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…
Productivity
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…
Practical Constraints
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…
Leading yourself
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. …
Agile Transformation
Entire organizations also suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect and are stuck in transformation at the peak of Mount Stupid.
Organizations are made up of people and people tend to have many cognitive biases. One of these is the Dunning-Kruger effect ( Wikipedia), first described by the two social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in an article published in 1999. …
Marcus Raitner
Agile by nature | Rebel without a pause | Working out loud | Author of https://fuehrung-erfahren.de
