Whether we come together as facilitators, consultants, managers or committed citizens - we need conversations that go beyond individual perspectives. Especially at a time when social, ecological, political and existential crises are overlapping, we need spaces that enable more than just the exchange of information: spaces in which shared realisation and deeper understanding can emerge. Especially [...]

In preparation for the oe-tag 2025 on 13 June 2025 in Halle (Saale), where we want to embark on a dialogue-based search for traces of German-German history in organisations, because we believe that “Not everything has been said yet!”, I have been reading. Among other things, about “Three East German women who get drunk and found an ideal state” and [...]

What happens when we lose our usual control and instead make room for mistakes, for not knowing, for the unplanned? At the SOCIUS lab in Hamburg, we explored precisely this question - with impulses from art therapy and organisational development. Organisational development meets art therapy - this was the theme of the SOCIUS lab in Hamburg with Annika [...]

Joana Ebbinghaus is heavily involved in the preparation of the oe-day. In this interview, she talks about her motivation and the importance that the topic still has today - for people and organisations. Why is this topic so important to you that it is being addressed at an oe-tag? I could write a really long essay here. [...]

Children and young people are the only group in society that is systematically excluded from political participation. In their book Children - Minority without Protection, Aladin El-Mafaalani, Sebastian Kurtenbach and Klaus-Peter Strohmeier impressively show how this fact affects the reality of young people's lives. On this evening in February at the HDKDW, El-Mafaalani outlines a future in which [...]

In one of our SOCIUS salons “Healthy Sick People”, a participant reported that her son had died six years ago and spoke of grief as a chronic illness. As a bereavement counsellor and co-initiator of our SOCIUS salons on the topic of chronic illness and work, I had already thought about exactly this. Grief is one of the deepest and [...]

The path from hierarchical to shared leadership runs through rugged terrain. Where founders and long-standing leaders relinquish the central control of „their“ organisation (voluntarily or involuntarily), the desire for a post-heroic culture is often expressed at the sight of the abandoned executive chair. No one is supposed to follow in the footsteps of the old central figure, no one is supposed to take over the leadership [...].

Have you ever wondered why rituals play such a powerful role in our lives? In a world that is spinning ever faster, they offer you the opportunity to pause, let go of the old and welcome the new. Rituals are a vessel that helps you to consciously shape transitions and reconnect with your essence.

When we launched the „Illness in organisations“ salon series in October 2024, the three of us had already been meeting regularly once a month for a year with our colleague and friend Monia to share our personal experiences and insights into what it means to want to work and be effective with a chronic illness. In the course of these conversations, more and more [...]

The TrauerTaskForce week of mourning took place at the end of October. In many different cultures, the dead are commemorated at this time of year. All Saints' Day, All Souls' Day, Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos), Sunday of the Dead, Eternity Sunday... The GriefTaskForce is a network of grief experts, supporters and friends who organised the week of mourning for the second time under the heading Eat.Cry.Repeat, [...].

Organisational culture is a dazzling creature that divides opinion. On the one hand, there is the conviction that culture can hardly be changed, if at all. From this perspective, we have to accept it like the climate zone in which we live (and where this is unsatisfactory, the good old Hamburg wisdom „There is no such thing as bad weather, [...]" comes into play).

Summary The text deals with the topic of trauma and traumatisation in various working environments. The phenomenon of traumatisation, with its consequences and effects, occurs both intra- and interpersonally and in contexts that were previously unprepared or barely prepared for it. Employees can experience such experiences as being overwhelmed and react in different emotional and physical ways. In [...]

Strategy discussions in organisations that we support are increasingly characterised by tensions. Where there is a struggle for the „right“ impact approach, discussions become passionate and spirited: it has often long been clear what we are against, but what are we actually for? And what exactly does it take to achieve this? While impact orientation in the 2010s was primarily a concept [...]

We invited Žaklina Mamutovič and Nele Kontzi, two pioneers of the anti-bias approach in Germany, to the SOCIUS lab in June. The two have been working together in the anti-bias network for over 23 years. They educate, support, offer training and advice, and it is clear to see that they do this with conviction and passion. Back in 2015 [...]

