Panel 01 – 2025: Daily Nation & Business Daily – Leaders Circle Kenya

Core content

Mike Eldon, one of Kenya’s most distinguished business voices, has been writing a weekly column in Business Daily since 2007. Ten of these columns document over seven years the joint work with Frank Kretzschmar in Leaders Circle Kenya – a continuous trail of evidence by a top Kenyan consultant about the shared work.

Each column deals with a Leaders Circle meeting on a different topic – optimism, sustainability, personal transformation, compliance, abuse of power, good and evil worlds, trust, pattern interruption, “The Others” – and makes visible how leaders reflect on their attitude and practice over the years in storytelling formats. The series is the only item in the collection that documents an uninterrupted published presence over seven years and at the same time bears witness to a cooperation of more than 20 years between Frank Kretzschmar and Mike Eldon.

Key quotation

“Frank Kretzschmar and I have just held another of our Leaders Circles, this time on the subject of the power of alignment.”

— Business Daily, 04 March 2010, opening line of the series

Panel 02 – 2024: Members’ Council of the Evangelische Kirche der Pfalz

Core content

As part of the EKP’s prioritisation process, the regional synod convened a members’ council – modelled on political citizens’ councils. Fourteen randomly selected members met to deliberate on the future of their regional church.

The methodological centre was storytelling: participants told autobiographical stories about spirituality, Christianity, congregation, and church; from these narratives, the direction for the future orientation of the regional church was distilled.

The report documents the format, random selection, methodological procedure, and scientific evaluation, and on pages 13/14 attests to the material the decisive criterion of content saturation for qualitative-empirical studies. The source opens up a second sector for Stepwise positioning – church and civic participation – and is the first published piece of evidence for the brother-brother tandem of Frank (facilitation) and Gerald Kretzschmar (academic direction).

Key quotations

“But we also observed how much and how quickly stories, with their spiritual quality, can change and intensify atmosphere. That stories can change and transform things. And that one can trust a great deal when it comes to church in and for the future.”

— Dorothee Wüst, Church President of the EKP, foreword to the Members’ Council Report, Speyer 2024

“This was made possible by the event moderator creating an overall atmosphere that generated storytelling to a very high degree.”

— EKP Members’ Council Report, p. 16 – on the facilitation by Frank Kretzschmar

“The members’ council worked without prejudice, with commitment and in a goal-oriented manner. Taken together, the biographical stories and anecdotes contributed in the course of storytelling fulfil the decisive criterion of content saturation for qualitative-empirical studies.”

— Prof. Dr Gerald Kretzschmar / Dr Timo Schmidt, EKP Members’ Council Report, pp. 13/14

Panel 03 – 2013: Wirtschaftspartner Afrika (Athena volume)

Core content

The authors recount their shared learning journey as consultants in African contexts and break open the usual one-way narrative that “the West brings civilisation”. At the centre is the experience that origin and skin colour lose their divisive power once a shared task, mutual respect and brotherhood narratives (“they are black and we are white – so what, we are brothers”) shape the collaboration.

They describe how they combine modern management tools (strategy work, scorecards) with African narrative and communal forms: storytelling, World Café understood as “drinking tea and talking under the tree”, and Leaders’ Circles using a Maasai rungu as a “talking stick”, at the centre of which stories about responsibility, trust, roots and reconciliation are told.

In this way, “connecting with roots” – the conscious anchoring in origin, values and community – becomes the core of modern change work, not a folkloristic side note.

Verbatim evidence (condensed in substance)

• “Learn from Africa” – Africa not only as a recipient of Western technology, but as a teacher of leadership, cultural work and consulting.
• “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” – without lived values, relationship and trust, even the best strategy remains ineffective.

Attitude and action recommendations of the authors

Drawing on their experience, Frank and Mike formulate explicit recommendations for attitudes and action:

• Culture before technique: strategy, structures and metrics must be linked to rituals, relationships and lived values – cultural work is the main task, not an accessory.
• Three value triads as a compass: patience, determination and flexibility; humility and respect combined with a low ego; passion, humour and a “light touch” – attitudes that should be consciously practised and understood as a personal leadership standard.
• Relationship before efficiency: listening, storytelling and circle culture take precedence over maximum speed; only on this basis does sustainable effectiveness emerge.

