Now that we have experienced that knowledge-work can be done anywhere, our offices hopefully evolve into creative places for inspiring encounters between people. — In the short term, the Corona pandemic has given the workplace a powerful shake-up. The exciting question now, in this final phase of the pandemic, is whether this stimulus was sufficient to revolutionize or at least renovate the world of work also in the long term. What will remain of…

We are wired for searching solutions by adding things. This leads to rules, processes and ultimately organizations being overly complex and bureaucratic. — What happens to the administration when the work diminishes? Cyril Northcote Parkinson asked himself this question and his subject of investigation was the British Colonial Office, an independent department of the British government that was responsible for the administration of the British colonies from 1854 to 1966. Parkinson found that…

What counts is the per­for­mance of the team. How can indi­vid­ual per­for­mance be assessed then? And should one do so at all? — Those who mea­sure indi­vid­ual per­for­mance con­tri­bu­tions and dis­trib­ute vary­ing rewards depend­ing on them, not only receive demon­stra­bly poor­er results for any non-triv­ial task, but also dis­rupt the team struc­ture in par­tic­u­lar. Each team mem­ber is then pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with his or her own area of respon­si­bil­i­ty. …

For your agile transformation you have to think big to break up silos, but at the same time start small to learn together. — Lan­guage is some­times reveal­ing. Tra­di­tion­al hier­ar­chi­cal orga­ni­za­tions con­sist of func­tion­al divi­sions that areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty, divide pow­er in terms of bud­get and head­count, and sub­di­vide val­ue cre­ation. Divide et impera, divide and rule, is a time-test­ed max­im since the Roman Empire, the core of which is to encour­age “divi­sions among…

What we can learn from the sugar consumption of Gandhi, from Netflix’s surprising resemblance to a nuclear submarine, and from the frightening team dynamics of super chickens about new leadership. — The X‑Conference on “Cor­po­rate Dig­i­tal Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Dig­i­tal Ethics” took place on Octo­ber 30, 2020. My keynote, which is now also avail­able as video, revolved — as expect­ed — around the Man­i­festo for human(e) lead­er­ship and specif­i­cal­ly around the ques­tion what (cor­po­rate) dig­i­tal respon­si­bil­i­ty has to do with mod­ern lead­er­ship…

E-mail was intendend to make work easier. In fact, the simple communication corrodes structured workflows and becomes the work itself. — In com­plex social sys­tems, tech­nol­o­gy always unfolds unex­pect­ed side effects. When IBM intro­duced an inter­nal e‑mail sys­tem in the 1980s, the very high cost of com­put­ing pow­er at the time made it nec­es­sary to ana­lyze very pre­cise­ly how peo­ple were com­mu­ni­cat­ing with mem­os and phone calls. It was assumed that…

Beat the system with its own weapons — Is it pos­si­ble to mea­sure agili­ty? And if so, how and with what? Orga­ni­za­tions that have been oper­at­ing very suc­cess­ful­ly in a plan-dri­ven man­ner for many years and are there­fore used to think­ing in terms of met­rics will raise these ques­tions soon­er rather than lat­er in their jour­ney towards more…

Every transformation entails friction with the status quo. By accepting the practical constraints too willingly the transformation itself is transformed and its protagonists are either assimilated or repelled. — A lit­tle change, reor­ga­ni­za­tion and opti­miza­tion has not been enough for a long time now. Today, trans­for­ma­tion is the name of the game. Trans­for­ma­tions are there­fore every­where, in many forms and shades. A dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion for the busi­ness mod­el, because data is sup­posed to be the new oil. An agile…

Changing habits requires more than motivation. B.J. Fogg’s behavioral model provides the basis for sustainable personal change and growth. — Humans are creatures of habit. And that is a good thing. Habits make our lives easier by automating decisions. On the one hand. On the other hand, habits necessarily eliminate other options for action. If we perceive those habits as good, we gladly accept this loss of alternatives. …