For organisational development, borrowings from other disciplines are the salt in the sensemaking soup: whether it is the navigation between map and terrain in nautics, the secret of creative flow in art, the interaction of self-healing and treatment in medicine or the development of operating systems and apps in software engineering - with every image [...].

Even the introductory round gave us an idea that this was going to be a special evening. A small group of 6 people had gathered for the SOCIUS labor live followed by a fireside chat to find out where and how the topic of East-West still concerns us in our organisations today. When collecting the questions that the [...]

How is collective action energy created? Alignment is a delicate matter. The corridor in which the joint alignment of a team takes place can be wider or narrower. If it is too narrow, the demand for binding common ground becomes a corset. If it is very broad, there is a risk of arbitrariness and disintegration. Alignment does not necessarily only refer to the [...]

“What time is it on the clock of the world?” Grace Lee Boggs “Everything is falling apart, but also, new things are possible. [...] We are in a time of new suns. We have no idea what could be, but everything that we have been is falling apart. So it's time to change. And we can [...]

Whether we are accompanying teams and organisations on the path to self-organisation or reflecting on our own process at Socius: Power is always a topic that needs to be discussed urgently on the one hand, but often also causes a lot of discomfort on the other. Power is usually held by „others“, whereas we prefer to call it „responsibility“. Power has something [...]

In recent years, researchers have increasingly scrutinised the topic of gratitude and have come up with some fascinating findings that are also relevant to us. Whether at work, at home or with friends. As social beings, we are “travelling” together in these changeable and volatile times. As research has found out, our behaviour influences [...]

Jazz is fascinating in many respects: as a counterpart to the symphonic corset of composed scores and the pursuit of standardised precision, it is a symbol of the emergent flow of joint development. The dazzling jazz metaphor has inspired works by Karl Weick, Mary Jo Hatch and others and has had a lasting impact on the rationalist management discourse of the last century. Currently [...]

The second module of our annual training programme „Leadership with attitude” recently took place in the beautifully situated Volkenroda Monastery in Thuringia. Together with my colleague Hanna Kunze, we dedicated three intensive days to the topic of “value-orientated leadership”. What are values, which of them characterise my personal leadership actions and how do they relate to the [...]

The New Quality of Work Initiative (INQA) is a federal programme for the promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises and non-profit organisations. With INQA Coaching, the successor programme to Unternehmenswert:Mensch has recently been launched, in which some SOCIUS team members were also accredited and have supported a total of around 80 funded organisational development processes over the past 5 years.

Creating this book was like founding a school - we needed patience, perseverance and staying power. We had to contend with a number of delays: promises that we needed didn't come as quickly as we wanted; the publisher announced that it would no longer be producing print media; our friend and BFAS board colleague Uwe Schröder [...]...

Construction noise was coming from the floor above us into the SOCIUS seminar room. Christian found this very annoying for the check-in round. And it immediately became clear how things would work here today: “Christian, that's not construction noise, that's the fart sound system we installed a few weeks ago in preparation for the lab! Be glad that [...]

We have eliminated nothing other than the blind, irrationally authoritarian behaviour that reduces productivity. With this quote, Ricardo Semler describes what motivated his mechanical engineering company SEMCO to break new ground over 50 years ago. Since then, the „technology of sociocracy“ has been further developed in numerous in-house experiments - including in this SOCIUS laboratory. Vivian Breucker [...]

Many years ago, I met Ines Boban, an expert on inclusion, at Matthias zur Bonsen's learning forum in Oberursel. At the time, she was working with her husband Prof Andreas Hinz in Halle. In May last year, I met them both on holiday on Brac, where we also spend our workations. We share an interest in [...]

Six were registered, five turned up. After a round of introductions, we began with a brief speculation: Why are there so few people here? Such an important and somehow inescapable topic: grief in the workplace. People die, there are separations, layoffs, crises - in work contexts, in private and in between, among colleagues, board members, managing directors, customers, friends. So why would [...]

