Category: Leadership

Moving on – Goodbye Automated Valet Parking

It’s four years ago that I decided to join the new Connected Parking team and with this step, join the Bosch company after a fabulous time with car2go and moovel. I expected and hoped for an exciting and challenging time in a field as innovative as hardly another one in the current mobility sector. The idea to realize a vision was tempting: Make safe driverless driving a reality by using outside sensors instead of vehicle sensors.

A true Internet of Things (IoT) application!

Looking back, I can say that all my expectations have been exceeded by far – in an absolutely positive way. Now I’m moving forward. Continue reading “Moving on – Goodbye Automated Valet Parking” →

Leute verbinden. Mit klaren Zielen.

Habe gerade eine spannende Idee in unserer Organisation gepflanzt. Während eines Workshops zum Aufstellen der Roadmap unserer weiteren Produktentwicklung sind wir in unser herkömmlichen Art vorgegangen: In der Gruppe gab es viele gute Produktideen und Wünsche. Daneben handfeste Features aber auch zahlreiche Einzelprobleme mit teils noch unklarer Lösung. Als Zwischenstand ergab dies eine Liste aus Produktfeatures in stark unterschiedlicher Reife und Granuläritat. In der Methode zeigte sich ein bekanntes Muster, das durchbrochen werden musste. Continue reading “Leute verbinden. Mit klaren Zielen.” →

12 schlechte Angewohnheiten und wie sie Deinen Führungsstil beeinflussen

Gerade einen schönen Eintrag auf “Smartblog on Leadership” gefunden: Internationale Junge Unternehmer wurden gefragt, welche Angewohnheit sie für sich gestrichen haben, um ihren Führungsstil zu verbessern. 12 Antworten wurden dort veröffentlicht. Einige sind die üblichen Verdächtigen. Andere Antworten sind nicht unter den geläufigen 1001 Tipps. Hier eine gekürzte Auswahl: Continue reading “12 schlechte Angewohnheiten und wie sie Deinen Führungsstil beeinflussen” →

ABC of Living Decisions

[Update] This post from June 13th, 2013 came to mind due to a trigger lately. So I want to bring it to your attention. I’ve been re-structuring and updating it for you.

I’m writing this post based on experiences I had within the last weeks. Achieve clarity within our organization with good decision making and carry out a change in a constructive and sustainable way.

I’ve noticed both good and bad examples for a base skill I’ve taken for granted: Living decisions.

Keep on reading for my thoughts on staying authentic and building trust in your decision-making skills!

Give guidance and clarity with good decisions.

Making decisions in a complex environment can be tough. Having to make them might be a high pressure. That shouldn’t keep you from making them. In turn, I find it even more important to bring guidance into an organization with precise decisions when the environment resembles a jungle for everyone else.

Continue reading “ABC of Living Decisions” →

Thanks to Lars for pointing me to this article. It’s a great insight on managing large teams over different locations efficiently. In his November 2012 article, Henrik Kniberg (also see my recent post from him introducing scrum) describes a team setup that combines scrum teams and keeps them interacting with each other.

It’s a challenge I’m currently facing as well setting up the new car2go and moovel development teams. I’ll definitely learn from that input for my further steps!

https://blog.crisp.se/2012/11/14/henrikkniberg/scaling-agile-at-spotify

Shoko Mugikura: Vertical? Horizontal? & Stefan Kiefer: In the red frame @ TYPO Berlin
Source: Eva-Lotta Lamm

I remember that my fable for visual note taking started somewhere in school. Just writing down what the teacher said or assembling text as home work was not enough. I needed to add some life to it: Historical topics were framed with country shapes, architecture lessons on gothic churches were brightened up with sketches of windows or architectural artifacts.

Somewhere on the way through university, all this went lost. Meeting notes became all text, technical, detailed, boring and were almost never revisited. I wrote things down to better memorize them for myself, but that was quite a poor way. Then came Evernote which I still enjoy for its simplicity and benefit of searching, tagging and having it on every device I use. But still text only. Here’s how to get better.

Continue reading “Render your ideas into facts – Moving minds with great note taking” →

Agile Product Ownership

Agile Product Ownership

With his 15 minute animated presentation, Henrik Kniberg describes the building blocks of agile product development really nicely.

It all sounds so simple. And actually, it is (while it actually isn’t). To my experience, one key fact for success to agile is achieving a high degree of transparency. No one wants to hear a “no” when asking for a feature. But constituting a “no” with a good reason, like an even better feature, will keep your stakeholders happy.

What do you find hard and how do you address these challenges?

Read Henrik Kniberg’s full article

Innovation must be a Leadership attitude

This post “Your Innovation Problem Is Really a Leadership Problem” by Scott Anthony points out several aspects that can help make (or keep) your organization innovative, focusing on the leadership team’s responsibilities.

In daily business, I see two things that seem to be in contradiction by nature: The quality you need for operational excellence vs. ‘fail-fast-attitude’ you need to push future innovation. My favorite quote: “[…] leaders have to figure out how to manage two distinct operating systems: one that minimizes mistakes and maximizes productivity in today’s business versus one that encourages experimentation and maximizes learning in tomorrow’s business. It isn’t either/or. It is both/and. […]”

Insist on quality and encourage experimentation – while this might be conflicting goals, you definitely need to bring them together!

Full story at HBR

Three Things to Boost your Teams

Do you feel people in your teams start loosing the passion they once had for their work? There are simple signs you see: Decreasing creativity, solutions don’t come easily, team discussions for tend to get frustrating where they once were constructive, effort estimations let you shake your head because the team is trying to back-up.

Colleagues around you will easily see many reasons after profound analytics and come up with various good suggestions. They might be right, consider them. But try something simple first. Ask yourself, whether you as a leader have given your team the right direction. Check whether you have given the three things:

Continue reading “Three Things to Boost your Teams” →

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