Thomas Leder

Dr. Thomas Leder is an affiliate with Schaffer Consulting and co-founder of HLP OrganizationalConsultants based in Frankfurt am Main/Germany. He has led his own consulting business since 1980. He helps his clients to aim their organizations at future competitive advantage and to translate this strategy into short-term breakthrough initiatives. Many projects target new market positions or new levels of process effectiveness. Thomas favours a fast-loop, result-driven process that evolves the strategy and includes steps to realize business results. He also advocates unfolding the organizational structure based on experience of success rather than trying to implement structural solutions that have been designed apart from the action and the spirit of the business. Thomas offers guidance and support to develop the appropriate organizational governance process and to steer the initiatives, as well as the process of learning and collaboration it takes to make newly gained abilities effective throughout the organization.

The context of business challenges Thomas helps to take on mostly are new growth, business renewal, merger integration, boosting functional performance, and blending regional business units into global, networked business segments. Since Thomas helps to evolve and multiply businesses over years and since he believes in cross-industry learning rather than proliferating practices within an industry, he works in a wide variety of businesses and cultural environments. These include banking, machine builders, automotive, publishing, consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, mail order, IT, consulting, development aid agencies, public services, and not for profit organizations-with corporations as well as European "Mittelstand" or public sector organizations. His experience with functional strategies encompasses manufacturing and sales operations as well as HR, IT and Accounting. Since many of his clients' businesses are global, he works wherever the organizations need him.

Thomas headed a study on success patterns of integration involving case work with chemical corporations in Germany, and he initiated a large public conference on the subject of developing synergies. He has published 15 articles about strategy development and process improvement and contributed to three books on business concepts and process capabilities. He gives regular public seminars on strategy and change management and speaks at larger conferences. Prior to his consulting career he was a lecturer and department head in a business education institution and a free-lance trainer for sales organizations. He holds an MA in Business Administration and a Ph.D. in economics from Goethe-University of Frankfurt.