The digital transformation is not only changing the way school leaders understand their role, but is also challenging old ways of thinking. Headteacher Nicole Stockmann and organisational consultant Andreas Knoth talk about how the culture of digitality is shaping their thinking - and what a contemporary mindset might look like. What attitude is currently being used in the school system to [...]

On 13 October 2022, Nicola Kriesel, Lysan Escher and Andreas Knoth were at the „Every voice matters“ online conference of Sociocracy For All and talked about our own transformation process: How we are in an ongoing evolution from a heroic-led organisation with a big heart and a will to work as a team, through a post-heroic phase, into [...]

„Collaboration“ is one of our six modules that we have developed in the SOCIUS change essentials online course and focuses on collaboration in a creative context. Forms of collaboration can take place between organisations, but also between teams or individuals within an organisation. We have broken down different degrees of collaboration and also identified risks in which collaboration may [...]

Self-organisation is a practice rather than a structural model. And while models can simply be adopted, the path to mastering a practice is the practice itself: Studies assume 10,000 hours to achieve excellence in a field (Malcom Gladwell 2009: Outliers). For example, to become an „excellent“ pianist, I have to practice every day for 10 years [...].

It's hot and the sun is shining. After two weeks of anxiously checking the weather forecast every day, we're now glad of the wind, even if it does blow pinboards and our listening stations into disarray. After no oe-day in 2021, we are particularly looking forward to this 15th oe-day; to a lively exchange in [...]

Crises - even the terrible and painful ones - bring forth something new. In the organisational world, this is reflected in structural arrangements that are both a framework and an expression of development. Two types of such transformative structures are „bubbles“ and „foams“ (a more in-depth look at these phenomena brought to the stage by Peter Sloterdijk can be found here). While in the [...]

Agility, scrum, holacracy, shared leadership and diversity management aim to help organisations deal with new challenges. They are intended to provide them with structural and cultural answers to the developments they are currently facing. These concepts are also „said“ to be able to fundamentally transform power relations in organisations. (see Bauer, Hohl and Zirkler, 2019). Which [...]

Lysan Escher and Marek Spitczok von Brisinski will open the SOCIUS lab series in 2022 with „Resilient into the New Year“. Participants from Berlin, Bremen, Darmstadt, Dortmund and Hamburg will spend a carefully organised and varied evening together with the shared wish „Give in to everything that strengthens!“. Strengthening can be, among other things, our breath and [...]

In our new category „SOCIA Outlooks“, we want to regularly focus our attention on the situations of women* in working life in NGOs, in the consulting business and in leadership positions. As the year draws to a close, Julia Hoffmann answers our questions. We are delighted that next year we will be providing insights into the thoughts and ideas of Hannah Kalhorn [...].

Transformation is long-term, far-reaching and process-based, which in this combination is already a certain imposition: if everything is a process, a constant change, a constant flow of creative destruction and renewal, we run the risk of losing our bearings. As if the world were not already dynamic, complex and crisis-ridden enough, we as protagonists of social transformation are also undertaking [...]

“We're in a new spiral of fundamental change. It needs to happen because we have unsustainable ways of living. We need to learn new perceptions of life and to see life differently.” Maria Scordialos „The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think. [...]

Diversity and discrimination sensitivity must go hand in hand with a power-critical discourse in organisations. The 15 participants in the Socius lab online on 16.9.21 largely agreed on this. At the same time, it became clear in the predominantly white educational group that the desire for a power-critical approach to diversity and discrimination-sensitive behaviour always starts with ourselves. Our lab guest [...]

A few years ago, the SOCIUS team already had experience with two grieving colleagues who had to let loved ones go within a very short space of time. The team of eight at the time reacted almost intuitively: empathetically, understandingly and patiently. The previous bereavements in the lives of the team members involved elderly parents. Here it was suddenly different, with siblings and [...]

