Eberhard Schnelle

Eberhard Schnelle (* July 18, 1921 in Danzig ; † October 5, 1997 in Barmstedt ) was an organizational consultant for the Metaplan company and developer of the method for moderating groups.

Life

Eberhard Schnelle graduated from school in Gdańsk up to secondary school and learned the trade of printer and binder in his father's company for office supplies. After the Second World War , his father Herbert Schnelle founded the company Velox-Metall- und Papierververarbeitungwerk Herbert Schnelle GmbH in Barmstedt in 1946 (appearing as Velox Werk Herbert Schnelle / velox: Latin for fast, quick, agile), which initially mainly produced articles for Produced school supplies, registries and archives. From 1948 the sons Eberhard and Klaus Schnelle were co-partners, from 1953 Wolfgang Schnelle (1930–2005) as well.

After a shareholder dispute, Eberhard Schnelle separated from Velox in 1959 and joined the sales agency Velox-Organization Hermann Dunst GmbH together with his brother Wolfgang Schnelle, which was managed by Hermann Dunst (* 1921 in Danzig, grandfather of the actress Kirsten Dunst ) in a villa in the Hamburger Hochallee was operated. The company, which moved to Quickborn in 1961, made a name for itself in a short period of time with innovative concepts for office space design: It developed office landscapes that have also found widespread acceptance in the USA . The new company initially operated under the name KG Organizationsteam Eberhard und Wolfgang Schnelle GmbH, from which the Quickborn team emerged in 1962 .

Due to the influence of cybernetics and information aesthetics, the Schnell publishing house in Quickborn near Hamburg developed at the same time in the sixties . a. Works by Kurd Alsleben and Helmar Frank have appeared.

The economic upswing led to a strong expansion of consulting activities, so that the name Quickborner Team gained a high degree of awareness. Around 1970 the team worked in the government and administrative reform project group . The planning project, in which Renate Mayntz , Frieder Naschold and Fritz Scharpf also participated, was set up by Horst Ehmke as head of the Federal Chancellery at the time and handed over the management to Reimut Jochimsen .

After massive internal disputes and in order to be able to concentrate again on the actual planning of the planning , Eberhard Schnelle founded the new company Metaplan Gesellschaft für planning und Organization mbH in 1972 - together with his two co-partners Wolfgang Schnelle and Hermann Dunst (until 1984) whose managing partner has been Thomas Schnelle since 1995. Due to a strategic reorientation, Eberhard Schnelle founded the Quickborner Projekt-Forum Gesellschaft für Unternehmensentwicklung mbH in 1994.

Eberhard Schnelle was married to the visual artist Telse Fast-Cölln, a granddaughter of Detlef Cölln (1876-1961), co-founder of the Hebbel-Gesellschaft eV

Entrepreneurial activities

In retrospect, the entrepreneurial activities of Eberhard Schnelle for the period from 1959 to 1997 can be divided into the following, simultaneously networked sections:

1. since 1959 organization team Schnelle, from 1962 to 1972 Quickborner team,
2. from 1960 to 1970 publishing house Schnelle ,
3. since 1972 pin board moderation as metaplan method ,
4. since 1984 workshop of change and corporate theater ,
5. inventing work since 1995.

These activities are described in detail in the commemorative publication for Eberhard Schnelle's 75th birthday. In the work, the respective socio-political situations that prevailed in the Federal Republic were analyzed and brought into relation to the entrepreneurial activities.

Ten years have passed since this analysis and, viewed from the year 2006, the Schnell publishing house is of eminent importance for the development of pin board moderation as a metaplan method. The publisher acted like a private think tank . The knowledge of cybernetics as a bridge between the sciences ( Helmar Frank ) was able to flow into a new method at an early stage . Information aesthetics played a central role, the content of which was primarily conveyed in the optical rhetoric and visualization training courses.

After the establishment of the Metaplan method, the Workshop of Change (WdW), initiated by Eberhard Schnelle and carried out once a year since 1984, assumed a similar function. Here he began the development of corporate theater as a consulting service that complemented the Metaplan method. In the annual WdW events, his creative work also started with the three typical clown characters: red clown , white clown and black clown .

In view of the consistently high number of unemployed, Eberhard Schnelle repeatedly emphasized that work should be invented in a creative process. This is how the concept of inventing work emerged since 1995, which was also tried out by the professional and business educator Helmut Woll at the TU Chemnitz at the beginning of the 21st century . As early as 1963, Eberhard Schnelle stated with regard to the invention of work:

“But if we understand creative activities by human work, we are very helpless today. We urgently need systems of cooperation for creative people, systems that make the many terminologies and opinions available to those interested in information without political friction losses. Despite all the restrictions, I believe I see some promising approaches in this set of ideas summarized under the term cybernetics. "

Publications

• New ways of communication. Rules of the game, working techniques and use cases of the Metaplan method. As editor. Publications of the Society and Companies Foundation, Issue 10, Hanstein, Königstein / Taunus 1978
• Metaplan method as a management tool . Together with Joachim Freimuth. In: Alfred Kieser u. a. (Ed.): Concise dictionary of leadership . Poeschel, Stuttgart 1987
• Management role: group member and moderator . In: Wolfgang H. Staehle (Ed.): Handbuch Management. The 24 roles of the excellent manager. Gabler, Wiesbaden 1991, ISBN 3-409-19934-9

literature

• Joachim Freimuth, Fritz Straub (Ed.): Democratization of Organizations . Festschrift for Eberhard Schnelle on his 75th birthday. Gabler Verlag, Wiesbaden 1996.
• Joachim Freimuth (Ed.): The fear of managers . Verlag für Angewandte Psychologie, Göttingen 1999.
• Jürgen Engel: Inventing work . In: Helmut Woll (Hrsg.): Junior companies and entrepreneurial competence . Book on Demand, Norderstedt 2003, pp. 88-99.
• Frank Ibold: Development of the Metaplan consulting approach and the consulting company . In: Wolfgang Schnelle: Discursive organizational and strategy advice . Norderstedt 2006, pp. 89-105.

See also

• Notice board moderation
• Open space

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bergedorfer discussion group on the subject of "Cybernectics as a social fact", quoted from Bergedorfer Protocols, 1963, p. 124.