Time for a personal reflection – What I learned in 2021
Last year was a very successful year for us at Zühlke. We felt the upswing in the market, won numerous projects and recruited many new talents. For me personally, it was a year marked with many positive changes and learnings.
A year ago, I summarised my learnings in my post and the things I wanted to drive forward in the future. So, it's a good time again for a personal self-reflection.
Power to the teams and becoming more agile
We have continuously moved towards an agile organisation with value streams along market sectors and teams with an entrepreneurial spirit and accountability. We have radically changed our budgeting process for innovation in the direction of lean and participatory budgeting and shifted responsibilities from the Executive Board to the teams. The teams are now in charge to distribute the overall innovation budget among them. The journey is certainly not finished and will go on for a while.
Looking back, this released a lot of positive energy and at the same time also showed that those changes take time - longer than I originally thought. An important learning for me was that incremental and continuous change for the organisation is the better way for us. We implemented changes with OKRs (Objective Key Results) as I presented in my post one year ago, learned and adapted it. However, this continuous and incremental change is not always easy for people, as it needs a constant effort. We will continue our journey and I am convinced that an agile business organisation with market-orientated value streams and practices is the way to go. I will report again on the further course and experiences.
Breaking out of my own comfort zone
Change can also be quite exhausting. I have caught myself falling back into old habits or sometimes trying to perpetuate the past. It is human. For me, a key learning was to recognise this and work on it. I believe it is important to have the courage to change old habits, to follow new paths and, above all, to question my own view. Especially for us as a company in a strong growth, this self-reflection and forward-looking attitude is essential. ?
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Stay client orientated in the new way of work
Remote work and home office have become part of our daily life and will stay for good. This has increased our productivity, propelled distributed working on a global scale and increased the quality of life for our people with more options.?
Last year, there was a lot of positive reporting about the benefits of the new way of work. I strongly believe in it, and at the same time I have become aware that it also has a potential downside: The informal exchange and networking with clients can be missing and I believe there is a risk that organisation might become too inward looking when working in a dominant remote setup for too long.
I have had very good experiences when inviting customers for “Voice of Customer” sessions for all employees (also in virtual calls) or when I schedule regular fixed days for customer meetings and activities. It also helps to ask: what added value does this bring to the customer, or how would a customer comment on our current discussion in a meeting??
Time for reflection and mental health
Full days with virtual calls can be exhausting for me. Sometimes I don't have the time to reflect and think beyond current business. I have made it a ritual to go out for some fresh air after a quick lunch in home office or later in the evening to re-charge and think about specific topics. This change of perspective helps me to make the right decisions and to see things from a different perspective with more distance. But it takes discipline.?
Looking forward
I am very convinced that this year will be very successful businesswise, with many opportunities arising. Last year was great, but certainly not always an easy learning experience. I believe that the lessons learned here will be central for me as person as well as for our leadership work. Now it's time for me to continue implementing it.
What are your personal key learnings? I look forward to hearing your views, experiences and thoughts.
Hi Nicolas, thanks for sharing your personal reflection. It particularly resonates with me on the points that people/teams work at their best if they get a high amount of autonomy and their company supports them in alignment between themselves, other teams and the customers. The pandemic has learned us a great deal on how to trust our people and how much they love to take over responsibilities and accountabilities. As you describe it with the tools of OKR or participatory budgeting - that would have sounded insane a couple of years ago but feels now as the most natural thing. But the pandemic has also forced us to rethink our ways to connect and align - it has become much harder between people, teams, teams and their customers. And I love the measures you are taking to handle this with the "voice of customer", meetings and activities. We have particularly started with regular coffee chats, playful/personal intros into meetings or entire dev exchanges where people join other teams for a couple of days. Not just to get an alignment going on in a business perspective but with a strong intend to connect to other humans. And there you got me the most in your reflection: mental health of our people and of ourselves. My ritual is a round of jogging in the morning (instead of commuting to work). But it takes much more discipline to look after physical and mental health - there we certainly have lots of work to do. I'm interested to hear how you and others handle it.
Senior Product Manager at Planet (Datatrans AG)
2 年Really love this: "It also helps to ask: ... how would a customer comment on our current discussion in a meeting?" and the best about this is that everybody can bring this questions into their own meetings. ??
Komplexdenker & Humanist bei Smart System Guild GmbH
2 年Dear Nicolas, my personal key learnings from 2021 are... 1. We have to learn to live with and to accept uncertainty 2. We successfully learned to use digital media very fast - nevertheless, a face to face communication is still the best way to build trust and a reliable relationship 3. The impact of a world wide pandemic is that the wealth of the richest people in the world increases tremendous while many average people lose their jobs, more children in many countries start working instead going to school and many other negative effects. My personal learning is that we as society need a change, otherwise the effects fall back on us or our children some time in the future. We do have the core capabilities (knowledge, technology, skills, ...) to change, we should start applying. It is our responsibility. I hope that does not sound too negative. Applying might lead to many new jobs, opportunities, ways to work and live. There is light. It's on us.
Driving e-mobility fast forward >>>
2 年Great and wise words, my friend. Thank you very much and stay healthy!
All important takeaways Nicolas! Thanks for sharing!