Red42: the founders
Silke Hermann and Niels Pflaeging formed Red42 in 2018, when each of them had already accumulated more than 15 years of consulting experience. As mature professionals, the two had no time to lose. They had pretty specific ideas about what to achieve next, with Red42. They did not want to waste neither their time, nor their client's. They did not want to waste anybody's time.
Silke and Niels are creators, practitioners, researchers, advisors. But first and foremost, they are earnest economist-entrepreneurs with a keen interest in humanism and democracy in work and societies. Silke and Niels do not believe in magic, and they despise new-age hocus-pocus. Their work is systematic, rigorous: It follows logic and reason, consistently. Silke and Niels get shit done – as some might say.
"first, upgrade your thinking. then act upon your system, Consistently. Invite everybody in and make the cycles between thinking & action shorter and shorter. That's how transformation works."
Silke Hermann
Red42 is "dogmatic", in that Silke and Niels have a firm point of view. They believe in robust method for accelerated change and learning. They believe that radical humanism and economic reasoning can, and indeed must go hand in hand! Their work aims at helping companies with transforming themselves to become consistently agile, sense-and-respond, entrepreneurial and high-performing. Not "just any way that works", but through consistent decentralization and self-organization. Silke and Niels know that true transformation can never be brought about in a piece-meal, sliced and diced sort of way. Which is why they help their clients to transform their entire organizations. No experiments, no pilots, no labs, no dabbling - but no shortcuts either! In short: Silke and Niels promote organizational democracy that works.
In doing so, Red42 are contributing to a much-needed renaissance of organizational development, design, leadership, and learning.
RED42 BOOKS: PUTTING
PRACTICAL THEORY AT
EVERYBODY'S FINGERTIPS
Silke and Niels are the authors of several business books: The first book they wrote together was the German bestseller Complexitools (forthcoming in English in 2023). They followed up on that with the work/life organizer The Uncomplicated Year (2016), and the handbooks on OpenSpace Beta (2018) and on Cell Structure Design (2020). In addition, both Silke and Niels authored several books, individually.
