How to enable change

In our umlaut perspective, it is crucial to transfer strategic transformation ideas into the everyday working life of the clients' employees as only their behavioral change will lead any transformation to success. We know that it is difficult to question behavioral patterns - that is why our consultants work with a high degree of empathy, experience and accessibility.

We transfer all the necessary know-how and tools that are useful to the clients’ organization as in addition to organizational development, our pool of experts also supports you with know-how in the areas of engineering, data sciences, AI analysis or testing. Thus, our clients can count on us when facing day-to-day transformation-related challenges - no matter if it concerns technology, business models or working methods.

By the time we complete a job, the client's organization will be more agile, self-managing as well as future-proof and capable of helping itself by itself should the need ever arise again. But what’s behind our working methods?

Our systemic consulting approach

Our change processes are based on our very own scientific OSTO System Model. It is based on the OSTO system theory, which comprehends complex systems and organizations as living systems and maps these by means of the OSTO System Model. The basics of this theory have been formulated by David P. Hanna in the 1980’s and have been published initially in 1988. It was further developed by Klaus Henning and Renate Henning from umlaut.

The model assumes that several central transformation processes take place on the inside of a complex organization. These are deeply influenced by mutual reactions between the inner life of the organization and the outside (environment). In terms of closed loop theory, the OSTO system model depicts the essential elements of such a living system in its interconnectedness, dependencies, and reciprocal reactions. Thinking in network structures is, thus, a crucial part of the OSTO system theory. It allows to diagnose (hidden) patterns of organizations as well as redesigning them.

Based on our OSTO System Model, we enable organizations to initiate a holistic, future-proof change in just 4 steps:

1. Organizational diagnosis
2. Objective target formulation
3. Process design
4. Development support