Scale the future without recreating the past
How impact-driven founders can preserve their organization's spirit as it scales – without the chaos or the drama.
Too often, impact-driven organizations are held back by dysfunctions:
Founders become decision-making bottlenecks, working themselves towards burnout while still holding the organization back.
People get flak if they haven't checked in with everyone before making a decision – thus moral ambition slowly erodes into a culture of unproductive criticism.
Your team prioritizes harmony over difficult conversations, until it blows up in everyone's face (or you settle into comfortable mediocrity, letting go of larger impact ambitions).
Founders get contradicting demands from the team: One day you're critized for being too top-down, next day you're supposed to show more assertive leadership. The result: Paralysis instead of forward momentum.
I know these dysfunctions, because I've experienced them all first-hand.
First, as one of the two founders of the Berlin-based social business soulbottles, where we:
grew to 80 people without VC investment
experimented with all kinds of new work approaches
raised almost 2 million € for clean water projects
and got the highest ever B-Corp-Score in Germany.
Second, in 10 years as an organizational consultant for all kinds of different organizations:
From car manufacturers to foundations,
from marketing agencies to democratic schools,
from Extinction Rebellion to being involved in starting a new political party.
Through all those tests and experiments a set of tools has emerged that reliably overcomes all those dysfunctions.
That's why, after all those years in the trenches, I can say with certainty:
You can have your cake and eat it, too!
You can build a work-place where everyone has fun, can be themselves and does the best work of their careers. (Everyone includes yourself!)
You can use Hierarchy's benefits...
clear decision-makers for each decision
clear and inspiring vision
a way to quickly end long discussions and resolve disagreements
... without its downsides, ...
power concentration (and -abuse)
layers of bureaucracy stifling creativity
culture of asking for permission instead of doing
decision-making bottlenecks & loneliness at the top
... you can add consensus democracy's benefits...
Every voice matters.
Everyone can be heard and feels like they belong.
Culture of equality, inclusion and eye-level.
Decisions have high buy-in.
... without its downsides ...
Decisions take a long time.
Everyone could veto your decisions – thus everyone is your boss.
Consensus becomes the main decision-making bottleneck – torpedoing innovation.
Vetoes and mutual blockades can erode interpersonal trust.
... and you can add the benefits of "no structure"...
Quick, informal information-sharing and decision-making.
A culture of "let's try it out and see what happens".
High amounts of creativity, motivation and forward momentum.
Idea meritocracy: "The best idea wins, no matter whose idea it is."
... without its downsides.
Chaos.
Gross inefficiencies – like several teams unknowingly working on the same thing.
Unclear decision making structures lead towards consensus as the new informal norm.
As a reaction, shadow hierarchies emerge but can't be talked about openly.
Organization-wide alignment becomes impossible.
Combining all these benefits without inheriting all these downsides is not only possible – you need it to keep your organization effective and mission-focused as you scale.
An affordable way to scale your organization's OS
Until now you've had to cobble together your organization's OS on your own. That meant you had to either
spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel,
risk falling victim to your own blind-spots,
or sort through well-meaning but counter-productive advice from people who don't understand impact-driven organizations.
Starting in 2026 I want to synthesize everything I've learned on how to build effective, world-changing organizations and offer it in a more scalable and affordable way.
In Q1/26 I'm focusing on customer research: Drilling down on the specific issues impact-driven founders face as they scale.
In Q2/26 I'll build and launch an MVP that solves founder's most important issues in a more effective and affordable way.
From then on, I'll be developing, refining and scaling the offering until founders have a validated, well-known one-stop-solution for their organization's development (and their own leadership development as well).
So, if you're an impact-driven founder with a growing team, I want to talk to you. ;)