Prototype a new mission
VIB — From representing members to building with them
Before
For years, VIB — the Association of International Banks in Germany — did what associations do: it represented its members. In 2025, its leadership set a bolder ambition: to become an active developer of new services for those members. That meant building three things at once — the services themselves, a repeatable way to keep developing them, and a team that could grow from respected subject-matter experts into continuous business developers.
None of it could be settled on paper. No one yet knew which services members would genuinely value, or how the organization would need to work to deliver them. It was exactly the kind of Change where the right answer can’t be predicted in advance — it has to be discovered.
Prototyping
Rather than write a strategy and roll it out, we helped them prototype. Over six months, we built the smallest real version of each idea and put it in front of the client — not a slide about a service, but something members could actually use and react to. Their responses, including the unwelcome ones, reshaped each concept within weeks.
Five service concepts were tested this way, with the people who would live with them helping to shape them. Each prototype was deliberately unfinished: its job was to surface what no one could have known on paper, while changing course was still cost-effective.
After
Two services are now operational: the VIB Expert Panel and VIB Connect. Two more are scheduled to launch in 2027. And one was deliberately stopped when its prototype disproved its assumptions — a success in itself, because the organization learned before it invested rather than after.
The more lasting result wasn’t the services. It was the capability. VIB now runs its own business-development routine, funded by a new revenue stream that, eighteen months on, pays for the next round. A team of subject-matter experts had become people who could develop and adapt on their own — without waiting for the next instruction from outside. VIB had built a Change Muscle.
“Prototyping changed how we work, not just what we offer. It gave us both the confidence and the capability to keep developing on our own.”
Dr. Andreas Prechtel, Managing Director, VIB (Association of International Banks in Germany)
Why it matters
This is the part we care about most. When strategy, people, customer value and new skills all move at once, prototyping is often the only practical way to learn what a transformation needs to become before you scale it — and it leaves the organization better at changing than it was before.
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