The Year That Was, 2019 – Going With The Flow
For me, the motto for 2019 was going with the flow. A lot has changed and a lot has simply emerged from the present situation and the existing possibilities. The…
Year: 2019
Reflecting on the Manifesto for Human(e) Leadership with 1 – 2‑4-All
The Manifesto for Human(e) Leadership was never conceived as a textbook or reference work. However, despite and because of its brevity, it is surprisingly well received as book. The…
Change: It’s an infection, not broadcasting!
Again and again I hear and read that we have to meet the people on their ground and have to win them over for a successful change. I consider this very…
Here I am human, here I may be curious!
Digitalization is driving human labor out of the value chain. It only continues what robots and automation have begun long before. You can feel threatened by this, but…
The Agile Transformation as a Joint Learning Journey
Agile transformation is not a change project designed by consultants and ordered by top management, however much some people selling panaceas may propagate it. Agile transformation is a joint learning…
The Company as Workshop for Prosperous Life
This is the title of a central chapter in Bodo Janssen’s new book “Kraftquelle Tradition. Benediktinische Lebenskunst für heute” (Amazon Affiliate-Link). Companies are more than just places of value…
Less Is More: Knowledge Work Requires (Also) Idleness
Less working hours lead to more and better results. What may sound absurd has recently been impressively demonstrated by Microsoft in Japan. In August, all 2,300 employees had…
Work-Life Balance: Differentiate Without Separating
Never I have been a devotee of the concept of work-life balance. It suggests a separation that I am not willing to accept. If something has lost its balance, then it is…
Leadership Beyond the Walls
Which responsibilities do organizations bear for society? Is it enough for them to fulfill their respective purpose to the best of their ability or do they also have…
The Lively Disorder of Agile Organizations
The biggest hurdle for companies undergoing an agile transformation is the perceived loss of control. At its core, agility means self-organization. The more decentralized decisions are made, the…
Leading With Passion
Leadership unfolds its impact always in two dimensions: on the one hand there is the Why, which manifests itself in a common purpose and attractive vision and on the…
Against the Over-Regulation of Collaboration
Less, but better. This motto of the famous German designer Dieter Rams should guide us not only in the design of products, but also in the design of…
Everyday Sabotage
Are you tired of endless meetings and a never-ending cycle of office life? The Simple Sabotage Field Manual, published by the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the CIA) in 1944, reveals tactics for undermining productivity and morale in organizations. Even today, these tactics are alarmingly relevant.
Context Not Control
What does Netflix have in common with a nuclear submarine? Although at first glance they couldn’t be more different, their exceptional leadership culture is very similar. Reed Hastings, CEO…
Agile: Asking the Right Questions
How can we become (more) agile? Many of my conversations begin with this question. So someone wants to work differently, wants to become agile or more agile. The…
On the Handrail into the Decision-Making Circle – Networks and Companions
What on earth did Mark mean by that question? Why did he want to know what “assignment” T. had? After all, it was only supposed to be a small…
The Crux of Meetings
Just like T., the protagonist in last week’s fragment of my novel “On the Handrail into the Decision-Making Circle”, many people are confronted with the same situation several…
On the Handrail into the Decision-Making Circle – Meetings and Circles
His first group meeting. They gathered in one of the numerous meeting rooms, whose dismal functionality immediately suffocated every trace of creativity. In general, the whole building — although completed…
On the Handrail into the Decision-Making Circle – The Application
So, a position in the corporation after all? For him, this was his first real application ever. He previously never had to apply formally, it always happened somehow. One…
The Court Jester at the Touchline
Servant leadership in general and the misunderstood role of the Scrum Master in particular is mostly underestimated. The effect of this kind of leadership is rather indirect; like…
Life Path Not Career Path
Three years of agile transformation at BMW Group IT have taught me a lot about organizational change and I have summarized it in three principles. But I also learned a lot about…
Three Principles of Effective Transformation
From three years of intensive work on the agile transformation in the BMW Group IT, I see three essential success factors. First, the transformation always starts with the why…
Unboss Instead of Egomaniacs
Times of change are times of uncertainty. A typical reaction to this uncertainty is the call for heroes and strong leaders who bring order into chaos and show the…
Complex or Complicated?
