About Our Team
Decades of practice have shaped us to deliver compelling messages
We know your side of the table. We speak at eye level with top management, and know their expectations, demands and customs in a wide variety of decision-making situations. We are familiar with international corporations as well as medium-sized businesses.
Having worked on all continents, we know how cultural differences can affect structure and communication. For more than two decades, we have been structuring particularly complex issues for our clients and developing powerful storylines that convince recipients. We exercise theory and practice. We either train teams and entire organizations in the method of pyramid thinking. Or we work on very specific business tasks such as critical decision papers, stakeholder maps or multi-million must-win pitches.
Our Coaches
Structured communication and an analytical view are all part of Volker Boeschen's tools. Therefore, he learned to appreciate the Pyramid Thinking approach early on and spread it in his areas of responsibility. More than 20 years ago Volker joined Accenture (Andersen Consulting). After successfully building up his own consulting firm, he joined Deloitte & Touche to further develop the business consultancy for medium-sized businesses. Moving on to Rödl & Partner, he took charge of the Business Consulting Unit. Today, he passes on his experience in seminars and coaching for steercom. He is also in worldwide demand as an independent executive coach and trainer for business development, leadership and project management.
Methodically perfect, interdisciplinary and strong in communication: Claudia Dirksen complements the steercom team with cross-functional experience and special competence in dealing with heterogeneous groups. Clearly structured problem analyses and concise, target-group-oriented communication were outstanding features of the pharmacist's career path with an MBA. Following her time as a manager in the pharmaceutical industry, she worked as a consultant at Management Engineers, where she also familiarised herself with the pyramidal approach and used it effectively in her work. In her role as Executive Consultant, Claudia supports leading companies and NGOs in the health and life science sectors in strategy and organization development and implementation.
Silke Ehret has been applying the principle of top-down communication consistently and successfully for 18 years. Above all, she was able to fully exploit the advantages of this method in presentations of results for decision-makers and high-ranking company committees - a task she was all too often entrusted with in the course of her various functions. Whether as principal and member of the management board of a strategy consultancy, managing director of the board of directors, head of group controlling at a German bank or with tasks in capital market communication: “It was always a matter of communicating concepts, projects or reports as focused and comprehensible as possible. The pyramidal approach was an invaluable help in this.
Silke is an expert in strategy development, organizational realignment/restructuring and goal-oriented corporate management with industry expertise in financial services, real estate and the automotive industry. Today she works as an independent management consultant.
Klaus Felsch began his career as a trainer, and even today he helps our workshop participants to gain new insights and approaches as a trainer. “In my independent consulting and management activities, I recognize the high demand for structured working methods in the companies every day, from which I draw a strong motivation for myself“. At the beginning of his career, he trained customers and internal employees for Ericsson, and then moved to system development as a manager.
This was followed by international positions as top management consultant in various companies (including Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, DiamondCluster, Oliver Wyman). In contrast, he has remained loyal to the telecommunications industry for more than 20 years. Today, Klaus Felsch works as an independent interim manager and top management consultant in Essen (focus: Strategy, Marketing, Product Development and Change/Turnaround Management).
Christian Fenner internalized and perfected Pyramid Thinking early on in his career as a consultant, enabling him to successfully apply it every day during his time as Group HR Chief Operating Officer at Credit Suisse. “Whether solving problems, making decisions or communicating, pyramidal thinking is invaluable to me in my everyday work at all key stages. As a trainer, he has strengthened the problem-solving and presentation skills of his managers over the long term. Today, Fenner still teaches in steercom workshops how to approach strategic problems in a structured way and how to communicate solutions to target groups using the pyramidal approach.
Brilliant thanks to Pyramid: From the beginning of his 20-year career, Frank Georgi has consistently used the pyramidal approach, thus impressively demonstrating the efficiency of this method. During my ten years as a management consultant at Accenture and nine years in management roles at Zurich Insurance and SwissRe, I was always able to build on the solid results of pyramidal thinking, which is why I am now happy to pass on its foundations to companies in all sectors of industry. Frank's commercial experience ranges from strategy development and M&A to operations and information management.
Engine and mastermind - as steercom co-founder, Wolfgang Hackenberg transformed his expertise in structured communication and his didactic skills into a company that today trains business experts globally and across industries.
He passes on his knowledge in around 50 workshops worldwide each year and also lectures at the University of Passau and the Hertie School of Governance. “Stringency and clarity in thinking and communicating are key drivers of success. I became aware of this during my time as a partner at Accenture Strategy, where I also discovered my passion for knowledge transfer during several training sessions I held at Corporate University St. Charles,“ says Wolfgang. His experience has also benefited numerous proposal teams, which he helped to successfully present their products and services as a big deal coach. His first boss at Roland Berger had already told him “Quality comes from tormenting“.
Dirk Hanßen is a true “conviction culprit“: After countless presentations - often made in painful night shifts - today he more than appreciates the advantages of pyramidal thinking and structured communication: “The methods have meanwhile become so elementary for me that I am glad as a power user and steercom trainer to be able to make my knowledge accessible to a broader public today“.
Hanßen spent over 20 years in top management consulting (Roland Berger, Heidrick & Struggles). With a focus on strategy development, international post merger integration and corporate performance programs, he now works as an independent consultant.