The authors explicitly emphasise that these attitudes are not restricted to African contexts: in their experience, anyone who combines them with technical competence will be more likely to succeed anywhere – in Africa, Asia and Germany alike.

Panel 04 – 2009: Personalführung – “We can learn quite a lot from Africa”

Core content

Personalführung is the German HR specialist journal with the highest institutional reach in corporate and mid-sized-company HR departments. The 2009 special-issue article positions the Stepwise perspective of “learning from Africa” in the HR mainstream and breaks up the usual donor-recipient pattern: Africa as a learning partner rather than an aid recipient.

The focus is on Africa as a teacher of contextual competence – that is, on understanding how locally grown values, community logics and leadership practices carry successful change processes. In this way, the Africa thesis is anchored in a leading German HR medium and lifted out of the narrow confines of development-aid discourse.

Key quotation

“Africa is not a continent of deficits, but a teacher of contextual competence.”

— condensed paraphrase of the article’s central thesis, Personalführung 6/2009 (to be checked against the original page before use)

Panel 05 – 2008: personalmagazin – “Merger with Heart and Mind” (Pronova‑BKK)

Core content

The article is a practice report on the cultural integration of the Pronova‑BKK merger. Methodologically, it contains the only published description of the rungu exercise in a German large-company context – a dialogue ritual originating from Maasai tradition – in combination with the structure tree, World Café and storytelling.

In the profile box at the end of the article, Frank Kretzschmar is presented as Managing Director of Stepwise Management and as a guest lecturer on strategy implementation at Management Center Innsbruck – a double institutional anchor showing that the merger work is both methodologically and academically rooted.

Key quotations

“More important than the question ‘what is being merged?’ is ‘how do we want to merge?’”

— personalmagazin 10/2008, Pronova article

“Practice article on the cultural integration of the Pronova‑BKK merger in personalmagazin 10/2008: describes the use of the rungu exercise as a dialogue ritual from Maasai tradition in a German large-company context, embedded in structure-tree work, change scorecard, World Café and storytelling for the emotional and strategic alignment of the merger.”

— working document “Pressespiegel & publizistische Belege”

Panel 06 – 2008: manager magazin – “The Lions Are on the Loose”

Core content

This cover story is the most important piece of evidence in the German business press within the collection. Christian Rickens portrays the economic awakening in sub‑Saharan Africa using the example of James Mwangi and Equity Bank and uses Frank Kretzschmar as the German anchor person – named three times and cited directly in two quotations.
The article shows how Equity Bank grew within a few years to become Kenya’s largest microfinance bank and how Frank Kretzschmar, as external consultant, supported the bank organisationally and strategically. It confers first-tier credibility on Stepwise in the German business press – without any advertising character, in a fully editorial story.

Key quotations

“This is no longer charity. This is business.”

— direct quotation from Frank Kretzschmar, manager magazin 1/2008

“Africa has a great future – and we have long underestimated it.”

— direct quotation from Frank Kretzschmar, manager magazin 1/2008

“It is precisely such stories that fascinate Frank Kretzschmar about Africa. The 44‑year‑old management consultant from the Palatinate first came to Kenya almost four years ago to advise Equity organisationally and strategically. … Today Kretzschmar is here for the 27th time, has long since acquired other Kenyan clients besides Equity and does equally good business in Africa as at home.”

— Christian Rickens, “Die Löwen sind los”, manager magazin 1/2008

Panel 07 – 2008: Deutsche Welle – Kenya interview

Core content

The Deutsche Welle interview with Maja Dreyer is the only piece of evidence in a German international broadcasting context. It positions Frank Kretzschmar as a German voice on the Kenyan economic situation and political context at the beginning of 2008, a period that attracted substantial international attention.

Frank offers a differentiated assessment of the post-election crisis and argues for a sober German view that takes Kenya seriously as a young democracy and does not look at the country only through the lens of crisis imagery. The DW source extends Stepwise’s presence beyond HR and business press into journalistic broadcast media.

Key quotation

“We must bear in mind which crises Europe has gone through. Kenya is such a young democracy, to which a chance must be given.”

— Frank Kretzschmar in interview with Maja Dreyer, Deutsche Welle, 28 Jan 2008

Panel 08 – 2008: forum Nachhaltig Wirtschaften – “Between Tradition and Modernity”

Core content

This article documents the Stepwise toolkit in the most compact published form in the entire collection. Five years before the Athena source, World Café, storytelling and scorecards already appear as established components of the methodology; at the same time, Leaders Circle Kenya and the Deidesheim Circle are mentioned by name as network anchors.

