Introducing the Digital Leadership Partner Model
Introducing the Digital Leadership Partner Model
Introducing the Digital Leadership Partner Model
We believe the consulting market (including agencies, venture builders and strategy firms) is overdue for a change. There is room to do differently: for our customers, for the people that work with us, for ourselves and last but not least the final consumer. We need change on all levels. We need change and think over how we live as a society, how we do business and how we as humans collaborate, live and work.
We at Digital Leadership, have the dream to be that change and fill that gap in the market. We offer freedom and responsibility. We share openly and OpenSource. We are all about honest communication. Circular thinking is central to us.
We are thinking holistically, integrative and end2end. We value collaborative partnerships and our purpose is to help evolve. With genuine engagement. Because nothing else matters.
Our dream
We offer entrepreneurial compensation, and everything is here on eye-level. But attention: without 100% commitment, it’s not going to work …
FAQ – Questions have to be answered
Market context
The consulting market (including agencies, venture builders and management consultancies) has become frustrating to many. Few of it is genuine “consulting” and most of the time it is not strategic. Customers are frustrated about junior staff, low experience, low value, low impact and often hire consultancies for “cover my ass” projects. Staff in consultancies are frustrated too: they work long hours, are overworked, tired, have limited impact, have limited access to expertise, need to “figure it out” and have enough of the deep hierarchies. While they earn better than other professions, they do not really participate in the pie and ultimately work frustratingly long hours,
reason why they leave on average after 2–3 years (the highest turnover profession outside of restaurant service staff).
Whilst the overall market and demand is growing, it is time for a change …
About Digital Leadership
- Our team members have on average 10+ years relevant experience. This is way above the 0-3 years experience customers get at the typical agency or consultancy.
- Our offering is end to end. We can do strategy consulting at the highest level. But we do also walk our talk and therefore we view execution as part of the game. We have therefore seen through some of the largest initiatives globally.
- Personal commitment: we are no anonymous mass. And we do not serve our customers by just somebody in the hierarchy. Our Partners are personally responsible to make you as a customer happy. And we have delivered upon this promise over the last decade successfully.
- Partnership-approach with our customers: we jointly work with our customers whom we indeed refer to as business partners. We do things together and view ourselves as one. Not as a supplier who is treated as such in an exploitative relationship. I guess what helps is that we are highly differentiated…
- Holistic approach: we believe excellence in an individual discipline is … overrated. The true challenge is to orchestrate an entire digital change program end2end. We are uniquely able to do so: thanks to the expertise of our Partners and thanks to …
- Thought Leadership. Delivered: since our incorporation over a decade ago, we have consistently invested into our methodologies. We share a part of our knowledge OpenSource with the UNITE models being the largest library of Innovation and Transformation models on the Internet. And if you want to discover even more, read our book “How to Create Innovation” which arguably is the first book globally in its genre that covers all silos.
- Track record: we have been there over the last decade. Across Europe. On some of the largest programs. And our Partners are senior leaders in their respective fields.
- We are uniquely flexible: since we are employing good parts of our experts on demand, we can uniquely tailor our approach in a highly flexible way to whatever our customers need.
- Discover our innovation
- Discover our Digital Transformation Practice
- Discover our Brand & Experience Practice
- Discover our Culture & Organizational Change Practice
The Digital Leadership Partner Model
The DL Partner Model summarizes how we as Partners work here at Digital Leadership.
The definition of what a Partner does is comparable to other consultancies, agencies or other types of Partnerships: ultimately, a Partner is in charge of acquiring and delivering business.
The similarities end here, however. On purpose, we have not created a new pyramid organizational
structure, since this would have led to the usual employment contracts, goal-setting, performance management, dependencies, meetings without end and so on.
We believe in freedom. And with senior Partners joining us, we need to give them the space to act in liberty. So what a Partner offers and how he delivers is their choice.
Stefan as founder is therefore the initiator and sparring partner, and not “a boss”. And thus, no performance goals are set–unless you set them for yourself, of course. With such a mindset, a usual fixed employment would not be very suitable. So this is a much more entrepreneurial engagement, and this equally allows the Partners to earn an entrepreneurial compensation.
