Hermann Ladner
About

For thirty years I have been working on one question: why things stall despite all the preparation.

I came from engineering and studied business administration later, and it was that detour that led me to the question which stayed: why do organisations come to a halt when the strategy is right and the execution was set up properly?

It is not the strategy. It is not the execution either, although that is what gets claimed. It sits in between, on the way from the decision to the intended impact. In Decision Fog everyone reads the same situation differently, everyone drifts apart despite a shared intention, and nobody notices. That is where I start.

Hermann Ladner in conversation in a lounge

Where I work

Mandates

Own mandates since 2004 in pharmaceuticals, energy, telecommunications, financial services, industry and education, mostly in situations of high simultaneity: restructuring, transformation, cultural tension.

Life Institut

Founded in Zofingen in 1998. This is where the work is institutionalised: accompanying leadership teams, training facilitators, developing the tools.

ReflectIQ

A platform for structured reflection on complex organisational dynamics, currently being built. Its predecessor rethinking.cloud has been in use for years: more than a thousand people have worked with it or been trained on it.
Publications

Klarheit entsteht im Handeln

How leadership teams get through Decision Fog · in German, spring 2027 · about the book

Digitale Transformation mit System

Trends, technologies, business models, organisation, processes, planning and change management · first edition 2017, 2026 edition, with Wolfgang Keller and Michael Kunz · at Leanpub

Enduring Organization

Die Freiheit der richtigen Entscheidung · 2005 · out of print, available from me

A first conversation, before you decide.

Thirty minutes. You describe what is going on in your team at the moment, and we look at what sits underneath it. No charge. I am glad to have these conversations even when nothing comes of them.