Impact Business Design Framework: Guidance for Effective Transformation
Change doesn’t just happen. Organizations aiming for real impact need clarity in design, structured guidance, and flexible methods that harness complexity instead of simplifying it. The Impact Business Design Framework offers direction: it reveals where your organization stands today – and the next level it can grow into tomorrow.
From Feeling to Thinking to Acting
Change starts with ourselves.
Knowing what you want, making good decisions, solving problems, motivating yourself when needed, putting intentions into action, and learning from them – that’s a lot to handle and it challenges us deeply.
The better we know ourselves, the easier it becomes to deal with these challenges and actively shape the transformation of change.
External transformation can only succeed through inner transformation. The goal is to bring both developments into alignment – and this is exactly what the Impact Business Design Framework supports.
We developed the Impact Business Design Framework because we firmly believe that better ways of doing business are possible.
It is possible to shape a more livable society and to leave behind a planet whose preservation remains a worthwhile – and above all achievable – goal for future generations.
This is how we understand future readiness: as a mandate for us today, who bear responsibility and (should) know what we are doing.
And as an ongoing commitment for the generations to come.
Regenerative Business as a Model for Success
Impact Business Design elevates an organization to a higher stage of development. The goal is to make it future-proof for generations to come and to lead it into a regenerative future. The approach model combines the following core characteristics:
Future Readiness
The Impact Business Design Framework ensures progress that is designed backwards from the future. At the same time, it involves all relevant stakeholders in building and implementing the process.
Leverage
The methods in the framework accelerate transformation by using levers as force converters, responsibly shaping the organization’s impact on the ecosphere.
Empowerment
With the tools in the framework, we move people towards transformation and inspire them for an impact-first corporate culture.
Adaptivity
The Impact Business Design structure offers modular building blocks that can be flexibly adapted to the maturity level and awareness of the organization.
Circularity
The Impact Business Design Framework enables people in the organization to think, feel, and act systemically and holistically.
A Future Model for Your Company
Our framework is a systemic and integral model for effective transformation. It combines strategy, culture, and structure and guides through three phases: Transparency (status assessment), Transcendence (new patterns of thinking and acting), and Immanence (anchoring). With tools such as the Impact Business Oscillogram and the Impact Profiler, complex transformation becomes manageable and sustainably effective.
From Today to Tomorrow in 13 Steps
The goal is to move from a stable state in the present (and the past) to a new, stable state at a higher level. It’s about mastering transitions to the next maturity level. This process is your responsibility: breaking through current security, envisioning the future level of stability, and shaping the path to get there.
Impact Circle
The Impact Circle is inspired by Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle. In contrast, the Impact Circle differentiates the Why and asks about the “Warum” (the moving away from) and especially the “Wofür” (the moving towards). In the Transparency phase – the preparation for a transformation journey – the Circle serves as a possible template to define what exactly is at stake.
Adaptive Cycle
With the Adaptive Cycle from resilience research, you can evaluate the life cycle stage of your organization. The goal is to assess which phase your organization is currently in and what perspectives management has on it. Each phase of the cycle requires different behaviors, strategies, communication styles, and employee skills.
Impact Business Canvas Today
To make change within and around the organization tangible, we work with a Today–Tomorrow comparison. First, we assess Today. In the status assessment, the focus is on clarifying: Where do we come from and where do we stand today? How do we currently view the world, nature, society, our company, our customers, employees, and products? By reflecting on Today, we honor where we come from and build understanding for why we need to set out toward the future.
Impact Business Canva Tomorrow
In the Tomorrow perspective, you design a vision of how your company evolves into an Impact First organization and where it should be in three to five years. This opens up the organization’s space of possibilities. Now it’s about shaping the future and breaking it down into the individual elements of the transformation roadmap.
Explore Measures
By comparing Today and Tomorrow, it becomes clear which measures are needed to activate the levers of implementation.
Your Transformation Journey Starts Here.
Do you have a question about our services, want to book an in-house training, or are you looking for consulting? Get in touch with us!
Stephan Grabmeier
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