With a lot of freedom, comes a lot of responsibility. You can make your choices, and you own their consequences. We do not want to create an ego-shooter club, however, in which everybody is busy with self-optimization.
Quite on the opposite, we wanted to create a global family of leaders who support each other. The broad idea is that every Partner supports the other Partners at minimum a half day every week and receives equal support when he is in need. So when you have a pitch, an escalation, as-level workshop or want a fellow senior Partner to look after your topics while you are on holiday, you will get help from your fellow Partners. In addition, Digital Leadership is there to support its Partners. Importantly, we want to be a committed Partnership. We do not want to become a “club” or “expert network”.
So for all of us, this is a 100% commitment.
Without that, we would not be able to build the brand, reputation, trust, speed, focus etc. Our focus and commitment are therefore essential to us.
We want to build a global family of leaders. Therefore you are mostly welcomed regardless of your place or who you are. We expect Partners first of all to have a certain level of personal maturity, enabled with a positive and human value set. Please read the FAQ on culture .
We are looking for people with very strong, if not industry–leading knowledge in their respective discipline, with a track record on minimum Senior Ma nager if not Director or Vice President level.
In addition we are looking for ideally broad knowledge in the digital domain. A good indicator would be if you easily follow most topics through our book How to Create Innovation. The book also contains an in–depth chapter on the topic of Culture, and more in particular, “teal organizations,” which defines what we are ultimately looking for.
Last, we are looking for any signs of exceptional ability, regardless of which domain.
Ultimately, for all of us this is a full–time 100% commitment (teaching or voluntary work is no problem – we just do not want to see any missing professional focus after a transitory period). A transitory period allows busy individuals enough time to ramp–up here at Digital Leadership.
If you are interested to join or want to learn more, simply write to Rudolph ( Rudolph.Salazar@digitalleadership.com ) and Stefan ( sd@digitalleadership.com ) or directly schedule a meeting with Stefan
- Discover our Innovation Practice
- Discover our Digital Transformation Practice
- Discover our Brand & Experience Practice
- Discover our Culture & Organizational Change Practice
Over the next months, we want to grow into a family of 10 Partners. In 2023, we should surpass €5 million in annual revenues.
What lies beyond is probably difficult to tell. There are too many variables in play. Perhaps this venture will become big, perhaps we will remain relatively small and focused.
More importantly, we want to enjoy our work, our partnerships with customers and create an impact. Joy is part of our work. For us, quality trumps quantity.
Our thought leadership positioning will remain a constant focus–it is surprsingly differentiating and sustainable (why on earth did we publish the most extensive library of innovation & transformation tools and not the “big” players?!).
For us as existing Partners, we want to stay true to our culture. And for me as founder, I am not here to give a vision: instead, I would like to invite you for a joint journey! Because life is about evolution. Not fixed goals. And it shouldn’t be about my vision, but rather about what we can jointly build.
So Let’s UNITE and create a world worth living in! Read more about that in our book!
- Initial contact
- Read up on us: get to know our book, the UNITE models (the largest collection of Innovation & Transformation models globally!), our general website and better understand the Partner model through the information we share here.
- First get to know: Whenever you are ready, you would typically schedule an interview with our founder, Stefan F. Dieffenbacher. Here is direct access to his calendar. This initial conversation is mostly there to get to know each other, and Stefan will help you answer the many questions you might be having. As a follow-up to this session, Stefan normally shares additional information as well as the Digital Leadership Partner contract, which is the most friendly contract you will ever have seen (3 pages long) .
- Optional Q&A session: If required, a 2nd Q&A session with Stefan happens to discuss any questions.
- Getting to know YOU: We also would love to get to know you better, so typically we arrange for a 90min screen-sharing session where you share some of the highlights of your professional life! This leads to a better understanding of your core competencies, your positioning and your customer value proposition.
- Meet another Partner at Digital Leadership : somewhere during the process, you would typically get to know another Partner.
