Agility and Alignment: Strategy as an Empty Sphere of Action
When it comes to agility, most people think of Kanban or Scrum at the team level. And then of course the many scaling frameworks come to mind like…
The Blog
Gradual fabrication of thoughts while writing.
The Dead End of the Agile Transformation
Copying Spotify or simply implementing any other blueprint of an agile organization is a fundamental mistake. Not because the models themselves were poor, but because implementing a model of an…
Three Pillars of Sustainable Change: Empathy, Trust and Patience
Change and change management was yesterday. Today we are doing transformations. A digital transformation for business models, because data is the new oil. An agile transformation for the organization…
Leadership Is About Asking Questions Instead of Giving Answers
Leadership is about making others successful. This is the leadership philosophy of Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google. The founder of the drugstore chain dm, Götz W. Werner, gets…
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…
Stop Starting, Start Finishing!
We really don’t lack opportunities and choices. There are always more ideas than can actually be implemented. This is true at the level of the individual as well…
How Jeff Bezos Banned PowerPoint and What to Learn from It
This is now the eighth year I’m blogging. I like writing. Writing helps me to get to the point. And by this I mean, really to the point and not…
Change Never Comes for Free
How do people cope with change? Family therapist Virginia Satir has provided an interesting model that can also be applied to organizational changes. A stable status quo is challenged…
The Benefits of Feature Teams
Agile methods and especially Scrum look very simple in a small product with a single team. As soon as several teams work on one product, the work has to be…
The Art of Ambidexterity
We are experiencing a world in which it is “normal that many things are changing and are changing more quickly than ever”, as Karl-Heinz Geißler so aptly put it.…
Leadership as an Encounter of Adults on Par with Each Other
Leadership is a matter of stance. Unfortunately, leadership is still defined in terms of power and subordination. The relationship between leaders and those being led is usually asymmetrical: the…
Network and Hierarchy: The Dual Operating System of Sustainable Organizations
As a manager today, it is necessary to have more abilities than just to climb the career ladder as far as possible. The hierarchy is without question an appropriate…
Leading with Purpose and Trust
The very essence of leadership is to provide orientation. That’s why leadership is crucial in agile organizations. Agility requires orientation to be effective. Without this orientation, agility becomes…
Agility Between Freedom and Order
Work in large industrial corporations is defined by processes, roles and standards — centrally planned, elaborated, documented, rolled out, trained and regularly checked for compliance. In return, there are ISO…
Diversity and Dissent over Conformity and Consenus
This is the second thesis of the Manifesto for Human(e) Leadership. In this second part of the explanations to the Manifesto, the concept of diversity is quite central…
Unleashing Human Potential over Employing Human Resources
Whoever sees organizations as machines and treats humans like cogwheels in them must not complain that people only work to the rule. Under these circumstances, more than working…
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…
Manifesto for Human(e) Leadership
At a time when it is “normal that many things are changing and are changing more quickly than ever” (Karl-Heinz Geißler), the role of leadership must at least be…
Agility, Empirical Process, and Falsification
Agility only makes sense in the light of uncertainty. If you know exactly what the customer wants or what the market needs, you don’t have to be agile…
Agile? Nice and orderly, please!
From Lenin comes the statement, which unfortunately cannot be denied entirely: “Revolution in Germany? It’s never going to happen. If those Germans want to storm a station, they’ll still…
Employee Advocacy: Word of Mouth in the Digital Age
Many organizations struggle to deal in a positive way with social media. Internally, a lot of the potential of networking in an enterprise social network is still untapped and externally,…
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.…
Agile without a Plan?
Planning replaces coincidence with failure. This bon mot is attributed to Albert Einstein. It’s not the first time I’ve used it in this blog. Already the second article…
Lead like a Gardener
The military is often cited as an example and blueprint for hierarchical organizations. With good reason, because in the course of industrialization, many companies were indeed inspired by…
Growth Mindset: the Key to a Learn-it-all Culture
Expertism rules. Perfection is appreciated. First time right. Mistakes must be hidden, we fail secretly. Sascha Lobo once called this a typical German fixation for gap dimensions. This was…
Form without Function — Acting without Effect
You have to be very strong now: A few user stories and daily standup meetings won’t make you agile. All right, now it’s out. There’s no point in cloning…
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…
Only those who can lead themselves can lead others
Management deals with the inanimate. It deals with numbers, processes and structures — leadership with the living, with people in their diversity and uniqueness. It is often neglected that leadership…
From tayloristic immaturity to agile self-organization
In our predominantly tayloristic working world, there is always a strict separation between thinking and acting. The management defines goals, organization and processes and the simple employees are working…
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…
Resolutions 2018: More mindfulness, leisure and focus
There is no doubt that the year 2017 was a challenging one. Although my new motto “Rebel without a pause” was only meant as an allusion to the James Dean…
Your agile transformation needs no heroes
Dear decision-makers, who wish to make your organizations more agile, do not long for heroes and saviors for your agile transformation. And please stop copying blueprints and using…
Leadership is about making others successful
There are more than enough leadership philosophies. Some of them are clear and understandable, others are rather a loose series of common catchwords. Since leadership has to do with…
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