Dear treasure readers,
this week it’s going to be text intensive again. But I can promise that all texts will be written in an exciting way and above all that there will be great visualizations. But before I produce much additional text myself, I prefer to open the treasure quickly.
Nugget 1 is a kind of travelogue. Ines Timm, Johanna Röhr and Johanna Felde are digital communication students on a study trip to New York. There they wanted to find out what it looked like: the new working world. This resulted in various blog posts, three podcast episodes and numerous posts on social media. In the final article of this learning trip the three summarize their experiences to 9 theses. I would like to take up three of these, which are sometimes somewhat lost in the hype around New Work. Firstly, there is the issue of self-discipline. For many years, the business world has trained its employees down or at least not encouraged them. Thinking is done in management and individual contributors just execute. So it’s time we learn our own responsibility again, and that includes self-discipline. This brings me immediately to the second thesis, which often is neglected in the discussion: “The future of work does not begin at the workplace, but in school…”. Because actually it starts already in the school with the training of executing aides. Entrepreneurship and personal responsibility are on the curriculum of only a few schools. The third aspect is the lateral entry. We still talk far too little about this. When I look at job advertisements today, 99% first ask for a specific technical training and corresponding competences. I would like to see more courage from companies here and I am convinced that one could benefit extremely from new perspectives.
I would be happy, by the way, if the three continue their project and the dialogue! If that’s how you feel, feel free to give Ines and the two Johannas feedback.
The project Schichtwechsel.blog comes to an end: 9 theses on the future of work (8 min, text, German)
Are there Star Trek fans among you? If so, then the title of Nugget 2 should make you want more. I’m no Trekkie and I still liked the LinkedIn article by Benjamin Lampe. It is about communication in international teams. Benjamin remembered his friend’s tip and from then on Klingon was spoken to the team. I myself know the situation where team members are inhibited in team meetings because they don’t speak English as fluently as their colleagues. This phenomenon was particularly noticeable among my colleagues from China. If special idiomatic expressions or dialect are spoken by the native speakers, you are quickly “out”. It is good if you can agree on a “neutral” language. This certainly contributes to the success of Purple Space.
Can speaking Klingon make you a better captain? (4 min, text, English)
I had never heard of design sprints before Nugget 3. Of course you know sprints from Scrum. And design principles have been on everyone’s lips ever since the hype around design thinking. In his guest article on komfortzonen.de, Caspar Siebel describes what design sprints are all about, how to organize a design sprint and what it takes (e.g. team composition) to make the sprint work. His visualizations are awesome by the way and encourage even more to implement them. I would like to emphasize one aspect of Q&A in particular – team diversity. That’s what it was all about in Nugget #2, and I think it’s good to have decision-makers in a sprint. In a classic organization, this means that the division manager spends a full five days for participation. That alone is a good litmus test of how much the organisation is behind the project. We are also happy to exclude those who have concerns from such activities. On the one hand, they add up a good perspective. On the other hand, after the five days they are probably also bought into the project. Such a design sprint would perfectly fit my current challenge in the company. However, I am not sure whether I can sign the decision-makers up for five full days. But that would at least test the commitment to the project 😉
The ultimate FAQ for Design Sprint (17 min, text, German)
Have a nice weekend!