International, trend-setting, innovative: Bernd Hümmer is a university lecturer for sustainable corporate management, among other things, on a topic that is just as fundamental to modern management as structured working methods. “For me, the pyramidal approach with its structured approach is a real must-have, which as a teacher I also enjoy teaching outside the university“. Prior to his academic career at Georg Simon Ohm University in Nuremberg, he worked for many years as a senior manager at Roland Berger, focusing on international management and marketing strategies. At Philips-Kommunikations-Industrie AG (later Alcatel-Lucent), he was previously responsible for commercial management and strategic corporate planning in an international business division.
Ingo Kett is a well-known advisor in the board rooms of major European companies with more than 25 years of experience. He led major initiatives in digital transformation, merger integration, and technology integration. Ingo has led the consulting business at Publicis.Sapient in Germany, served as Managing Partner, European Energy & Utilities at IBM Global Business Services, and as an Executive Partner, Enterprise Transformation at Accenture. Ingo has founded his own venture capital business investing in digital StartUps. He was rewarded the Business Angel of the year by the German minister of Economy. He sits on a number of advisory boards. He holds a PhD in business science and was appointed honorary professor.
He is a business professional, thoroughbred communicator and passionate pyramidal thinker and knows: “Being able to sell means being able to explain“. With his many years of practical experience, Carsten Leminsky stands for the DNA of steercom in an exemplary way.
As a co-founder of the company, he can fully exploit his special systematic and communicative skills and benefits not least from his extensive experience as a former strategy and change consultant at pwc and SME managing director. “Clear words = clear message = clear goal = success“ is his formula, with which he was already successful as a Certified Global Trainer at pwc and which he now conveys in dozens of workshops around the globe. As a Big Deal Coach in individual consultations, he also leads decision-makers to success in complex pitch presentations.
Complex issues are her daily challenge - structured solution concepts her answer: As a consultant for top management, Ruth Mengede's pyramidal approach helps companies around the world to achieve convincing performance in the areas of strategy development, restructuring, process optimization and organizational development for technically oriented industries. “Without conclusive analysis and categorization, my work would be unthinkable,“ emphasizes Ruth, who specializes in mechanical and plant engineering as well as the process and automotive industries. After studying mechanical engineering at RWTH Aachen University and working for Lufthansa Technik for several years, she spent ten years with Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in Germany and Brazil, most recently as a partner.
Gero is a Systemic Consultant with extensive experience in coaching and developing teams of large multinationals, both onsite and since 2019 remotely, integrated into steercom´s “Communications for leaders“ offering.
In addition, he is an educated and certified mediator who specializes in conflict management and cooperative leadership culture. For role plays and interactive interventions he can rely on 15 years of experience as a professional actor in Germany and the United States.
Concentrated practical experience, precise knowledge of methods, excellent didactic skills. All this makes Sebastian Schöne a valuable member of the steercom trainer family, because he ideally combines theory and practice of structured problem solving. “In my job as an independent management consultant focusing on strategy, organization, innovation and analytics, I successfully use the pyramidal approach in my daily work. This makes him a convincing ambassador for structured work on the foundations of the pyramid in our workshops“.
After studying economics in Bayreuth, Dublin and St. Gallen (lic.oec.HSG), Sebastian Schöne worked for fourteen years as a strategy consultant at Accenture, where as a faculty he trained colleagues methodically and focused on structured working methods.
A master on stage. Inspirational, well-founded, and pragmatic, Sibylle Wolf draws on her many years of stage experience as an opera singer (among others Vienna and the renowned Bregenz Festival). With her consultancy “Perform yourself“ Sibylle has advised board members, middle management and clients interested in the art of performing for many years. She passionately advocates a wholistic approach to presentations which goes beyond the mere content. Her focus thus is on the art and craft of “telling“ in storytelling where she makes sure that decision-makers master the whole gamut of the tonal range. Sibylle holds a Master of Arts in Neuro Linguistic Programming and is also deeply involved in the operations of her family’s fashion business. As a performer Sibylle tours with her own program with cabaret artist Mathias Riechling and has trained regularly with steercom for many years.
Building startups with the pyramidal approach - Karsten Wysk has been doing this successfully for years, both in his work as interim CEO at venture builder BCG Digital Ventures and with his own startups. "With startups, there is often enough chaos already - the pyramidal approach helps me enormously to structure the communication and thus also my thoughts and the approach."
After studying economics at the University of Bayreuth, Magdeburg and Macquarie University in Sydney, he worked as a strategy consultant at Accenture before founding numerous companies of his own. Most recently, he was Partner & Product Director at BCG Digital Ventures.
Less is more! That is the maxim of Stefan Zenz for more than 25 years. Because that is how long he is busy in visualizing key messages. In the early 1990ies he built up a graphics expert team for the international top management consultancy Roland Berger and teached them in presentation design. After that he was the graphics expert in charge for all speeches of Roland Berger himself – by the way highly appreciated from top managers and the federal government.
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”. This is the base any design thinking of Stefan Zenz, in his beginning in the early 1990ies and today in his role as self employed graphics designer. In this function he advises together with steercom international top strategy consultancies as well as traditional medium-sized companies and innovative start-ups – as transformer of client ideas, as impetus for new and courageous designs and as sparring partner at eye level.
For Nikola Ziehe, structured communication with a clear core message at the beginning means trust, attention and added value for the recipients. Nikola looks back on more than 15 years as an external and internal strategy consultant and knows what is important for effective and successful communication. She has been working for steercom as a trainer since 2014 and is happy to share her knowledge and experience with you.
More information
Book
8 steps to a convincing business presentation
Learning experience
We give structure to the individual client case and provide pyramid thinking logic for life.
International
Until 2020, we traveled the world for our clients from our offices in Hamburg and Zurich.
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