Magic of Culture We are born in the reality of our family. Whatever our family looks like, it does form our worldview, our perspective, and our values. Our families are part of the society and the time, we are in. Whether we are refugees, emperors, soldiers, or scientists, baker or cooks, just to name a…
Magic of Freedom We all use the word freedom frequently. Freedom to operate. Freedom to talk. Freedom to travel. Freedom to roam. Freedom……is a wildly used word. However, everybody does have – outside of a technical expression which is somehow defined – a different opinion what freedom is and what it means. For all of…
Magic of Cash We live in different societies, and in different societies cash has a different relevance. I am not talking about having some cash in a wallet in the event a credit card may no longer work, but more about hunting for cash in our accounts or not. We know from psychologists that typically…
Magic of Words We all use our language. Our language and our word are tools to communicate, and to make things happen. We explain, we discuss, and we understand that every word, every sentence is subject of an interpretation. When we listen to words, the tome will travel together with the sentences, and the tone…
Magic of Self-understanding When we look back in history, we will easily understand that different countries went through different historical events contributing to our self-understanding. In some countries, people understand themselves being part of something bigger, a population, a nation, something that is more relevant than the individual. In other countries and societies, people understand…
Magic of Tasks We all get tasks to do in our life. Some come with our work, some with our private life. Some are designed by us, others get designed by the situation we are in, by other people. Some tasks get designed by the epoch we live in while others may just come by…
Magic of Children We have four children. Having children does mean that probability is limited to ever get rich in cash. We are rich in emotion, rich in having the next generation at our home, and sitting on the table. Rich in seeing the different perspectives, and rich in never being bored. We know why…
The Magic of Big Numbers When I listen to politicians I sometimes wonder: Millions, billions, trillions – numbers seem to be only words, and currencies fluctuate as well easily. The taxpayer in me wonders if there is no longer any connection to reality.When I was still in R&D and as parttime controller part of budget…
Sales Roles – Hunter, Farmer – and Shepherd There are numerous trainings about salespeople, their mentality, and what type of sales a certain business requires.Hunters are often characterized to be the always hungry, looking for new prey. They want to develop new customers, are agile, always active, using all channels and keen to generate more…
The Innovation Dilemma If you look at the organizational charts of some companies, you can see a traditional attitude: R&D is responsible for new things, including innovation. The consequence? Some people develop new products in the dark, even if there are stage-gate processes, pipelines and all that is modern – the day R&D delivers it…
The Change Dilemma Change Managers are often in an interesting position – hired to bring change to an organization, but the organization may not be ready: If the organization is close to bankruptcy, there is a sense or urgency cross all levels. As long as the organization is profitable, the will to change is quite…
The Employee Dilemma Employees join a company. When you enter the first company or organization after your training, you are somehow in honeymoon. The stories on the internet are great, it is the best place to work on our planet, and whatever triggers you emotion is triggered. You expect what you have been told comes…
The Middle Management Dilemma Managers in the middle of hierarchy often have the most complex position: They must fulfill their managers tasks, get instructions, often not very specific, called freedom to operate, and often as well in contradiction to other tasks, and other colleague´s instructions and targets. In addition, the have to manage and motivate…
The CTO-CIO Dilemma The position of a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is powerful. CTOs are the guardians of technologies, often heading the R&D activities of a company. Chief Innovation Officers (CIOs) should be the drivers of innovation. Now, what´s wrong with combining CTO and CIO into the same role? Even the internet suggests such combination…
The CFO Dilemma The position of a CFO is powerful. CFOs are the owners of budgeting processes and follow up on deviations. From a CFO´s perspective, deviations are unpleasant, and the ideal business year will be the one when budgets get overfulfilled. In quite some organizations, budgeting time is sandbagging time. People try to build…
The CEO Dilemma Some people believe, being the CEO of an organization brings unlimited resources and power to an individuum. In most case they are wrong. A CEO is not only bound to the limits of the organization but to the different fields of interests by others, and to the times he is in: In…
The PE Dilemma Private Equity is an overall interesting business model. However, the overall success rate is not very encouraging: 70% of investments don´t deliver the anticipated commercial success. Close to 20% of the investments change money, and only 10% of the investments (over)-deliver the anticipated financial results. Is it the next big theorem backed…
