The Post-Pandemic Office as a Place of Inspirational Encounter
Now that we have experienced that knowledge-work is possible anywhere, our offices hopefully evolve into creative places for inspiring encounters between people.
Category: New Work
The Home Office: What It’s Really All About
Home office is in fact only at first glance a question of where you work. In essence, it is about equality, about concepts of human nature, trust instead of control, and fundamentally about the relationship between manager and knowledge worker.
The Transformation Devours Its Children
COVID-19 is a touchstone for agility and new work. The crisis reveals the true culture of the organization unvarnished. Quite a few beanbags and foosball tables now turn out to be “lipstick on the pig”, a naive cargo cult at best and the deliberate deception of a Potemkin village at worst.
The Myth of Short Ways
Spatial proximity allows short ways and efficient coordination. This narrative of the cult of presence sounds plausible, but it is not true — especially not in large organizations.
Expanding the Digital Radius of Action Instead of Worshipping Physical Presence
Instead of calling for presence again after this long phase of forced distributed work, now would be the perfect time to decouple the employees’ radius of action from their physical presence and to consistently expand it into virtual space.
Blog Parade #remoteworks
After weeks of distributed cooperation it is time to draw a balance. This blog parade is itself an exercise in distributed asynchronous collaboration, a virtual retrospective to reflect on the opportunities and limitations of home office and remote work, in order to identify success factors and prevent us from falling back into the old rut.
Less Rules – Better Cooperation
How many rules does cooperation require? Less is more. For instance in traffic, as Hans Monderman’s concept of shared space shows. But also in organizations: fewer rules lead to more responsibility and lively cooperation.
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…
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…
The Uncomfortable Truth About Open-Plan Offices
While trying to do concentrated work amidst colleagues on the phone or in discussions, I regularly wish to return to the quiet library from my student days. With all…
People over Processes
Making decisions is often considered an essential element of leadership. An elite circle of executives makes decisions; at least the big and strategic ones and sometimes, depending on…
Working Sustainably – Less Is More
Sustainability could be defined as a principle according to which no more should be consumed than can be replenished, regenerated or made available again in the future. Usually we…
Where’s the Library?
Knowledge work requires concentration. To this end, universities have libraries in which one can focus on studying. In most of our companies there are no such zones for…
Digital Mass Graves of Knowledge
Almost half a century has passed since Ray Tomlinson sent the first e‑mail in 1971. A technology for a few nerds has gradually become a mass phenomenon at the latest since the…
Corporate Rebels: Change Requires Disturbance
Aristotle once said, “A good man is not always a good citizen.” Accordingly, a good employee is not always an obedient employee. Organizational rebels cause disturbance and thus keep their…
The Aesthetics of Failure
In Japan, there is the art of Kintsugi. In this traditional repair method, broken ceramics are glued with a lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum.…
Corporate rebels: Disobedience to complacency and inertia
Corporate rebels cause irritation and thereby keep organizations alive. They act according to clear principles for the benefit of their organization as what and how it should be…
How to lead, challenge and coach corporate rebels
Change needs disturbance. Every organization needs people who question the status quo. As jesters or corporate rebels, they cause constructive irritation and thus prevent dangerous stagnation. After the…
My Working Out Loud Moment
Working Out Loud (WOL) is on everyone’s lips. Whether at Bosch, Daimler, ZF and last but not least at BMW, where I recently had the pleasure to meet John…
The underestimated power of networking
IIn many organizations there is now an enterprise social network. That’s simply because it’s what you do today, and because the younger employees in particular are well versed…
10 Principles for Corporate Rebels
The pressure for change is growing in the enterprises. Organizational ambidexterity is in high demand: exploiting the established while exploring the unknown. But how does the new come…
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