Focus Topic · Transformation · Kraus & Partner

When the real construction site is the organization.

Our craft is making leadership teams more effective. The changes that come with it we handle ourselves: through sparring, workshops or coaching. Only when the entire organization is up for review does Kraus & Partner join in: our parent company, with decades of experience in designing, planning and steering the full rebuild.

Transformation experts since 1987, co-owner of Die Dranbleiber, with teams regularly staffed across both houses.

The problem

Some levers sit not only in the team but also in the organization itself.

Working on leadership and collaboration sometimes brings it to light, often in a strategy workshop: the decisive lever is not in the team itself but in outdated structures and processes. The obvious next step, a big anonymous consultancy, puts at risk exactly the openness and closeness that took real effort to build. That is where our partner K&P comes in.

Work with the leadership team shows: the real lever sits in structures and processes.
A new strategy is decided, but the old organization needs a new setup to carry it.
Two units or two companies need to merge, and the concrete blueprint is still missing.
Structures that have grown over years need questioning and reworking, but nobody has a clear picture of where the biggest potential lies.
The agreed culture change needs structural rebuilding, not just new formats.
New ways of working need rolling out across the whole organization, not just in the leadership team.

Die Dranbleiber × Kraus & Partner

One brand, embedded in a larger house.

Since 2024 we have been an independent brand within the Kraus & Partner group. We sharpen leadership and teams; K&P rethinks and rebuilds the whole organization. Two approaches, one home. Or put differently: one address for every challenge.

Die Dranbleiber — Leadership & teams

Our craft: making leadership more effective. We remain the anchor: the same faces who named the topic and whom the team trusts. More effectiveness, less conflict, the sparring partner for collaboration. And we make sure the big program does not slide back into the complexity it set out to escape.

Kraus & Partner — Rebuilding the organization

From building a change architecture through developing the whole organization to translating strategy into structures, processes and program management. Transformation work at a scale a boutique cannot deliver alone.

The benefit

It starts with leadership topics and grows into a transformation project: the same contacts, no new briefing, no trust to rebuild. Only the logo changes.

What Kraus & Partner brings

Change at scale.

Almost 40 years of transformation expertise, led by Prof. Dr. Georg Kraus since 1987. No off-the-shelf solutions, but organization designers who think the way we do.

Kraus & Partner shapes organizations in change: from strategic realignment through structure to lived culture. The transformation discipline at a scale a boutique cannot deliver alone.

To Kraus & Partner

100+

Transformation experts

Repeatedly named “Top Consultant” for German mid-sized companies.

Consulting fields

Change, strategy & innovation, leadership, processes, sales, turnaround: the full range of organization design.

Levels in view

Strategy, structure and culture always in interplay, with change management as the craft at the core.

The minds

Prof. Dr. Georg Kraus

Founder & Managing Director, Kraus & Partner

Kevin Pfander

Managing Director, Kraus & Partner

Michael Schön

Managing Director, Die Dranbleiber

Worth a listen

The transformation podcast by Kraus & Partner.

How do you take more than 300,000 people into the digital future while restructuring at the same time? Martin Seiler, board member for HR and Legal at Deutsche Bahn, in conversation with Michael Schön (Die Dranbleiber) about transformation, restructuring and AI. In German.

Episode cover, episode 43: Transformation, Sanierung und KI bei der Bahn — with Martin Seiler and Michael Schön

Podcast by Kraus & Partner

Transformation to go.

Episode 43 · January 2025 · 34 min · German audio

Martin Seiler, HR board member of Deutsche Bahn:Transformation, restructuring and AI.

“Over the past five years we have seen 100,000 employees into retirement and hired 130,000 new ones.” A conversation about change at a scale that exists only once in Germany. At the microphone: Michael Schön (Die Dranbleiber). German audio.

Playing the episode connects to Podigee (podcast hosting). Details in the privacy policy (German).

The episode in your own app: Apple Podcasts Spotify

We stay with it, however big the rebuild gets.

Every real change starts with naming what is really going on, simplifying it and getting it delivered, and we stay with it until it holds. If the lever grows beyond a workshop, Kraus & Partner brings the whole group to our side.

Our approach

Contact

And what is on
your mind?

Write or call us directly. We reply within 24 hours.

Or reach a person directly:

Michael Schön

Founder & Managing Director

Ludger Sieverding

Managing Partner

Christopher Prätsch

Managing Partner

Common Questions

Good to know.

What does transformation mean at Die Dranbleiber and Kraus & Partner?

Moving structure, processes and collaboration together, not one by one. Die Dranbleiber own the questions of leadership and collaboration, Kraus & Partner the design of the organization.

When does it take Kraus & Partner, and when is Die Dranbleiber enough?

For leadership and teams, we are the right partner. If it grows into a full rebuild of the organization, we bring in Kraus & Partner for the transformation expertise and the resources that takes.

From what size does a transformation project make sense?

Size is not what decides, reach is. As soon as structure, processes and collaboration have to move at the same time, meaning a larger part of the organization gets rebuilt, the structured framework pays off.

How do Die Dranbleiber and Kraus & Partner work together in a project?

One contact, one team, one contracting partner, depending on focus and capacity. Put simply: everything concerning leadership, collaboration and the interpersonal is Dranbleiber territory. The structural rebuild comes from Kraus & Partner.

How long does such a project typically take?

The first phase of a transformation project typically runs 6 to 18 months. Progress is measured at fixed intervals, so whether to continue is decided after every phase, not only at the start.