Systemic Excellence Group

Louis Klein

Dr. Louis Klein is an internationally recognized expert in the field of systemic change management. He is the founder of the Systemic Excellence Group and has been its CEO since 2001.

On 12th September 2001 the Systemic Excellence Group started with a bold claim: Another change is possible! Building on the experiences in systemic organisational development, a few dedicated systems practitioners and researchers came together in Berlin. Inspired by this vibrant creative city, they wanted to step out of the frames of traditional research and mainstream consultancy. The legendary new economy had paved the path towards new thinking and alternative practices in business. In the creative atmosphere of those days, the SEgroup started a learning journey rather fuelled by passion than by the goal orientation. It was rather an expedition into the unknown. Innovation was not so much the focus. It came as a by-product. The idea was much more to improve systemic organisational development (OD) practices and to live up to the full potential of systems thinking for organisational practices.

The years since then turned out to be an intensive learning journey which took SEgroup from a starting as a systemic OD service provider towards becoming an independent think and do thank, supporting and reflecting change processes and change projects, not only in organisations. SEgroup created a unity of research in practice, where practice feeds into research and research feeds into practice. Seen from the outside, SEgroup appears as a Janus-faced entity where one face looks like a fully-fledged management consultancy focusing on change projects and the other face looks like a fully-grown academic research institute with a superb access to the field of change. Seen from the management consulting side, the research looks like quality assurance, which builds on academic rigour. And seen from the research side, the consulting looks like on-going fieldwork and action research which provides exciting opportunities to do the research at moments when the future is still open and rationalising cases from a known end can be avoided.

Today, SEgroup’s vision is clear: Changing the change! Oscillating between praxis and reflection, between consulting and research, propels the process, which systematically explores the conditions for the possibility of change and ventures new thinking and alternative practices. Innovation is one result. But what is more important is the efficacy in supporting value-creating change.

See more: www.systemic-excellence-group.com