Blog articles about Transformation Design

The importance of communication for business development

As an entrepreneur, it is your job to move your company forward. You want your company to be successful and prosperous and to develop with high turnover and even more EBIT. You are certainly aware that digitalization offers you opportunities, but also risks, and that not everything has been exhausted yet. So now you’re taking care of the digital change and designing a well thought-out plan for change management. You think of everything. If A does this and B does that, C will happen. Everything is planned through in a structured manner, IT is briefed, and now finally: the roll-out.

OKR as a contribution to more agility in the VUCA world

My own experience with OKR – When we started with OKR, I was skeptical. Another new wave? What a lot of effort! My attitude: I know what I have to do! In the past, I sometimes caught myself losing focus. What was still an A priority in the course of permanent change and what had become even more important in the meantime? Because it wasn’t clear, I sometimes put off important tasks, blanked them out until they caught up with me.

The Bells and whistles of team development

In teams, after reorganizations or other major changes, the sense of “we” is often lost, and communication suffers. In “corona times” and increasingly virtual collaboration with teams distributed across different locations or home offices, collaboration has not become easier either. Some employees have never even seen each other in “real life.” Managers are now required to work with their teams. Often, they consider take only the “hard facts”. Team actions that are fun are often not taken seriously.
But how can you trust someone you only know from work as a colleague? Someone with whom you have never laughed? How to value someone fully if their strengths are not visible? How to foster their potential in the best possible way?

What can a good boss do? (EN)

There are many possibilities for developing the personal strengths of individuals. If you want to make a direct and personal contribution as a manager, coaching and mentoring are very suitable and have a proven track record in many organizations and situations. When can you act as a coach? As a coach, you ask many questions and widen perspectives. The coachee (or client) is therefore the person who is enabled by the coaching process to develop their own solutions to their own questions.

Is my company sick?

How do you recognize a sick person? Pale skin, dull eyes. The sick person is preoccupied only with himself/herself. Loud wailing or silence. The strength is fading. Everything seems to be fighting against each other from within or has resigned. Perception of symptoms, pain, but often unclear cause. There is little communication and if there is, talking about the pain. The entire body is vulnerable and powerless.

An ill person is not very attractive to others. People intuitively keep their distance so as not to become infected, not to have to endure the wailing and the sad sight.

I am not Elon Musk

I am not Elon Musk. Or more accurately, we are not Elon Musk. That statement is harsh, seeing that a big vision is often only made possible by a big ego. Elon hardly needs real results for that either. He doesn’t need to be a good person or a good leader. He merely needs great ideas that can be combined with strong emotions and linked to a charismatic person, with seemingly unswerving belief in himself and his vision. But I am not Elon Musk. We don’t make promising technologies ourselves. We use them.

Feedback and Feedforward – Looking to a positive future

Looking to a positive future instead of dwelling on mistakes
Feedback is a great way to give people an evaluation on perceived behavior. If the “feedback rules” are followed by both sides, it is a wonderful tool that can constructively defuse conflicts and enable development.

The feedback rules include a factual description of the perception, the effect of the behavior on me as the feedback giver, and impulses for improving the behavior from the feedback giver to the feedback receiver. An appreciative attitude on the part of the person giving the feedback is a basic prerequisite. Positive aspects in the feedback are crucial so that it can be accepted in its entirety. Otherwise, the reptilian brain (in English much more charming: “Crocodile Brain” or “Croc Brain” for short) immediately goes on the attack or defense.

Female experts in leadership, please!

When I talk to CEOs, they are often looking for qualified women for supervisory board positions or for management. It’s not just a matter of meeting political targets. It is simply necessary to get more women into management positions. Diversity is one of the key factors in the “VUCA world”, where volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are increasing constantly. Companies in a complex environment, where rapid adaptations and innovations are necessary, will hardly survive if their leadership is purely white and male. This realization should slowly have reached all levels of companies with future aspirations.

Why, nevertheless, do (too) few women become C-Suite executives?

Transformation or Change

Der kleine Unterschied, zwischen Changemanagement und agiler Transformation. Change und Transformation sind Synonyme? Weit gefehlt.

Durch Changemanagement wird die Raupe kein Schmetterling. Es besteht eine Notwendigkeit zur Veränderung, also bekommt die Raupe vielleicht Haare. Der nächste Change steht an und vielleicht bekommt die Raupe Streifen in Signalfarbe, um sich vor Fressfeinden zu schützen. Ein Change führt also von der Ausgangssituation A zu Punkt B, weitestgehend planbar.

Eine Transformation ist mehr. Die Raupe stirbt, um als Schmetterling aufzuerstehen. Ein Schmetterling wird nie wieder eine Raupe sein. Der Schmetterling ist ein ganzheitlich neues Wesen. Die Transformation ist vollkommen.

Changemanagement wird geplant und im Unternehmen verkündet und das manchmal rein auf die betriebswirtschaftlichen Ziele begrenzt, die mit dem Change verfolgt werden. Und dann ändert sich: nichts. Jedenfalls nicht bei den Mitarbeitenden. Sie arbeiten jetzt vielleicht anders, mehr oder weniger, aber der Mindset bliebt erhalten.