  Projects are not just concepts, plans and tick boxes behind milestones: every goal formulation is based on a balancing act between one's own and external demands; every plan contains the breathtaking leap into the unplannable; fantasies of failure and heroism lurk beneath every responsible role. To the extent that projects become personal, they have the potential to become a playing field for personal development [...].

Attachment theory is one of the most researched psychological theories. It explains how we as social beings enter into contact and relationships with each other - based on how we have experienced security in our close emotional relationships, usually in early childhood. When working with young children, findings from attachment research are standard. [...]

In our new category „SOCIA Outlooks“, we want to regularly focus our attention on the situations of women* in working life in NGOs, in the consulting business and in leadership positions. At the end of the summer holidays, Joana Ebbinghaus answered our questions. We are already looking forward to the answers from Julia Hoffman and the other women from our [...]

At the beginning of 2017, I gave this written interview as a contribution to Christin Döhring's master's thesis on „Sociocracy - potentials and obstacles for modern organisations“. She sent me 15 questions. Now I have found it again and decided to publish it here because it might be of interest to others. I am pleased [...]

In our new category „SOCIA Outlooks“, we want to regularly focus our attention on the situations of women* in working life in NGOs, in the consulting business and in management positions. The interview series continues with Nicola Kriesel. In the next few weeks you can read the answers from Joana Ebbinghaus and Julia Hoffmann and then we will [...]

Complexity did not just come into the world yesterday: Social systems are, by definition, multi-layered and dynamic, i.e. complex. However, the borderline experience between dynamism and chaos in the coronavirus universe is currently making what contemporary management discourse calls the „VUCA world“ (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) very tangible. The experience of uncertainty triggers contradictory [...]

Admittedly, the method of collegial counselling, which can enrich both teams and so-called stranger labs, had not really died. Nevertheless, it has been a little quiet in recent years. In the SOCIUS team, we have always greatly appreciated collegial counselling sessions, sometimes in the super-quick format of fifteen minutes [...].

Sometimes good things take time and it takes us a while to share our thoughts and work with you. We have just come across two SOCIUS finds that have been waiting to be published for years. In 2016, Ralph Piotrowski gave a talk on „Professional proximity“ to employees of a charity organisation, which [...]

Every person who accompanies groups and teams, regardless of their size, has experienced it before: things don't run smoothly. The mood sinks. There is resistance. No progress is being made. Strong emotions become visible. You become nervous and insecure. What can you do when things get stuck in the process? When the mood gets rough and the [...]

The SOCIUS lab with Hannah Hummel in autumn 2019 was an intensive laboratory with six participants, which made the improvisations a very personal experience. Hannah Hummel is a social pedagogue and has been performing improvisational theatre for over 20 years. Her work and her passion are a good match, as her work with children and young people is also [...]

With 10 participants, our lab on 9 May was well attended. Marek Spitczok von Brisinski was there for the third time as lab leader for the experiments in this monthly room. This time it was about protection concepts for organisations in which there are structural power imbalances - in other words, almost all of them. Marek is a qualified sociologist, diversity trainer, mediator, trauma consultant and organisational developer. He is [...]

This is the second blog post on the topic of „holding space“. This second part deals with the specific activities of facilitators and provides an outlook on the challenges of holding space in organisations. Holding the space The now widely used English term facilitation seems appropriate as a role background for holding spaces. In most cases, the task of [...]

The concept of „held spaces“ is well established in the support of group processes and is becoming increasingly important in the development processes of organisations. A held space is difficult to grasp, it is characterised by an invisible quality, conceivable as a socially constructed bubble that can open up opportunities for development and change and make them accessible. The understanding of what characterises a [...]

Everything will unfold with more grace if we stop trying to control and instead choose to simply sense and respond. (Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organisations) There is a fine line in strategy work between „not always just reacting to the environment“ and „not just planning for the drawer again“. Laloux's most recent introduction to the discourse [...]

I see the study of one's own biography, the categorisation of one's own life path, as an essential aspect of the art of living. Origin, experiences, private, professional and social contexts form the framework in which biography takes place, is interpreted and assessed; combined with dreams, longings and desires, this forms the overall work that characterises one's own life plan [...].