"With a strong sense of what is possible based on many years of leadership and consulting experience"

Workshop & Moderation

My name is Michael Zeisig.

Empathetic listener with a sense of humor, pragmatic solution-oriented engineer, straightforward and clear professional optimist, focused pacemaker, runner, former competitive athlete, supporter of HSV (Hamburg soccer club), hobby gardener, nature lover & father from Hamburg.

What drives me & why Game Changing Partner?


The world needs people who make a difference and move things.
Keeping you and your business in the game for the long term.

 

What drives me is:

  • How do we need to change and I need to change, when the rules of the game change around us?

and: 

  • How can we change the rules of the game ourselves to stay in the game for the long-term? 

That's why I am a Game Changing Partner

"In a world driven by competition and the need to be on top, many companies unconsciously fall into a kind of finite mindset. You could also say "quarter-driven management." They focus on short-term goals rather than development and growth. Such a finite mindset will doom any organization to failure.

In finite games, like soccer or chess, the players are known, the rules are fixed, and the goal is clear. The winners and the losers are easy to recognize.

In infinite games, like economics or politics or life itself, players come and go, the rules are changeable, and there is no defined end point. 

In an infinite game, there are no winners or losers; there is only ahead and behind.

Many of the struggles organizations face exist simply because their managers play an endless game with a finite mindset. All of these organizations often lag behind in innovation, morale, and ultimately, performance."

Simon Sinek

I am a self-employed consultant for top managers, leaders and executives.

Before starting my own business, I have been working for four years as a partner in a Hamburg-based consulting firm for medium-sized companies, focusing on strategy, leadership and organizational development. My clients were international corporations and medium-sized family businesses in all industries.

14 years of being a senior executive in the international aviation industry at Lufthansa Technik AG deeply impacted me. I had various management positions in aircraft maintenance. As business unit manager for the refurbishment of aircraft cabins for commercial airlines, I was responsible for sales and results at the Hamburg site with an annual sales volume of several €100 million. I managed around 150 highly specialized employees in all functions along the entire value chain.

As an integrator between company management, employees and executives, I have developed and coordinated market strategies, innovations and change concepts in line with the company's future vision, and have effectively implemented change programs derived from these in an operational and sustainable manner.

I am a mechanical engineer with a PhD, specializing in process and quality management, production planning and control, logistics and factory planning. I graduated in mechanical engineering at the TU Braunschweig, specializing in production and systems engineering.

I'm deeply rooted in the desire to set the right impulses as a game changing partner for German SMEs together with you. I want you and your company to sustainably #stayinthegame.

Stages in my life

What shaped me? Which lessons did I learn?

Effektive Workshops mit viel Spaß

4 years

Partner in a Hamburg-based consulting firm for medium-sized companies

3 things I've learned from 4 years of SME consulting:

1. the world is colorful and the rules of the game for sustainable (corporate) leadership are similar


After 14 years of experience in the aviation industry, a colorful spectrum of companies and industries opened up to me: Packaging industry, e-commerce logistics, B2C household goods manufacturing, 2-man handling logistics, mechanical engineering, automotive industry, service for awarding government research grants, environmental protection organization, airport operator; small companies with 50 employees to large medium-sized enterprises with a global presence and up to 15,000 employees; annual revenues between 10 million and 4 billion euros. Regardless of the industry, regardless of the size: Managing far-reaching transformation is on the agenda for all of them. Centralized and strictly hierarchical management models are overstretched and have had their day. Everyone is looking and craving for new leadership approaches and realizing that agility alone does not provide sufficient answers. Ego-free leaders who are willing to delegate responsibility, endure uncertainties, and learn leadership anew themselves have the best prerequisites for staying in the game in the long term.

2. Wave surfing is unsexy, consultants often deliver ineffective transformations 


Consulting approaches in which armies of consultants invade organizations from Monday to Thursday armed with PowerPoint and Excel are doomed to failure: A lot of program is made ( literally) and a few million euros in consulting fees later, the army of consultants leaves again - what remains is often a gain in knowledge among the people:  Always go along nicely and show superficially good face to the bad play. This is how we have survived the last 5 waves of consulting - and: now we can continue to do business as usual in a relaxed manner, because the next wave is sure to come. For this we should save and divide our forces, because in the wave we need a lot of strength - at least that's what we have learned.

Just like in real life: This often looks sexy and dynamic on the outside (in the wave) - effective transformation dynamics are different!

From my many years of leadership experience and from many successful consulting projects, I have experienced these waves again and again and learned from them that transformations only succeed when as many people as possible are actively involved in shaping and implementing the change. This requires fewer consultants and many more people from the organizations who participate, try things out and drive change themselves instead of being driven from the outside.

3. Die Kunst “Nein zu sagen” – nur was wirklich wichtig ist zählt!


I have learned in all the consulting projects that many customers know very well which changes are important for the sustainable development of their organization. They know the technological trends, market and competitive developments very well. And they often have a very good sense of their customers' needs. That's not surprising, either, because they deal with them every day.

