Posts filed in:Leadership

#standwithpeace

I abhor violence, and I hate war. When I grew up, my parents – who had been small kids in the final years of World War II – taught me never to point anything remotely weaponlike at any sentient being, not even a blade of grass at an ant, and not even in jest. The aftermath of the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia, the terrors of the Gulf Wars, and the everlooming threat of the Cold War spinning out of control made the reality of war a constant painful presence in my childhood and youth. Starting on the day when Irak first fired Scud missiles on Israel in early 1991, for a couple of weeks, I lived in stark naked fear of a new world war exploding in our faces. Until today, I cringe at pictures of soldiers, tanks, bombs, or blood. “Nie wieder Krieg”, as in Käthe Kollwitz’s placard from 1924 in this post’s header, is one of the very few rally cries I’ll follow anywhere, anytime.

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Posted by bucketrides

corona: die komfortzonenfalle

Am gestrigen Mittwoch haben die Bundeskanzlerin und die Ministerpräsident*innen der Bundesländer wieder einmal darüber beraten, wie mit der “Lage” in Deutschland in Zeiten der Pandemie umzugehen sei. “Wir brauchen noch einmal eine Kraftanstrengung”, wird die Bundeskanzlerin zitiert1. In der konkreten Ausgestaltung fühlt sich die “Kraftanstregung” dann allerdings eher matt an: Statt wie bisher zehn dürfen sich im öffentlichen Raum zukünftig nur noch fünf Personen aus zwei Haushalten treffen – dafür zählen Kinder aber nicht mit. Die Maskenpflicht gilt nicht nur in Geschäften, sondern auch davor, außerdem auch in Unternehmen – es sei denn, man sitzt am eigenen Arbeitsplatz. Gleichzeitig bleiben Schulen und Kitas grundsätzlich geöffnet – aber ab 200 Neuinfektionen pro 100.000 Einwohner soll jeweils regional über alternative Modelle nachgedacht werden. Und schließlich: Über Weihnachten gelten Ausnahmen von den Regeln, denn dann dürfen sich bis zu zehn Erwachsene (plus Kinder) um jeweils einen Weihnachtsbaum versammeln.

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Posted by bucketrides

Wollen wir die totale Followkratie?

Seit Ende der vergangenen Woche gibt es auf Instagram einen Account mit dem Handle 12062020olympia[1]. Innerhalb weniger Stunden zog der Account so viele Follower an, dass Instagram ihn für einen Bot hielt und vorübergehend deaktivierte[2]. Der Account gehört zu einer Crowdfunding-Kampagne auf Startnext, die Geld für “Die größte BürgerInnenversammlung Deutschlands im Olympiastadion Berlin mit bis zu 90.000 Menschen” einsammelt.

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Posted by bucketrides

What I Do When I Work (2/2)

Executives engage in conversations with me on topics high on their agenda because of the 10,000s of hours of consulting experience I bring to the table[1]. They value the fact that I have seen literally hundreds of businesses, worked with literally hundreds of managers, and observed literally hundreds of organizations in their specific ways of functioning – or dysfunctioing.

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Posted by bucketrides

What I Do When I Work (1/2)

Some time this week, it will have been 2,000 days since I started my own consulting practice. Even if I had only worked on two out of three of these days, and never more than 8 hours per day (both of which are probably underestimations), the total time I spent on doing what I do for work will by now have surpassed 10,000 hours. By common wisdom[1], these 10,000 hours equal the achievement of me really knowing what I do – “the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert – in anything”[2].

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Posted by bucketrides

Listening Closely To What Is (Not) Said

Friday, January 20th, 2017, will be remembered as the day on which Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. Just like his predecessors, he used the occasion to give an inauguration speech (the full text of which can be found in many places, for example here, provided by The Washington Post [retrieved Jan 21, 2017]). Over the coming days, weeks, months, and years, much will be talked and written about the contents of this speech and its consequences for life in America and beyond.

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Posted by bucketrides

The Stuff I Carry Around With Me

We all carry stuff around with us. Some of it is material, tangible, and more or less heavy, bulky, or cumbersome. Some of it is immaterial – which doesn’t necessarily make it any lighter. Most of the time, I write about the latter. This time, however, I’ll write about what’s actually in my bag when I take off for work[1].

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Posted by bucketrides

The birth of courage from a ruptured heart

A rupture is haunting Europe. Less than 36 hours ago, half of a country at the heart of the continent voted to leave the common institutional framework known as “European Union”[1]. Of course, everybody reacted (and is still reacting), from established media[2] to social networks[3], from financial markets[4] to cash machines in remote places[5], from politicians all over the world[6] to the proverbial woman (or man) on the street[7]. There are those who cheer and imagine a series of further -exits, prefixed by almost any imaginable letter in our European alphabets.

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Posted by bucketrides

#penelopepapers: Unveiling the biggest conspiracy of humanity

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Penelope. Ring from 5BCE. Louvre Museum. From here [retrieved May 12th, 2016]

“Men have always been cheated!” – such was the first comment that Beyoncé is rumoured to have posted in an (apparently immediately deleted) tweet[1] in reaction to the recent unveiling of what social media quickly dubbed the “Penelope Papers”: A collection of 11.5 million leaked documents authored by more than 214,488 women, some dating back to the pre-anthropocene[2].

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Posted by bucketrides

Monkey Business: Leadership advice from our ancestors

So now it’s the year of the monkey[1]. For some, even more specifically, it’ll very soon be the year of the male fire monkey[2]. Firstly, therefore, happy new year to those who feel that their year is starting now: May it be colourful, melodious, rose-scented, gentle, and infused with a fine taste of ginger and honey. Secondly, then, it seems high time to reflect on the leadership lessons our simian ancestors have been trying to teach us for thousands and thousands of years, while we were too busy to listen, totally absorbed in our own evolutionary journey[3].

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Posted by bucketrides

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