Schlagwort: Management

Being a leader or manager is something that is heavily discussed in our current knowledge worker times. In more or less any consulting or coaching session of the past years this was a topic at one point of time. Many organizations think about changing their process and role models and establish more leadership than classic management. However why the heck do we need to do it at all?

People need leadership. Things need management. It is dangerous to get it the other way round.

Charles Handy

This blog post is a brief overview of the 4 steps allowing you to make your own thoughts about it. In case you have further questions may be it is a good idea to post a comment.

Agilität ist eines der Top Themen in den Unternehmen weltweit. Die großen Beratungshäuser beraten so ziemlich jeden und der Begriff: “Agilität” wird ganz oft in verschiedenen Szenarien verwendet und genutzt. Was dabei ganz häufig auf der Strecke bleibt ist der Verstand und der Sinn warum wir etwas machen. Erst vor kurzem hat die Unternehmensberatung Kienbaum eine Studie veröffentlicht, dass in Zukunft noch mehr IT Organisationen agil arbeiten wollen. In der iX wird darüber berichtet und ich frage mich ernsthaft, ob dies Werbung ist oder ein ernst gemeinter Bericht.


I’m sure you all know that the marketing costs for about anything we do in the world-wide web are increasing and extremely expensive. It is pretty common within all e-commerce companies to measure the success of marketing based on ASR (advertizing sale ration), CR (conversion rates), traffic, page impressions, ad impressions and many, many more KPIs. In fact looking on our company reporting every week I wonder why the customer happiness or the net promoter score are not more prominent compared to the these dedicated marketing figures.

You know it well. The car manufacture your family used to buy is the one you prefer. It is a learned principle of customer experience. It’s linked to the pros and cons your father and mother exchange while buying something valuable such as a car.

A car is really a special investment good for all of us. It’s that expensive that we can’t just buy it. You need to save money for buying it, lease it or discuss a credit arrangement with your bank. All these things are related to a contract or plan that lasts at least a couple of years – typcially 3.

Learning the hard way

I bought my first car, a FIAT Uno from the money I earned in my first job. Of course it was a used car and I actually didn’t cared to much about the brand or the customer experience I expected to have with this brand. It was actually the only car I could afford at that time.

Of course I had my customer experience. Not only with the manufacture and service stations. It actually didn’t matter if it was a brand service station or not – the service was crab. And I was very lucky to earn enough to reduce the time using the car to a minimum. When I sold it I was lucky to get some money back that I was able to invest in the next car leasing.

The Ford was nice – I selected it because of recommendations. The service station was much better than before however the car was cheap. It was ok for the time. I can go on through the various cars I leased our even bought afterwards. However I’m really surprised as non of the car manufacturer really supported me through my customer journey of the decision.

Now let’s see what this example of a customer journey has to do with modern, electric mobility solutions…

Wer kennt sie nicht die Situation. Mit dem Team wurde hart an einem Ziel gearbeitet, die gewünschten Features umgesetzt und alles getan den Zeitplan einzuhalten. Ja geschafft, die Arbeit wird präsentiert und die einhellige Meinung aller direkt Beteiligten ist, wir haben alles richtig gemacht.

Aller Beteiligten? Ja der Product Owner, verantwortlich für die Ziele des Teams hat seine Zustimmung bereits signalisiert, er ist auch zufrieden mit dem Ergebnis. Und dennoch, als das Team die Arbeitsergebnisse im Rahmen einer Review präsentiert ist die Meinung des verantwortlichen Managers vernichtend. „Alles falsch, erfüllt nicht seine Erwartungen!“ Es spielt dabei auch keine Rolle, ob die Meinung in der Review, nach der Review oder irgendwie später kund wird. Fakt ist das „Empowerment“ des PO ist hier zu Ende.

Aber was ist eigentlich passiert? Und ist es wirklich ein Problem des Managers?