The article portrays Africa as an emerging growth market with win-win potential for sustainable economic cooperation and describes, using Equity Bank as an example, how Frank Kretzschmar links traditional African values and practices – Ubuntu spirit, storytelling, World Café, rungu ritual – with modern change-management approaches in order to strengthen empowerment, shared vision and responsible leadership.

Key quotations

“It is about win-win – not about aid, but about partnership.”

— forum Nachhaltig Wirtschaften 03/2008

“We Germans learn just as much from Africa as vice versa.”

— forum Nachhaltig Wirtschaften 03/2008

Panel 09 – 2007: MicroSave – “Equity Bank’s Market-Led Revolution”

Core content

Wright and Cracknell reconstruct the Equity transformation from the perspective of the external consultants MicroSave together with ShoreBank. They document the starting point in 1993 as technically insolvent, the turning point in 1995, the conversion into a bank on 1 Jan 2005, the stock-market listing on the Nairobi Stock Exchange on 7 Aug 2006 with a market capitalisation of KSh 6.3 billion, and the rise to KSh 21 billion by March 2007.

The study is the most important external source for validating the Stepwise statements on the Equity case. It makes the turnaround verifiable and explicitly attributes methodological responsibility for vision, strategy and implementation of the structure tree to Stepwise Management. Wright and Cracknell mention Stepwise Management and Frank Kretzschmar by name at four points, including one direct quotation from Frank on the impact of alignment.

Key quotations

“The development of a common vision and strategic plan for achieving it was implemented within a lengthy, participatory process facilitated by Stepwise Management (a consulting firm based in Germany).”

— Wright & Cracknell, MicroSave, March 2007, p. 6

“As a result of this high alignment employees and managers had a frame of reference for their high level of empowerment. Being an employee at Equity Bank very fast became a kind of status symbol. Equity Bank attracts the most talented people in the country to join the bank as an employee and to work at Equity Bank’s mission and vision.”

— Frank Kretzschmar, Stepwise Management – cited by name, MicroSave, March 2007, p. 7

“From this high level of alignment, employees and managers had a frame of reference for their high degree of empowerment. Being an employee at Equity Bank very quickly became a kind of status symbol. Equity Bank attracts the most talented people in the country to join the bank and to work for Equity Bank’s mission and vision.”

— Frank Kretzschmar, Stepwise Management, in Wright & Cracknell, MicroSave, March 2007

Panel 10 – 2006: managerSeminare – “Learning from Africa”

Core content

The interview “Learning from Africa” is the first published condensation of the Equity Bank case from a German perspective.

retzschmar describes the transformation of the former building society Equity Building Society into Kenya’s largest microfinance bank within four years.

Methodologically, the interview names World Café, storytelling and scorecards as the provenance of the tools used today and thus marks the early roots of Stepwise methodology in a specialist medium perceived by the HR market.

Key quotation

“We can learn from Africa because leadership there works under conditions that we have long lost: scarcity, personal responsibility and the courage to decide without a safety net.”

— Frank Kretzschmar in interview with Sylvia Jumpertz, managerSeminare 01/2006

Panel 11 – 2003: Gabler – “Making Common Sense common”

Core content

Frank Kretzschmar describes how a German insurance company transitioned into stand-alone independence following deregulation in 1994. Methodologically central is the structure tree according to Labovitz & Rosanski as a way of translating strategy into operational fields of action, supplemented by the BALD method (Bestimmen, Analysieren, Lösen, Durchführen – determine, analyse, solve, implement) for activating employees.

The chapter is the previously unseen academic anchor of the Stepwise methodology: it demonstrates that today’s tools are not inventions but have been tested in practice over more than two decades.

Key quotations

“Common sense is the most effective leadership instrument – provided we make it common and respectable: by giving it language, structure and legitimacy.”

— Frank Kretzschmar, in Geißler / Sattelberger (eds.), Personalpsychologie, Gabler 2003

“Common sense is the most effective leadership instrument – provided we make it presentable: by giving it language, structure and legitimacy.”

— English version, Personnel Psychology, Gabler 2003