- Optional on-site meeting: as required, we would also meet on-site for a day and work together. Typically, this covers very concrete subjects such as onboarding, your positioning, how to get to first customers and others.
Business Development is ultimately owned by the Partners. We as Partners are best placed to communicate our vision and value propositions. We do not believe in sales people doing sales blabla.
We as Digital Leadership have done a lot to push Marketing : we have written the book “ How to Create Innovation ” invested massively in our website which is driving very significant traffic, thanks to the frequent blogging and the UNITE models. Today, our website receives more traffic than almost every national competitor–only global players are getting more visitors. This translates into strongly growing visibility, book readers, UNITE fans, interested parties and will ultimately drive leads.
In addition, Partners support each other in their business development efforts and cross–sell each other. Last but not least, I am as a founder personally here to support any business development effort. Beyond, we have a number of initiatives and tools to support business development in general.
In summary, we have a unique market position, outstanding setup and strong growth prospects–a setup that is hardly matched by hardly any competitor
We do not want Partners joining simply for the revenue potential. Whilst this is an important component of what we do, money alone is not good enough of a motivator–particularly not for a value–driven company like we are ( read the FAQ answer on # culture).
Having said that, there is (very) significant earning potential. More specifically, compared to a senior manager / director type of individual or a strong performing freelancer, a successful Partner at Digital Leadership should be able to double his earnings.
This is primarily for two reasons: as a Partner, you can ask for very different rates than a freelancer can. And as Partners at Digital Leadership, we solve a significant problem for our customers which typically entails a larger team. So a Partner has leverage. In addition , we have a clear premium positioning, meaning the daily rates we command are higher than that of other consulting players and are certainly superior to the typical agency.
Last but not least, high earnings do not cut it. By far most people do not manage to build wealth, despite often good earnings (!). It ultimately takes financial competency to build wealth. Me as a founder have been in your shoes, and I know how to go about it. We plan on discussing financial matters and sharing investment opportunities amongst the group of Partners.
Delivery Model
We believe in freedom and independence. Partners can within very few limitations make their own decisions who they serve, how they deliver and what they charge. That also includes from where they work (on site vs remotely), with whom they work (freelancers, external partners or in the future also employees) and ultimately which methodology and processes they use (so we would, of course, like to push our UNITE models further).
In summary, it thus largely depends on you and how you want to play it.
Sharing my story as founder, I have served large customers across Europe and have built (almost family–type) relationships with our customers. As a result, we were “one team” (with people from the customer) that needed to get the job done as opposed to a supplier that had “deliverables”. This led to long–lasting relationships (the oldest customer has been here for a decade) and limited the need to find new customers. Overall, I have been working on 2–4 projects per year. I chose to staff those projects predominantly with a freelance workf orce. This allowed me to create tailor–made teams for our customers, which resulted into great flexibility for both the customer as well as my personal life. I hired highly senior people to join on projects, which was a big USP for customers: most of our people had 10+ years of experience. This led to higher quality and more efficiency.
Our website & reach
- We get 1k–4k visitors on our website every day (!) With this traffic, we are outranking nearly all national players and even many globally leading players
The UNITE Models
- The UNITE models are hugely popular! Every month, we see get about 10k Downloads of the UNITE m odels and counting
Our book , How to Create Innovation
- Our book, How to Create Innovation , has become a global bestseller. In several countries, we are the #1 bestseller in meaningful categories (such as best business book in a foreign language, best entrepreneurship book…).
- We are also seeing increasing adoption from universities globally and have received the first bulk orders from major universities globally. This is great news, since this means that our book (which was nev er meant to be an academic book) is now officially peer reviewed which is a testament to it’s great quality!
Our business
- We have grown 6 partners currently (planned 10 by end of year)
- Based on our m arketing and publications, we are getting very relevant leads are coming in , in growing number !
- The First Press Releases are out there, and we are expected to get featured well.
Interested joining us?
Interested joining us?
If you can imagine joining us, please schedule a first meeting with Stefan, the founder of Digital Leadership!