Trying harder, squeezing in more, always on: The technical possibilities tempt us to condense our time. But is more and faster always better? — Final­ly, a work­shop in per­son again. I pre­pared all the equip­ment for the marsh­mal­low chal­lenge. And as a bonus, mate­r­i­al for the can­dle prob­lem, which I had nev­er tried in a work­shop before. The box was ready to hand on the dress­er in the hall­way. Before that, I did two…

Trying to combine the best of home and office in hybrid forms of working is laudable but often misses the point: Flexibility in time makes the difference. — The discussion sur­round­ing hybrid forms of work­ing after the Coro­na pan­dem­ic pri­mar­i­ly revolves around geographical flexibility. For some employ­ees, espe­cial­ly younger ones, it may be essen­tial to work flex­i­bly in terms of loca­tion and, in extreme cas­es, to indulge in dig­i­tal nomadism. …

Give me the strength to stand my ground when I am right, give me the humility to admit mistakes when I am wrong, and give me the wisdom to know the difference. — On December 21, 1954, at midnight, a devastating flood was to wipe out all life on Earth. That was the prophecy of Dorothy Martin from Chicago. She had received this warning from extraterrestrials through telepathic contact. …

Beyond the frameworks, agile means exploring a complex environment through trial and error with an empowered team owning what they are doing. — There are many agile meth­ods and frame­works, but what is the essence of agili­ty? And how can one describe it with­out resort­ing to the ter­mi­nol­o­gy of Scrum & Co? At first glance, the Man­i­festo for Agile Soft­ware Devel­op­ment seems like a good start­ing point for answer­ing these ques­tions. How­ev­er, propo­si­tions…

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. This loose group of…

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…