Resilient People (Part 8) – Generations We may be proud how the human population developed in the last two millenniums to the level we have today. But did we really develop as rapid as we believe? Assume we need only in average 20 years from one generation to the next. In other words, we go…
Resilient People (Part 7) – Walking on a foggy road When we plan our business, we tend to plan the next fife years, eventually even the next decade. Such exercise is never easy, and consequences may be deducted, too: Career, bonus, next assignments, our welfare… …all may depend on how well we plan. Sandbagging inclusive.…
Resilient People (Part 6) – Out of Control Not all of us are believers. Those who are longing for understanding may have more doubts than others. All may agree there not just one single truth and if it may be, it´s not visible for all. Over centuries, people tried to understand this world. Till today…
Resilient People (Part 5) – Noise Noise can be disturbing. That´s why in audio engineering, electronics, physics, and many other fields, noise got defined, associated with colors, power, a noise spectrum of a noise signal which is a signal produced by a stochastic process. Different colors of noise have significantly different properties. For example, audio…
Resilient People (Part 4) – Strategy and execution You may remember from one of my previous posts – I am a strong believer in strategies and strategy execution. A strategy provides direction, and direction is what leaders must provide. The organization does expect leadership which includes guidance. However, we all know the moment we finalize…
Conflicts (Part 7) – and now? In the last weeks for most of you, I could just refresh the memories of trainings passed long time ago. When we look to the actual situation on this planet, we see in how many conflicts we are involved. Chaos theory taught us that even a little event can…
Conflicts (Part 6) – Levels In most games we want to reach the highest level. In conflicts it is better not to escalate. Every dispute, discussion or argument has the potential to escalate. An escalation can occur if just one party involved no longer seeks a shared solution or if at least one party leaves…
Conflicts (Part 5) – Characters Everyone has its own way of arguing. Depending on the conflict we may even change our favorite behavior and adjust to the situation. Humans are quite complex beings, and our favorite action and reaction patterns change not only over time. However, there are in general five characters we may find…
Conflicts (Part 4) – 10 rules We may decide not to solve a conflict – and such conflicts will last for generations. This planet offers more than enough examples where and how revolution interrupted evolution. We may see many examples where conflicts got suppressed, till they erupted again. If all parties are interested to sole…
Conflicts (Part 3) – Modes of Conflict There are various perspectives to justify a conflict. The following five perspectives may help to categorize them. As a leader it´s helpful to understand the logic of an argument and to see the different logics opponents may follow. Things: “The soup is too salty. Please bring me a…
Conflicts (Part 2) – Definitions Why are definitions relevant? They support our thinking and imagination. They provide context. They put into perspective.And they may even let us have a shared and common understanding.Now – what exactly is… …an argument? An argument is an open disagreement between two or more individuals or parties or groups presenting…
Conflicts (Part 1) – Why it is relevant to think about In December 2023, I wrote a post about arguments: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/arguments-dr-lukas-von-hippel-1dure/. This post caused quite some reactions, the majority outside of LinkedIn. There is obviously a need to discuss, debate and deal with arguments, disputes, conflicts… In a mini-series I want to show some aspects…
5P Method (Part 6) – Profit We call it 5 P method and have 6 parts – how normal are we 😊? Well – how normal we are is simple answered – not really. If we would be normal, we would behave as the majority. In a previous post, we mentioned the bells curve and…
5P Method (Part 5) – Partners Human being are the only species on earth being able to cooperate with individuals they never met and never will meet: During the stone age was a trade of workpieces for fire stone knifes over 4500 km distance – those who made the workpieces never met the customers and…
5P Method (Part 4) Products Most organizations I worked for understood their product being a chemical or biotechnological derived entity. Travelling with a CAS number, a specification to decide about certain physical or chemical aspects. A product often is more with consequences for the whole organization. A contract is a promise. The supplier agrees to…
5P Method (Part 3) – Processes We are all used to work in processes. Organizations learned to organize their work following certain quality regimes like ISO 9001ff, ICH Qx, HACCP, ISO 14000ff, ISO 50000ff just to name a few. Different quality regimes have a different understanding about what we can expect from our colleagues in…
5P Method (Part 2) – People When you look cross organizations and industries – we all claim people are the foundation of our business. We are proud to have the best people in industry and we are all glad and thankful to have them – till the moment something happens, and we have to change:…
