Simon
Sablowski
Curiosity, Creativity, Collaboration
I am an accomplished professional in the areas of organisational change, leadership coaching, and agile product development. Curiosity, creativity, and collaboration are the foundation of my work.
To date, my clients include Volkswagen, SumUp, BD Rowa, European Central Bank, Bundesdruckerei, and Siemens.
Services
By providing impactful coaching, consulting, and training, I guide organisations toward strategic alignment, purposeful innovation, and genuinely delighted customers.
Coaching &
Mentoring
Hone your skills and achieve mastery through personal coaching and mentoring. My approach is practical and hands-on, focusing on real-world application to ensure immediate impact.
Whether you’re an aspiring team coach, an established product manager, or a seasoned executive, I provide the guidance you need to navigate complexity and excel in dynamic environments. Our sessions foster self-awareness, problem-solving, and creative thinking, ensuring continuous personal growth and peak performance.
Workshops &
Training
Accelerate your team's development through workshops and training tailored to meet your specific needs. Participants learn useful techniques and build capabilities they can apply immediately.
Each session is designed to foster collaboration, encourage reflection, spark creative problem-solving, and provide actionable insights. Whether for a small team or an entire organisation, my sessions offer engaging learning experiences that inspire continuous improvement and drive long-term success.
Organisational
Development
Transform your organisation to improve value delivery and foster collaboration across teams. I help you design and manage change systematically, ensuring the best chances of success.
By connecting strategy with operational work, we will ensure alignment with your business goals while fostering clarity throughout the organisation. Together, we will refine structures to promote agility and resilience, guiding your organisation towards continuous innovation, delighted customers, and a thriving workforce.
Recommendations
My passion for enacting sustainable improvement is reflected in the feedback and success of my clients. Their words showcase the valuable results and positive change we’ve achieved together.
"I had the pleasure of working with Simon for several years on various projects focused on change management, leadership coaching, and agile working methods. Throughout our time together, Simon consistently demonstrated exceptional expertise and dedication in all aspects of his work. Simon has a deep understanding of agile methods and a passion for empowering teams to adopt an agile mindset. He posseses excellent communication skills and is able to effectively lead and coach individuals at all levels of an organization. Additionally, Simon is highly skilled in facilitating workshops and training sessions. Simon has a proven track record of success, and is an invaluable asset to any team looking to drive positive change and to achieve goals."
Ulrike Müller
Managing director at Volkswagen
"Simon’s guidance has been transformative for leaders at all levels—executives, product managers, and team coaches. What sets him apart is his exceptional ability to go beyond traditional coaching methods. His wealth of experience and unique approach have provided our team with invaluable insights, fostering both individual growth and sustainable organisational improvement."
Markus Siegmann
Director business process digitalization at BD Rowa
"Having worked with Simon in Agile Transformations in two different Siemens business units already, I can highly recommend him as an agile coach, trainer and mentor. He has a lot of experience, is full of good suggestions but also open to try new approaches. Whatever the transitions required, from training and coaching teams, helping leaders implement new leadership behaviours and strategies to bringing scrum masters, product owners and coaches to the next level, Simon accomplished it. I appreciate his positive attitude and calm nature especially in difficult situations."
Annemarie Kreyenberg
PLM process manager at Siemens
"Simon is a very professional coach. His experience and approach facilitate the change design and implementation. He helped me in building effective teams and in making the adopted Scrum events as focused to the goal as possible. Among the things which I liked the most, I would mention the highlights on factors to be improved. I would recommend Simon for large and difficult change management projects."
Maurizio Gabriele
Project manager at European Central Bank
Experience
My diverse experience across industry contexts equips me with valuable insights and fit-for-purpose methods, demonstrating my versatility in applying agile principles and practices.
since 2023
Leadership & Agility Coach
I guide teams, coaches and leaders in their journey toward seamless collaboration, purposeful innovation, and delighted customers. My services include coaching, consulting, and training in the areas of leadership, change management, product strategy, teamwork, and personal growth.
At BD Rowa, I coach leaders to drive meaningful organisational transformation, enabling sustainable improvement that aligns with their strategic goals. My focus with a large product development organisation at Siemens was to improve collaboration across software development, product management, release management, and quality management, spanning four locations and more than forty teams.
If you're ready to discover how my expertise can support your organisation's growth and success, let's connect and explore how we can work together. Reach out via the contact form – I look forward to discussing the possibilities for collaboration.
2015 - 2023
Agile Coach at agile42
agile42 enables sustainable change that equips organisations to achieve resilience in a rapidly changing world. As an agile coach, I worked with clients in healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, finance, cybersecurity, and education.
My responsibility spanned the full range of consulting, coaching, and training services. This included defining organisational goals and experiments, assessing organisational culture and leadership behaviours, providing training and coaching to teams and individuals, and measuring success throughout the engagements.
At Volkswagen's Future Center Europe, I improved leadership and collaboration on innovative projects. For SumUp, I aligned software and hardware development teams to deliver greater customer value. I established a portfolio system for Bundesdruckerei IT to manage their initiatives. Also, I led JTI's Agile Champion programme, helping 20,000 employees embrace agility in their daily work.
2011 - 2015
Interim CTO at Rocket Internet, Foodpanda & Various Startups
Rocket Internet is a global online venture builder for e-commerce and online marketplaces. I was responsible for launching all new projects and supervising up to 100 direct reports in software engineering, project management, and quality assurance. I collaborated closely with technology centres in Portugal and China, and hired more than 50 employees. Under my supervision, teams successfully launched HelloFresh, Jabong, Jumia, Linio, Lazada, Zalora, and many other projects.
Foodpanda is an online food delivery service that operates in Asia, Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. After transitioning from Rocket Internet to its priority project Foodpanda, I assembled and led a team of 30 software developers, product managers and system engineers. Managing Foodpanda's product development included collaborating with 100 stakeholders representing different market needs.
As a freelance consultant, I assisted early-stage startups in creating product development strategies, planning software architecture, recruiting teams, introducing engineering practices, and establishing agile development methods.
2009 - 2011
Co-Founder & CTO at Motivado
Motivado used interactive video coaching to help people solve personal issues and achieve goals, which bridged the gap between expensive coaching and general guidebooks. Topics included health, relationships, and career advancement.
I co-founded Motivado and worked with a diverse team of software developers and psychologists. In a highly agile fashion, we collaborated closely with our users, released updates frequently, and continuously optimised our processes.
Our products helped many people become happier, healthier, and more successful, earning us an award from Germany's Federal Ministry for Economy and Technology.
2001 - 2009
Software Developer & Illustrator
I began developing software in 1999 and worked as a freelance web and software developer, primarily in travel and e-commerce. My experience includes frontend and backend development, rapid prototyping, software architecture, automated testing, continuous refactoring, performance optimisation, and user experience design.
One of my clients was mytourclips, a platform for travellers to exchange experiences, videos, and pictures. I managed an extensive refactoring of the existing application to improve scalability and extensibility using my framework, nacho.
I also worked as an animator at Inkarnatoons, contributing hand-drawn character animations to the provocative short film Judas & Jesus, which was released in 2009, was screened at film festivals worldwide, and won numerous awards.