My personal recap 2023

Another year has passed and this gives me an opportunity to reflect, lean back and check what both on a professional and personal level I can take away from the passed year.

On a professional side I have to admit it was for sure one of the most challenging years that I encountered in my 20+ years as IT professional. I really started to feel the squeeze to be in middle management, where on one side you need to be the lighthouse and guiding light for your employees while on the other side the company is throwing one crushing wave after the other at you and your teams.

This year especially it seemed that corporate life is becoming across Europe more and more "Americanised" - meaning short-term. financial success is outweighing any sustainable organisational developments. A situation that is especially for middle management a lose - lose situation, as on the one hand you want to and need to provide the best environment for your teams, while on the other hand the "powers to be" decide exactly in the opposite direction as most of the time it conflicts with short-term financial targets.

The squeeze of middle management

As you might know from my activities around LinkedIn I'm really keen on modern leadership styles, challenging the way how we run and think about organisations. I see that this movement of "new work" and "new leadership" which got quite a momentum during the pandemic, has now moved with quite some force into the opposite direction as the economic climate is growing more grim and in times of uncertainty people tend to fall back to behavior and patterns they know from the past.

In this regard comes the sentiment of the "Fearless Organization", as described some time ago in a nice book by Amy Edmondson - so removing fear as the primal trigger for actions in humankind.

What I see currently is that many organisations are still driven by fear, fear of economic downturn, fear of losing control of employees or just plain out fear of losing power. This clashes quite a lot with the concepts of positive leadership, servant leadership and purpose driven work. And coming back to the previous point about middle management, studies not only from this year but also before show that less and less young people want to work as managers (e.g. a German study from 2021 showed only 14% of the 18 to 25 year old actually can see themselves working as managers at some point).

The escape from management

From my last 8 years as manager I can only understand this sentiment, as organisations still do not embrace the change it takes to make management (especially middle management) part of a purposeful and sustainable work environment as purpose is often undermined by personal power games, political charades and the drive for short time financial success regardless the long term effects.

Similar as to politics, which instead of being a job to serve and do good for society has become a playground for narcissistic personalities and thus driven away any decent candidates from those jobs, a similar faith seems to be on the horizon for management positions.

Thankfully not all is lost yet. There are still a lot of people around that want to drive change, that still go to work everyday to find purpose and not only money and this continues to give me hope, that at some point momentum will be enough to turn at least some organizations into environments where humans can build amazing things together not just to earn money, but in order to improve, to innovate and to learn.

Keep the momentum

I've gotten this year one of the best appreciations in my career, as a person said to me "Please stay as you are and follow your way, as people need someone to look up to". I cannot be more thankful to receive such a nice feedback, as well as many others who thanked me for helping them to learn and grow. I still believe that if you receive this kind of feedback, this is what management should be all about: helping others to become their best, and not focusing on arbitrary numbers and results that matter most of the time anyway only to those already in power.

What matters is the connections we make, the impact we have on those we work with you and how we are remembered. Nobody will remember how high your profit margin was in 2023, but people will remember how you treated them, how you helped (or not helped) them and the interactions you had. There is also a great video by Simon Sinek about this topic, around his book of the infinite game.

What will remain of this year?

Despite the challenges and frustrations I felt this year in management, there were still many things that not only kept my going but made me proud. Most of those achievements are not mine, but those of my teams. I was just lucky to pave the way and watch them accomplish what they can do best.

1. Just within a few months we managed a forced 100% staff exchange within one product group, forged a new powerful team and continued to deliver with an astonishing operational excellence of 100% availability throughout the year of our products
2. Telling our incredible multi-cloud and CI/CD story at various talks and conferences lead to really great new connections and know how exchanges that proved to become a vital part of our engineering culture
3. With minimum staff we managed a complete technical make over of one of our products without interference of the "normal" development - containerized it, exchanged all core framework etc. - which was an incredible achievement by the team
4. I personally learned a lot about resilience, trying to shield my teams from the inconsistencies, pressures and craziness all around them while keeping myself balanced and optimistic in my daily work
5. Last but not least having spent in average 32 hours per week in 55 Teams calls (average/week) I started to appreciate well structured and prepared meetings. And that from time to time it is actually not a bad idea to be in the office, just to escape those back-to-back endless video sessions.

Done and dusted - new year ahead

With this one in the books, it's time to take not only a well deserved break but also look ahead into the next year. I have no doubt that it will be again an interesting and challenging one with many more opportunities to learn and grow. And just as a final spoiler alert: a change is right around the corner....

I wish you all a pleasant holiday season, use it to recharge and take a mental break from all the craziness in the world....