For a long time, one of the most discussed personnel development topics was the work-life balance, the establishment of a balance between work and private life. What exactly this strict separation of the two sides looks like is at the discretion of the individual and depends on age, marital status and basic views on life. But this model has failed. More and more workers check their e-mails in their spare time, use their business mobile phone on holiday and take work home with them, as they still had a (private) appointment at noon. The successor model is Work-Life-Blending.

The decisive factor for digital change is a cultural change, i.e. the anchoring of digital leadership in corporate culture. For the Executive Board and the company management, this means giving top-down impulses but also the freedom to deal with the new instruments and IT structures. The bottom-up experience then triggers a cultural change. A prerequisite is always a common understanding of the new management structures and processes, which must be clearly formulated beforehand, as well as talent management adapted to the digital change.

More and more employers and employees attach importance to mobility and flexibility. The increasing merging of work and leisure time is made possible by new working time models and digital technologies, which make it possible to work from anywhere at any time. More and more employees see their work no longer as a mere source of money but as an integral part of their lives. Anyone who has fun and enjoyment at work also experiences self-realization here. Employees are therefore increasingly willing to work in their free time if they in return get the go from their employer to do private things during their working hours.

• No more closing time, due to missing, fixed working hours
• Danger of exploiting oneself
• Self-determination and self-organization can be a burden
• No possibility of mental detachment from work
• Risk of neglecting private relationships and looking only for “friends” in the workplace.
• The job becomes the most important life content – a notice represents the end

• Higher motivation due to self-determination
• No time off from working hours, but use them effectively in productivity phases
• Flexible and free work
• No holiday taking for private appointments etc.
• Good balance between family and career
• Quality instead of quantity

“No, Grandma, I’m sure you didn’t turn off the Internet.” This sentence was repeatedly used as a joke and shows us one thing: digitalization is new and different. There are people who have to get used to this change. The same applies to managers: They have to learn how to use digital media properly in order to delegate tasks to employees.

Leadership in the digital world

Digitization offers many tools for distributing information and documenting project progress. However, these should not be misused one-sidedly as control instruments or tempt to constantly distribute messages thoughtlessly.

Rather, the digital leader should use the distance to enable freedom and scope. If you don’t keep a cool head as a manager here, you not only deprive your employees of growth opportunities, you also massively disrupt their work.

Digital media have changed the way we deal with information. In the past, messages were distributed with the help of printed paper such as newspapers or leaflets. This took time and the scattering radius was limited. Today, the Internet offers opportunities within seconds to make information available to the world.

Using Digital Media effectively and carefully

More and more companies are taking advantage of these opportunities. This often happens in communication processes between managers and employees.

Nevertheless, many companies are not yet aware of what is necessary to use digital media effectively. You can’t just make them available to employees. They have to be integrated into the corporate culture as an alternative way of communication. This includes not only excessive but also careful handling of digital media.

Read in the next newsletter how the careful handling of digital media succeeds or read here the complete article on the topic on our website.

New digital technologies, infrastructures, and applications do not stop at the principles of leadership. No, leadership is the prerequisite for a successful digital transformation of a company.

The decisive factor for digital change is a cultural change, i.e. the anchoring of digital leadership in corporate culture. For the Executive Board and the company management, this means giving top-down impulses but also the freedom to deal with the new instruments and IT structures. The bottom-up experience then triggers a cultural change. A prerequisite is always a common understanding of the new management structures and processes, which must be clearly formulated beforehand, as well as talent management adapted to the digital change.

In principle, digital leadership is a further development of the participative leadership style. However, employees are not only involved in decision-making processes, but they are also co-decision-makers. Due to the increasing lack of hierarchies, decision-making authority is process- and customer-oriented. For managers, this means creating maximum transparency of information, which is driven by the use of social media. In other words, managers must learn or try out a completely new form of management communication. Basically, a trend towards try-and-error can be observed in digital transformation, i.e. mistakes are allowed, almost provoked. The manager is then responsible for helping the person concerned to learn from it. A further task is to further promote the networking of competencies within the company, i.e. increased cross-functional cooperation between managers and employees. In addition, there are the new digital methods and instruments – be it in performance assessment, communication or project management – which managers have to learn and actively use in their role model function. Increasingly disruptive innovations represent a great challenge for leaders because it is important to keep a cool head even in uncertain times.

