Organizational
Transformation
Structures are our passion
Together with you, we examine, design and implement the organizational structures your company needs for a successful future. Because nowadays the greatest performance potential lies in properly designed decision-making and communication structures.
You restore your company’s ability to be managed when it has grown too fast or become too complex. We prepare your organization for the requirements of the future, design it in line with your business strategy and manage it in line with your aspired company culture. You eliminate unnecessary frictional losses, use the talent of your people and unleash hidden potential.
And we help you with the implementation. We accompany your transformation process as a whole all the way to success. In doing so, we pay special attention to enabling your staff to follow you.
Our methods and approaches are based on 30 years of experience in top management consulting and on the scientific foundations of management cybernetics, bionics and systems orientation. With all modesty: We have diagnosed and made fit for purpose hundreds of companies and organizations in Europe, in America or in Asia. Their success is our track record.
"Making complexity your strength."
For Business and Non-Business
Our clients include companies as well as governmental organizations and NGOs
For SMBs and corporate groups
We work for organizations of all sizes
For Local and International/Global
We offer our services in German and English - locally and globally
For all industries
Our solutions work in all industries and sectors
In addition to consultancy services, we also offer public VSM trainings: vsm-training.org/en
Diagnosing and designing the organization:
In most companies, the greatest potential lies in their management structure. We therefore solve organizational problems neither with organizational charts nor with process considerations or agile methods, but with a focus on the decision-making and communication structures of the company, i.e. on its management.
Along with the organizational structure and process organization, this is the third and most essential dimension of organizing today. It determines success or failure in a complex environment and defines the viability of the company. We work with the Viable System Model (VSM) to diagnose and design the decision-making and communication structures of your company. With this, we first examine the organizational structure together with you and check whether it focuses on the right things. We design the “in-between”, i.e. the coordination and coordination mechanisms. We design the right distribution of responsibility and resources, and we enable the company to deal with its external and internal complexity and dynamics. The VSM complements agile methods such as SAFe. So that not only the processes, but the company as a whole becomes controllable, agile and capable of handling complexity.
Implementing the right steering concept:
Many companies still manage with purely operational measures such as turnover and EBIT. They aggregate their expectations for the future bottom up in the form of multi-year plans.
In the VUCA world, however, navigating in the fog is now required. Forecasts and operational measures are strategically misleading in this context. We therefore work with you to set up a Direttissima real-time strategy process, define control variables and indicators (KPIs) for comprehensive control and design simple solutions such as dashboards to comprehensive situation centers (operations rooms).
Accelerating transformation:
How do we enable others to onboard the transformation process? How do we use their knowledge? How do we form a “guiding coalition” so that implementation succeeds?
For this purpose, we build so-called Syntegrations® into the transformation process. A Syntegration® is a multi-day retreat of 20 to 40 people to solve the current biggest challenge. A three-dimensional communication architecture based on bionic construction principles connects people and maximises the multiplication, integration and use of their best ideas and arguments (Collective Intelligence). This creates interdisciplinary, sustainable and comprehensive solutions whose implementation is driven by the commitment of those involved. Fields of application include strategy, organizational structures, costs/productivity, post-merger integration, conflict resolution, project kickoffs, etc.
“Syntegration as a core instrument to lead the company into a sustainable and successful future is, in my view, unique and effective. It was the cornerstone of the strategy for New Volkswagen. I have rarely experienced that in retrospect so many of the measures developed were actually implemented. The impact and significance of the method should not be underestimated in this respect.”
Herbert Diess, Chairman of the Board of Management of Volkswagen AG
So wandeln wir Volkswagen, Handelsblatt, 29. November 2020
"Deciding is our passion"
Consulting and implementation
We work together with your management team: From solution to implementation
Training and enabling
We train your managers in our methods and models
Training and keynotes
Be inspired by our approaches in a presentation or a training session
For customised solutions
Our solutions fit your organization like a tailored suit
The Neurology of Business
The book
This book describes the neurology of a company as a new dimension of organizing and as a basis for success in a complex world. It compares organizations with living organisms and places the neurology of a company (control and communication) as a third dimension alongside its anatomy (structural organization) and physiology (process organization). This “Neurology of Business”, so far overlooked by classical organization theory, solves its typical perennial questions.
The Neurology of Business introduces Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) and how it helps leaders diagnose and release hidden potential in today’s organizations.
The book is based on many consulting projects and management workshops the author has conducted in Europe, America and Asia. It guides the reader through the diagnosis and design process and illustrates application issues with practical examples. In this way, it becomes a language for managers to have meaningful discussions about the way their organization works. The book is useful for both business and non-business managers, as well as readers interested in general management.
The author
Dr. oec. HSG Martin Pfiffner is a renowned expert on organizational and structural issues. For over 30 years he has worked as a lecturer, trainer and consultant for organizations in the business and non-business sector. In various institutions and functions he contributes to the application of the models and methods of management cybernetics such as the “Viable System Model” or “Syntegration®” for the success of companies.
Network & Partners
We work together in a team of 20 international experts: The best people in Europe and America we have met in 30 years of top management consulting and training. All of them are proven and experienced cracks in strategy, structure, culture or leadership issues with a common, system-oriented understanding of management. Depending on the client’s needs and project requirements, we put together the right project team for you.
Memberships
Metaphorum, UK
Fellow of the Cybernetic Society (CybSoc), UK
SGO Swiss Society for Organization and Management
Stefan Wiesmann supports Martin Pfiffner in the management of mp consulting.
He is an expert in Syntegration® methodology, an experienced organizational consultant and an expert in the application of the Viable System Model.
Memberships
Metaphorum, UK
Fellow of the Cybernetic Society (CybSoc), UK
SGO Swiss Society for Organization and Management
Martin Pfiffner
Martin Pfiffner is 58 years old and lives in Pfäffikon (Zurich). He studied at the University of St. Gallen HSG, where he graduated with a doctorate in economics. As an assistant to Professors Peter Groß (Sociology) and Fredmund Malik (Management), he worked his way into system-oriented management theory. Later he studied management cybernetics in Canada and Wales with Professor Stafford Beer.
Pfiffner is considered one of the world’s leading experts in the practical application of the Viable System Model and Syntegration®. In the last 30 years, Martin has supported countless economic, public or private organizations in all corners of the world. The basis for his work is “The Neurology of Business”. This is what he calls the neurology of an organization and this is also the title of his book.
His professional experience began in the mid-90s with consulting and training activities at the Management Zentrum St. Gallen, to which he soon added the management of the “Management Cybernetics & Bionics Division”. Among other things, he launched the “Cwarel-Isaf-Conferences” for management cyberneticists from all over the world in this function. Later he was responsible for the development of management bionics and was a founding member and curator of the International Bionics Centre IBZ based in Munich. He built up Team Syntegrity Europe AG and became Senior Partner, Executive Board Member and Member of the Board of Directors of Malik Management AG. Until 2023, he served as a foundation board member at the Fondation Oroborus, which promotes the spread of management cybernetics.
He passed on his knowledge as a lecturer at the University of St. Gallen HSG for several years. From 2011 to 2016 he was a board member of the Swiss Society for Organization and Management and since 2020 Fellow of the Cybernetic Society (UK) and member of Metaphorum, an international association of scientists. He has disseminated Stafford Beer’s models and methods over the past decades and supplemented them with practical approaches.
Contact
Dr. Martin Pfiffner
Martin Pfiffner Consulting GmbH
-
Näppenrainstrasse 49
8330 Pfäffikon
Switzerland - T +41 79 468 08 40
- m.pfiffner@mp-c.ch
- mp-c.ch
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