Growing in Hypergrowth

When you start your job as a business student, everyone talks about the magic two-year limit: "I'll do this for two years and then we'll see.”

When I joined Celonis, the last time I thought of this sentence was before I arrived at the office and then there was only "do". The term “hypergrowth” was a mixture of hype and growth for me at that time and since Sheryl Sandberg everybody knows that you should go where everything prospers if you want to grow. And that was my goal.

When I joined the company there were 250 employees and it wasn't the shirt-sleeved start-up atmosphere anymore but a cool Can-Do attitude. My job is to continue spinning the academic DNA of the company and connecting industry and academia with an Academic Alliance programme. There were two of us and we had lots of ideas and even less time. Anything was possible and every day I felt like Christopher Columbus on a voyage of discovery. For me it was to the USA, too, but also to Australia, Italy, Holland and many German universities. I have always been a generalist and with Celonis I learned everything.

Today, two years later, there is still a lot to do. The team is much bigger now and as a senior I am learning every day: giving, trusting, enabling. Some of our green meadows are now growing vigorously and blossoming, others we have just discovered.

For me these 2 years do mean above all that: Doing the right things, not always right from the beginning but developing so quickly that dynamics became a new passion.

When I think about all that has happened, 5 key insights remain:

1.     Team before tasks - but who is your team?

When I was looking for a job, I first made sure that I found the tasks exciting and that I couldn't get bored. In the meantime, this has changed: With the right team, even difficult problems can be solved and hard days can be overcome. Without a team, I lack inspiration. But: My team does not only consist of my department, but rather of a cross-functional network of different colleagues who enrich me with different views and working methods. And that's what makes for exciting projects and varied days.

2.     Oscillation between stage and message

My understanding as a perfectionist has always been: Develop a message and then find a stage. With Celonis I first got the stages. I gave 120 talks on process mining, future skills, education and related topics and spoke in front of very different people. Being on a stage has never scared me. But what I noticed: It's not about being in the front. I want people to take something with them, to learn, to understand. And so, with every stage and every reaction from the audience, I have created a message and content, shared my own insights, developed my style. And now, new stages and formats are being born and that feels great - even if it still has to be perfect.

3.     The self-conscious Why

The Golden Circle by Simon Sinek is a powerful tool. The core element for me has become the unconditional Why, which is not only valid for projects and teambuilding, but especially for my personal drive and decisions. If you know your own Why and always use it as a benchmark, you can do magical things: lead targeted projects to success, say a targeted no, strive for a targeted promotion, take on targeted leadership responsibility, targeted leaving work early, targeted making dreams come true.

4.     The silent power of empathy

In the hypergrowth environment, the pace is always pioneering and often you are loud, fast and strong. In the USA, a loud, fast and strong country, Process Mining is relatively unknown. Developing the market there requires a counterweight: listening, observing, developing solutions that convince the other party. And this concept can be applied to everything: building loyal partnerships through good conversations beyond business-as-usual, creating customer-centric products that really solve problems, ensuring true social inclusion in the team, and leading with trust and encouragement.

5.     Strengthen strengths

At Celonis we get the amazing opportunity to take the Gallup StrengthsFinder test and get to know and work with our talents. My top five talents are: Achiever, Input, Learner, Activator and Strategic. I feel very comfortable with the result: All projects that I particularly enjoyed contributed to it. And in the future these strengths will be my compass: for messages on stages, team building and scaling, balance and leadership.