Digital leaders lead participatively, drive innovation, actively use new methods and media, thereby transforming the company digitally. The goal is to make the company faster, more agile and more flexible by using the influence of digitalization on the networking of competencies and thus leadership. But most companies still have a long way to go before this leadership style is established.  Because one thing needs to be understood: Digital transformation is not only a change in IT structures but above all a cultural change.

Everyone wants to be able to react quickly and flexibly to market changes or customer wishes and at the same time make sense or contribute to added value – but only a few are able to create an agile organization.  A principle of agile organizations is:

As the word “agile” already says, it is a matter of loosening, reconnecting or even completely dissolving a stuck structure. The main characteristics of agile organizations are their strong self-organization and simultaneous lack of hierarchy.

You and your team are feisty, articulate and live true to the motto: “Impossible, doesn’t exist!”? Congratulations, you have just qualified as an innovation manager! Are you shaking your head? Then you should urgently adapt a few adjusting screws to promote this competence!

Innovation management

This is not primarily about developing new ideas, but rather about reinventing ourselves. To develop something always means to let go of something old. In the first step, this means blockades of thinking, followed by the willingness to engage in something new.

This is the supreme discipline: to motivate employees, managers, and customers to think and act innovatively.

Storytelling is the key to innovation!

Just talk around the bush! The relevance and central message of innovation, packed into memorable stories and entertaining, appeals to the heart and mind of the listener, attracts attention and promotes “thinking out of the box”. This kind of visualization makes your innovative ability unique, lets you experience to support and stand out from the crowd.
Seminars and workshops on storytelling and innovation can be found here on our homepage.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. While in a change the control over the circumstances to be changed remains as far as possible, the transition is characterized by a loss of control due to a high degree of uncertainty, contradiction, and complexity. The reason for this is that in the context of the change the goal is already clear and consequently “only” the old state is uninstalled and the innovation is installed. Transition, on the other hand, describes the process of transition from an old to a new state, whereby the latter is not yet clearly defined. One is stuck: the old is already gone, but the new (the change) is not yet there. Therefore, in times of uncertainty, managers have a (temporary) feeling of (partial) powerlessness. Particularly in our fast-moving society, times of uncertainty are increasing. Those who need too long to react in the business world cannot survive in the long run. The reason: too much complexity, too much uncertainty, too much ambiguity and above all: too little control. But how can we deal with the loss of control without stopping?

For this, 6 components are important:

1. Being able to cope with fear
2. Distinct self-reflection of mental models
3. Pronounced self-reflection of mental blockades
4. Critical Discursivity
5. Creativity, improvisation
6. Enthusiasm and ability to innovate

People think in patterns. These patterns result from past experiences. They influence our attitudes towards the world. If we have developed a model that rejects something new due to bad experiences with change, or if we are simply overwhelmed with a complex situation, a mental blockade can occur. It’s the fear of something that probably won’t even happen – one is fixated on avoiding an event with maximum effort and doesn’t recognize the possibilities that are opening up!

In order to prevent this standstill or even regression, the manager needs certain knowledge and skills:

Leaders play a key role in the change process. They are affected and responsible at the same time. In order to successfully master the challenge, the manager must become a change agent. For this, it is important to face your own fears. Because even as a leader and a catalyst for change, you will not always be 100% sure that you are doing the right thing. In this phase, managers can be supported by a professional, external coach. Only when the manager stands behind the change process can he or she help his or her employees to face the innovations. In addition to their own conviction, it is important that the manager also has the necessary knowledge and skills:

No change is possible without the involvement of those involved – Lewin already recognized this. Those affected must understand why change is necessary and what the benefits of change are. This is the only way to promote the realization that change makes sense and that the current situation cannot be sustained.

For this, you first have to “unfreezing“, i.e. defrost. Nobody throws a frozen dish directly into the pan and turns to maximum flame. It is just as wrong to simply enforce a process and expect those affected to make friends with fait accompli. It must be made clear to those involved why the situation is being changed. The key role here is clear and transparent communication with the aim of spreading the goals and benefits of the change project.

It is hard to imagine today’s fast-moving world without change because it is vital for companies to survive. However, change projects often underestimate those affected – they are the key to success. From the point of view of those responsible, change is something positive and necessary – but why does the majority of those involved regard this change as a threat?

Changes tear down what gave us security and what has proven itself. The employees are happy in their old system, they have the feeling to make progress – and now they should give it all up? The defense system starts automatically because we are afraid of insecurity and above all of the new situation, which we cannot assess.