The naive and intuitive use of language sometimes mixes and overlays things that should be clearly distinguished. Popular among editors are, for example, the terms apparently and seemingly.…
In for a Penny, in for a Pound and Other False Dichotomies
The term dichotomy goes back to the Greek dichotomía (διχοτομία) and means dividing in two. A false dichotomy is the suggestion that there are only two mutually exclusive alternatives…
Good Leadership Makes Itself Unnecessary
Leadership no longer means command and control. It is no privilege, but rather a service. And this service is to empower and enable people to lead themselves independently in…
The Agile Counterfeiters on Their Way to Cargo Cult Hell
Anyone who imitates Spotify or introduces SAFe or obtains imitated or falsified agile frameworks and disseminates them as best practice will be punished with futile ritual practices of…
Discipline Beyond Obedience
Children are awesome. And sometimes they are an awesome challenge. To be honest, our two daughters are this every single day – more than once. Young children in…
In Titanic’s Ballroom
Several so called agile transformations ultimately end with people dancing rock ’n’ roll instead of a slow waltz in Titanic’s ballroom and some beautifully decorated deckchairs. And even if…
Man as Perpetually Wanting Animal
Successful collaboration in the age of knowledge work, especially in agile organisations with their high degree of self-organisation and self-responsibility, depends to a large extent on the assumptions about…
Setting Standards in Agile Organizations
Agility requires orientation. It’s exactly this alignment that enables effective autonomy and decentralized decisions, which make agile organizations so adaptable. But agility also requires common standards and conventions…
I have a dream!
The yearning for a new and better form of respectful and thereby profitable cooperation between people is greater than ever. Industrialization and Taylorism have transformed humans into resources. Initially…
If You Say Yes, You Have to Say No
In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is…
Agility Starts with the Assumptions about Human Nature
Agility hinges on the prevailing assumptions about human nature in the organization. Wherever people are generally distrusted and where the belief prevails that people must be motivated to…
Showing Appreciation with the Kudos Cards for the Manifesto for Human(e) Leadership
There’s a lot of whining and complaining. After all, it is very easy to be outraged about the mistakes made by others and especially by “those up there”. However,…
Wu Wei: Act Without Forcing
Only those who can lead themselves can lead others. This is how Father Anselm Grün sums up the essential challenge of self-leadership. Those who want to serve life…
Culture Follows Structure or the Misunderstood Scrum Master
From his decades of experience with the agile transformation of organizations and in particular with the introduction of the LeSS framework developed by Bas Vodde and himself, Craig…
The Workshop on the Manifesto for Human(e) Leadership
The Manifesto for Human(e) Leadership is on the one hand a useful stimulus for personal reflection on one’s own leadership qualities, especially in the form of the recently published…
Equal Dignity as Guiding Principle for Successful Transformations
Transformation is what everyone is talking about, because digitalization demands adaptable and customer-oriented organizations. Apparently steadfast organizational principles and behaviors that have been successful for many years must…
Aberrations of the Agile Transformation
Not everything that has transformation in neon letters on its cover actually is a transformation. It all starts with the erroneous assumption that agility can boost employee performance just…
Good Decisions Between Consensus and Consent
Who decides and how can good decisions be taken? For a long time, this question did not even arise in many hierarchical organizations. In case of doubt, the decision…
Independence in the Sense of the Whole
Digitalization does not replace humans and it cannot do without them. On the contrary, it is precisely because of digitalization that what is typically human is more in…
Lean Leadership: Empowering Instead of Instructing
Much can be learned from Lean Management: Understanding the value for the customer, then identifying the value stream and optimizing the flow to avoid unnecessary effort and last…
Don’t scale agile – descale your organization!
Agile organizations are lean, flexible and adaptable. This is accomplished less by “agilizing” existing structures and processes but rather by consistently questioning these. The solution, of course, is…
Pain of Adaptation in the Corporate World
After my switch from our small but fine start-up esc Solutions to the BMW Group IT in 2015, I was asked more than once whether I really was serious about…
Manifesto for Human(e) Leadership: The Book
A year ago, I published the six theses of the Manifesto for Human(e) Leadership on this blog. The response was overwhelming. Almost 600 people have signed the Manifesto since,…
Learning Serenity from the Stoics
The year is not yet a month old and my resolutions are waste paper. I wanted to handle my time more mindfully, focus better and prioritize more effectively. Like so…
Sailing by Sight
When it comes to agility, many people think in terms of methods such as Scrum on a small scale, frameworks such as LeSS on a large scale or tools such…
Drive Out Fear
The Roman Emperor Caligula became the epitome of the autocratic tyrant with his motto oderint, dum metuant (“let them hate, so long as they fear”). Fortunately, there aren’t…
Management by Objective – Without Carrots and Sticks
The turn of the year is traditionally the time to look back, pause and look forward to the new year. On a personal level, this typically leads to new…
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