5P Method (Part 1) – Analysis Trained to be the managers we are, we are strong believers in analyses – and we are right: A good analysis is telling about weaknesses both in terms of business and organization. Who will do the analyses may not matter: The big consulting companies will do a great jog,…
Training by Moviestar (Part 5) At the end of this year I want to make you aware of another movie that was for me telling in many ways: How do you deal with time? If you watch a movie, do you need immediate action? Do you enjoy different cultures? What was and is one of…
Business Punk (Part 6) | New Business Models (Part 1) | Let´s Spread Light, Hope, Change and Innovation At the end of 2023, different to “normal”, “traditional” Seasons Greetings, I want to share some thoughts, and share with you one activity which failed: It happened to me more than a decade ago, when we were…
Arguments “I don´t want us to argue.” – most likely we´ve all said or heard that sentence before. However, arguments have always been an integral part of human communication. We experience them in our daily lives, in the media, as a commentary in political debate and social issues. In our social and private life, in…
Business Punk (Part 5) – KPIs and Bonus When I joined industry, the payment system was quite different from today: We agreed on an annual compensation, done. After some years the system changed, and salary became more and more split into fixed and variable components. The logic: Support entrepreneurial behavior. Train a workforce that is…
Business Punk (Part 4) – Tact or Truth? In an intercultural context, Germans are not ranked high: They tend to be impolite, show no sense of humor, may be seen harsh, and they are certainly not the most diplomatic people of this planet (as we may see with our actual foreign minister). Diplomacy is a…
Resilient People (Part 3) – Overoptimized Life We all know how buy our days can be. We tend to optimize. Us. Our life. Our work. Our teams. Our organization……and we understand it is not healthy. The Swiss psychiatrist Daniel Hell, professor emeritus specialized on depression, recently gave an interview published by NZZ. For me the…
Resilient People (Part 2) – Flow Our life is like this: Noone ever asked whether we would like to be born. You get thrown in this life like a fish in the cold water of a river. Noone ever asked if you would like to swim or not. Whatever will happen – you will not…
Who am I – Manager or Men-ager? Most of us claim to be good managers – or we would no longer be in our position. A great moment to reflect this self-assessment, maybe backed on feedback. When is a manager a manager and when is a manager great? To manage an organization provides direction and…
Our world is hungry for innovation. However, innovation is not the best-defined word in our portfolio of terms.
Who´s perfect? Our days seem to have no time for normal: We run, we “fight”, we are agile, we are fit, we excel, we compete who is the – best, nicest, most aggressive, most successful…
…one superlative is following the next…
Are Old People Relevant? We live in interesting times. We claim we do not want to discriminate, but we discriminate every day. “Discriminare” (latin) translates to “differenciate, separate, split”. It is a neutral word indicating an activity but no emotion. Is discrimination ugly and bad? Or is it just normal? I am a male, white,…
We live in interesting times. We believe our times are more hectic than ever, and the result is stress. Stressed people may tend to react harsh, and such reactions may contribute to a spiral of emotion. This may be why one of the buzzwords today is resilience.
We are all individuals. We have our history. We learned during our career what works for us and what is not part of our personality. We have seen people who have been promoted far beyond their potential and skills, and we met those who could do more.
We believe to deal well with different opinions and styles – until we get confronted.
We are used to work in a certain environment. Our habits, our style, our preferences are good – because it’s ours.
When I was young, punk became a new trend. Most of my generation did not like the aggressive way, punk presented itself and punkers outfit was supposed to be a provocation.
What do we see? What can we hear? What do we feel? What can we taste? We have our senses and trust them – how reliable is it?
The plot is well arranged: A successful and renowned international conductor failed to reach his life aspiration being far too ambitious. Just in few minutes we learn about bad management, fame, and its potential consequences. After suffering a heart attack, he is ordered to retire, moving to the village of his not so happy childhood.
The War of the Roses from 1989 is an American black comedy film based upon the novel with same name. The film follows a wealthy couple with a seemingly perfect marriage. When their marriage begins to fall apart, material possessions become the center of an outrageous and bitter divorce battle.
I like movies. They tell stories and beside the storyline quite something about the time they have been produced. Do you remember the movies when nearly everybody smoked? Movies tell about the use of time – long scenes versus short cuts – how do we deal with time?
Companies are looking for purpose – or, in other words, “what is our right to exist”? What are the top questions for mankind we want to address?
Soon in my carreer I became attracted by reports. McKinsey and Company published around 1999 an article about the relevance of strategy.