It doesn't need anyone to show them on glossy slides all the things they already know anyway.

What they often struggle with is “Nein” and letting go.

A very important question in the strategy processes that I accompany is for this reason: “Was wollen wir zukünftig nicht mehr tun?”. Denn: Prioritäten setzen heißt “Ja” zu den wenigen wirklich wichtigen Dingen zu sagen und “Nein” zu all den unprofitablen Kunden, Produkten und Standorten, Projekten, Prozessen und Routinen. Die konsequente Fokussierung auf das, was wirklich wichtig ist, schafft strategische Veränderung und neue Realitäten in der Zukunft.

14 years

Senior executive in the international aviation industry

5 things I've learned from 14 years of leadership experience:

1. Change projects need clear visions, a strong team & support from the top - the journey is the destination!


I experienced what it means and what it takes to introduce the theoretical concept of one's own dissertation throughout the Lufthansa Technik Group: a clear vision, a project team working together in 100% trust, support from the Board of Management that is always recognizable and clearly demonstrated, assertiveness and perseverance. After 3 years, the project team celebrated the outstanding success. I myself didn't really feel like celebrating - I realized: The journey was the destination!

2. Leadership needs trust & development and a sincere interest in people.


Wie vorbildliches Führungsverhalten aussehen kann, habe ich selbst erlebt: Als Mitte 30-jähriger überträgt mir mein damaliger Chef die Personalverantwortung für ca. 100 Ingenieure und unterstützt mich dabei hundertprozentig. Er ist nicht nur an meiner Entwicklung interessiert, sondern zeigt auch echtes Interesse an mir als Menschen. Das hat mir die nötige “psychologische Sicherheit” verschafft. Sie stärkte mich im Umgang mit all den Unsicherheiten, die ich felt as a completely inexperienced manager when I took on far-reaching management responsibility overnight.

3. 100% operational project business does not work without a minimum of standards & discipline.


If you take an aircraft out of service for 60 days (planned) to be fitted with a new aircraft cabin by a team of more than 100 engineers & mechanics and only complete it after 143 days, it becomes clear that things cannot continue like this for the remaining 79 aircraft in the program: Running an operational project business as a profitable business requires transparency, a certain degree of project management standards and, above all, (project) management that is disciplined and takes action at short intervals to clarify deviations from the plan.

4. You need to make (overdue) personnel decisions - it's good to have a coach and trusted advisor when doing so.


When leaders don't pull together, it becomes difficult to impossible to successfully implement necessary changes in organizations. My coach opened my eyes at the time and did not allow me to look past the obvious for fear of conflict: Making (over)due personnel decisions is not an easy task, creates few friends at times, and in retrospect was my toughest yet most impactful leadership learning experience.  

5. “Love it, change it, leave it” – ist leicht gesagt, ist wahr und braucht mehr als Mut!


Henry Ford prägte diesen Spruch – und er hat(te) recht: Ich habe viele Menschen kennengelernt, die sich statt “leave it” für “blaim it” entschieden haben. Und ich habe selbst gemerkt, dass es für tiefgreifende (berufliche) Veränderung viel Mut, einige vertrauensvolle Gespräche und schließlich großes Selbstvertrauen braucht. Die erfreulichste Belohnung, die ich dabei erfahren habe, ist das Gefühl der Selbstbestimmtheit zu erleben – so fühlt sich Freiheit an! Rückblickend ermöglicht der Schritt zu neuen Ufern die Fähigkeit, selbst aus miserablen Führungsvorbildern etwas gelernt zu haben und die Dankbarkeit und den Respekt vor den großartigen Menschen, denen ich auf dem Weg begegnet bin. 

Unternehmensberater mit langjähriger industrieller Führungserfahrung
Promotion & Maschinenbaustudium an der TU Braunschweig

5 years

Research assistant in practice-oriented research and teaching

A presumably trivial but nevertheless decisive insight from fünf Jahren praxisnaher Forschung und Lehre

Knowledge is (directly) unsharable!


As part of my dissertation, habe ich mich intensiv mit der Systemtheorie beschäftigt: Ich wollte verstehen, wie Menschen in sozialen Systemen lernen und welchen Einfluss “betriebliche Vorschriften & Dokumentationen” auf Lernprozesse haben. “Wissensmanagement” war damals voll der Hype und bis heute hält sich der weit verbreitete Irrglaube, dass man so etwas wie “Knowledge databases” aufbauen kann. Ich habe durch meine wissenschaftliche Arbeit verstanden, dass Wissen nicht direkt teilbar ist! Knowledge is a highly individual matter, has something to do with personal conceptions, the probability of subsequent conceptions and individual models of reality. Knowledge is transmitted coded (e.g., language, text) via signals and can, in a further person, first of all via sensory perception (signal reception) create an information. By processing this information in the context of individual experiences (knowledge), new knowledge can emerge through the formation of new ideas and the shaping of connecting ideas. Once this basic fact is understood, one develops an idea of how people learn and how sustainable changes in social systems (companies) can ultimately succeed.