About
Since 2011, Celonis has helped thousands of the world’s largest companies yield immediate cash impact, radically improve customer experience, and reduce carbon emissions. Its Process Intelligence platform uses industry-leading process mining technology and AI to present companies with a living digital twin of their end-to-end processes. Celonis is headquartered in Munich and New York with more than 20 offices worldwide.
Impact, in collaboration with Celonis, designed the Leading@Celonis ‘Leaders of Leaders’ programme, a dynamic and action-driven journey designed to empower leaders. This programme is structured to activate Celonis’ four core Leadership Principles, fostering an environment where leaders are not just equipped but inspired to take action. Through a series of challenges and reflective exercises, leaders are transformed into catalysts for growth, creating a vibrant community where every Celonaut can flourish, innovate, and find a sense of belonging.
Celonis won a bronze Brandon Hall Group award for this programme in the Best Advance in Leadership Development category in 2024.
In August 2021, at an $11B valuation, Celonis was declared Germany’s first decacorn. The years leading up to and following this milestone were characterised by a rapidly expanding customer base, company footprint, and global workforce, together bringing the company to a critical juncture. As Alex Rinke, Celonis co-Founder and co-CEO, articulated, 'There are decades when nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen.'
In light of these transformative times, Celonis recognised the imperative for its leaders to rise to the occasion. A strategic organisational objective was to define the kind of company Celonis wanted to build as it relates to culture and making sure that everybody understood, lived, and felt it.
Celonis identified a learning opportunity that clearly aligned culture building and the development of leadership capabilities and behaviours with this strategic need. The goal was to design and deliver a custom leadership development journey that would focus on key leadership skills related to the Leadership Principles. These principles embody the essence of Leading the Celonis Way. They connect the dots to Celonis’s values by describing the everyday actions and behaviours that are core to the culture Celonis is building. They consist of:
- Lead with purpose: make it real
- Be different: be a great coach, mentor, and create psychological safety for colleagues
- Sustain performance: through peer support and accountability
- Facilitate greatness: cultivate collaboration, celebration, humility and learning
Leaders of Leaders is a multi-modular blended solution. The custom designed programme includes key interventions:
Virtual kick-off and pre-work: Celonaut leaders are welcomed to the programme with a virtual launch hosted with a senior alumnus. They are then invited to a series of leadership interviews to grow their network and deepen their perspective and dialogue.
Executive coaching: Each Celonaut leader is matched with an Impact coach who serves as a guide and challenger. Using their 360-feedback report and internal engagement surveys, participants have three coaching conversations to unpack what their results mean for them, and to find actionable ways forward. This part of the journey also includes a facilitated introduction to a peer consulting methodology that participants then use with their teams.
Face-to-face event: Celonaut leaders attend a 2.5-day programme in New York, Madrid, or Munich. This event serves as an anchor to the process, providing a series of challenging experiential inputs, practices, and reflection experiences on themes of Leadership as Action. Participants explore how to apply Celonis Leadership Principles in practice, through coaching, effective team leadership, and change. They leave with a task to work on in pairs and explore the topics and their commitments to them more deeply back in the workplace.
Ongoing self-led learning and collaboration: Post-programme, leaders continue their development as members of an alumni community and can give back to Celonis through taking initiative to grow others. Leaders are requested to be ambassadors for the Celonis Leadership Principles and activate the principles in their teams. They also have the chance to pay it forward by acting as mentors to Celonauts who are participating in the Aspiring People Leaders’ Programme.
Participants unanimously expressed their agreement that the objectives had been met; that Leading@Celonis had provided them with practical learning that would benefit their personal development, career, and are aligned to Celonis’ organisational strategy.
- 96% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that they had gained immediately applicable valuable insights applicable to their work.
- 99% of participants were extremely satisfied with the in-person experience.
The results from Celonis’ 2023 company engagement survey further demonstrated the impact of the programme. There was a measurable difference in engagement scores for questions aligned to the Leadership Principles between leaders who participated in the programme and those who did not join.
“Our goal was to break away from the traditional lecture-based leadership development programmes and create a highly energising, engaging, personalised and immersive experience. Each leader has an opportunity to focus on three key levers to activate their actions: Self, Team, and Peers. The combination of those two key design principles and the impact we are demonstrating, makes this THE flagship programme that everyone wants to participate in. Our leaders are prepared to take Celonis to the next level and take on the more complex challenges and changes that are ahead.”
Ani Acker, Global Head of Learning and Leadership Development
Senior leaders from across program cohorts exhibited profound results:
“Having been to a LOT of leadership sessions, I can honestly say this has been the most relevant and the one which was most aligned to where we are as a company and as leaders.”
Impact continue to partner with Celonis, working together to prepare the Celonaut leaders for ongoing challenges, and to improve both their personal wellbeing and organisational productivity.
Award winning
Celonis won a bronze Brandon Hall Group award for this programme in the Best Advance in Leadership Development category in 2024.
Celonis have shortlisted for the Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards in 2024. They are finalists in the Strategy Award category.