Leading Digital Change

Leading Digital Change The two-day seminar for everyone who has to implement change instead of only announcing it: you learn why change fails, how to make a direction concrete and how to take people along instead of running them over. By the end you have a plan for your own initiative and know which three steps come first.

Leading Digital Change at a glance

• Format: 2 days on site + self-learning track
• Level: basic to advanced
• Participants: max. 16 people
• Language: German (English on request)
• Certificate: AEI certificate of attendance
• Investment: €490.00 plus VAT

Change projects rarely fail on the technology. They fail because the direction stays unclear, because the first three months are worked in duplicate and because nobody can explain why the new way should be better than the old one.

The second reason is less comfortable: resistance is read as rejection rather than information. Whoever runs it over gets applause in the meeting and blockage in daily work — often visible only when the schedule can no longer hold.

This seminar works on both. You sharpen the direction so that decisions become possible in the team, and you learn to use resistance instead of fighting it. You work on your own initiative, not on a textbook example.

What you take away

• A vision that reduces to one sentence by which decisions can be made.
• A sequence for the first ninety days.
• An understanding of what resistance signals and how to address it.
• Clarity on roles so that change does not hang on one person.
• A format for making progress visible without inventing numbers.

Your learning objectives

• You name what change has failed on in your environment so far.
• You formulate a direction that makes priorities decidable.
• You recognise resistance early and distinguish concern from blocking.
• You settle roles so that the transition gets ownership.
• You make progress visible and adjust without changing direction.

The levers at a glance

A vision that covers everything changes nothing. Whoever says everything becomes more digital is right and has made no decision easier. A direction only becomes usable when someone can reject one of two options with it.

Resistance is a question nobody asked. Usually a concern sits behind it: time, competence, status. Whoever voices it can answer it. Whoever skips it keeps it, only unspoken.

Parallel operation kills every project. When a new procedure is introduced in addition to the old one, the load grows and the benefit never arrives. An exit date is not a formality but half the implementation.

Visible early wins are not a show. One small area where it measurably works better convinces more than any presentation. It has to be real, though, otherwise it backfires.

Who is this seminar for?

For leaders and owners who have to implement a change.

• Team and department leads introducing new ways of working.
• Project owners for digitalisation without disciplinary responsibility.
• Managing directors of small and mid-sized companies leading the change.
• Subject owners carrying a topic into the company.

Leadership experience helps but is not required. The patterns are explained during the seminar and practised on your own initiative.

The seminar is not suitable for teams looking for a specific project management certificate. We work on leadership and implementation, not on methodology questions.

Investment and dates

Participation costs €490.00 plus VAT, including the self-learning track, materials and certificate of attendance. There are six dates per year in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and live online, plus an in-house variant for teams. You will find all dates in the list on this page.

For the exercises bring your own initiative. Anyone without one picks from the provided cases; the own one is more productive, however small it seems.

After the seminar

You keep the materials, the plan for the first ninety days and a guide for the conversation with resistance. With that you can start next week instead of founding another working group.

The guide has three sentences: what changes? what stays? what does that mean for you from Monday? Whoever cannot answer those three has no communication, only an announcement.

The ninety-day plan does not list projects. It lists decisions: what is decided in week one, what only in week eight, and what explicitly not at all. A plan without the third column is a wish list.

Two weeks after the seminar you receive a short follow-up: what you introduced and which reactions came.

For teams the seminar is available as an in-house event with your own initiative. The procedure stays the same, the examples come from your company.

Programme: 2 days

Day 1 – Understanding change

• Why change fails
• Change as a leadership task
• Making the vision concrete
• Setting priorities
• Understanding resistance
• Involvement and communication

Day 2 – Taking people along

• Clarifying roles
• Introducing new ways of working
• Making successes visible
• Learning and adjusting

Both days run from 09:00 to 16:15 with breaks in the morning, at midday and in the afternoon. Short self-checks sit between the blocks so you can test where you stand before moving on.

Each day has three parts: an introduction to the pattern, an exercise on your own initiative and a review in the group. At the end of day one your direction stands; on day two you plan the implementation.

The seminar includes a self-learning track. It contains the patterns from both days as short units with examples and one self-check each. You can work through it before the date to clarify terms, or afterwards to repeat what stuck and what did not.

Our approach

We work on your initiative, not on a theory of change. At the start of each exercise you decide which decision you want to make easier and whom it concerns; at the end stands a wording that survives a test in the team.

The exercises are short and repeat in variations. That is deliberate: a clear direction does not emerge from watching but from repeatedly deleting everything that does not ease a decision.

Every block ends with a sentence you could show a colleague: what changes, what stays, and what it means from Monday.

We work in pairs, in small groups and in plenary, with changing partners. Every participant gets feedback on their wording, not just on their intention. Group level and participant count are deliberately limited: with 16 people no anonymous lecture is possible.