Summer finally arrived in Germany and with it the enthusiasm about the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. The Germans had a very hard time dealing with their national identity. The Nazi history neccessarily lead to a high ambivalence towards national pride, not just one’s own, but anyone’s.

Yet, the globalization of the economies changed many German companies and their cultures. Nowadays a much broader group of employees work in nationally and culturally mixed teams and contexts than 15 or 20 years ago. German politicians no longer deny the fact that Germany is a country of immigration; they even slowly understand that we are a country in definite need of it.

With the 2006 world cup in Germany, many took a new approach to national identity; viewing it as much more diverse and allowing for multiple identities. We witnessed many young people living in Germany with other cultural backgrounds, also passports, supporting the German national team.

The success was welcomed, yet many hoped that Germany should do well, but not win.

In 2010, everyone first worried, when Joachim Löw announced that Michael Ballack will not be able to play. Reorganization, change was needed. They adapted to the new situation very well. To most people the success of the German National league is a big surprise.

An exception to this is Amir Kassaei’s world cup blog, one which you should definitely read from beginning to the end.

In 2010, migrants not only support the German team by wearing flags over their shoulders on parades; they even defend the German flag on their shops against some German left activists.

Others, like Baktat, the Mannheim founded international food maker and retailer and Metropol Hayat, Mannheim local Turkish Magazine, support the German national team even with poster prints!

Very similar to the discussion in international business about the new global requirements with respect to competition, innovation and strategy, we now witness an intense discussion of the changing success factors of today’s globalized soccer game.

Today’s German team is much younger, much more multicultural and plays with a very fresh, new style.

The new German national team has surprised the world. Now, we want the “Sommermärchen”  to go on and win the world cup.

All this “dreaming” and adoration does however have some basis in substantial strategy, know how, potential and performance. Joachim Löw had a clear vision of how he wanted to succeed and what kind of systematic training he needed for these great talents.

Some of Jogi Löw’s success factor are:

1. Understanding the change of the game by systematically studying recent developments in international soccer
2. The change of the game is a paradigm change: Today a team of individual stars only will lose: Best performance means best team
3. Best Teams means using the potentials of the diversity of the team
4. Linking diversity to vision, strategy and implementation
5. Systematic training and hard work

And last but not least:

6. He managed to create an exuberant team spirit
7. He practices a mindful leadership communication: knowing what to say when and how to say more with less

For managers and politicians alike, this new German national team is a lesson on implementing best practice – on teamwork, on motivation, on diversity and integrating, on talent development, well, on leadership.

They are not simply imitating some former soccer stars like e.g. Brazil or the Netherlands. Rather, they are creating something new, some kind of synthesis of international impulses and influences and retaining some of the strengths of German soccer, something of their own. The result is a team that plays soccer differently.

The most moving scene for me personally, however, was, when Miroslav Klose and Jerôme Boateng hugged.

On South African soil.

Sixteen years after the end of Apartheid.

Congratulations, South Africa!

Congratulations, Jogi Löw & Team!

No matter how the world cup ends, for me, you have won already.

The discussion about introducing a women’s quota is highly controversial. In Germany it has mostly been rejected, in public administration as well as in industry. Many argue that a quota weakens women’s positions in the workplace rather than strengthening them. Women’s successes will be attributed solely to the quota, not to their achievements. Mostly you hearonly yes or no answers to the quota. I myself was never in favor of it.

On March 8th of this year, the world commenced the 99th International Women’s Day. India introduced a women’s quota for its parliament. – The upper house of India’s parliament has approved a bill which reserves a third of the seats in the national parliament and state legislatures for women.

Deutsche Telekom Introduces a Women’s Quota

The very same week, the Deutsche Telekom announced the introduction of a 30% women’s quota for their middle management by the year 2015. Wow, I thought and wondered what their arguments will be.

Summarizing Thomas Sattelberger, member of the board of management for HR, their main reasons are:

• All measures taken so far have not brought about the change we sought for.
• The glass ceiling needs to be broken, this is what we want to achieve.
• It is a necessity with respect to fairness in society.

And René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, clearly states: “Having more women on the top will improve our performance.” (my own translation)

Currently the Deutsche Telekom has overall roughly 11% women in leadership positions, internationally 24 %, yet in Germany itself only 18%.

The decision sparked off a lot of news coverage, even in the international press.

Let us look at the context:

Women’s Careers in Germany

According to a study published by the DIW (German Institute of Economic Research), there were only 2,5% women on boards of the top 200 largest German corporations in 2009, the only chairwoman of a German board being IKEA’s Petra Hesser. On the board of Germany’s 30 DAX corporations there is only one woman: Barbara Kux, a Swiss working for SIEMENS.

Dr. Sonja Bischoff, an economics professor at the University of Hamburg has regularly investigated the situation of women’s careers in Germany since 1986. On March 8th, Dr. Bischoff reported on her fifth round of her study “Who leads in(to the) future?”.

Her latest results show:

• the number of women in middle management has multiplied by four
• almost every 5th manager in German companies is female
• women in leadership position have risen from 4% to 18 % mainly leading in the fields of HR, finance and marketing

Another larger study published by Hoppenstedt shows that the upper levels of management (level 1 and 2) have a continuously increasing number of women: doubling from 1995 with 8,17% to 19,56% today. Yet, in larger companies this increase is less and slower from 3,2% to 5,9%, and even less with increasing size of the company.

This supports Bischoff’s results showing that a majority of women leaders are self-employed respectively entrepreneurs who can self-organize a flexible workplace.

Apart from the considerable lower average pay, Sonja Bischoff sees the greatest barrier to women’s careers still to be “prejudices against female superiors”. In her study, 24 % of the 370 women participants experienced a lack of trust in their leadership competence. She concludes, “personal experiences of discrimination are as much as they were in 1986”.

This is a very bad resume for German business.

Given these numbers, the decision by the Deutsche Telekom definitely has a signaling effect.

As a first matter of fact, a majority of girls currently finish school with better grades than male peers. Two thirds of current students in business administration are women. They are very successful right up to entering the professional world and the beginning of their careers. Why should their performance decline with age and professional experience?

As a second matter of fact, the top 100 largest corporations have 526 board positions. Only 7 are women.

This is hardly due to lower performance, maybe rather to a reluctance to compete.

A majority of German corporations are still against any quota. Yet, according to a study published by Odgers Berndtson almost half of the 49 women in the top management of Germany’s top 500 corporations even favor it with some reservation.

A Diversity Outlook

In my view, the question of a quota cannot be answered with a simple yes or no any longer. With respect to dimensions of time, society, economic and international development, organizations will have to come up with a pragmatic response to questions like:

• Do we have a realistic chance of hiring and developing enough qualified and talented women in our business fields?
• What do we risk by potentially loosing higher qualified male candidates?
• Can we afford to miss out the women given the demographic developments?

And less defensively:

What do we gain – short term, midterm and long term – by implementing a quota

• a) with respect to changing career paths in the long run?
• b) with respect to increasing diversity in management?

I do believe, “diversity wins“, as Tom Peters likes to say.

The quota will not win by itself. It can only be effective with corresponding measures, as e.g.:

• recruiting and developing talented women and men in support of diversity thinking,
• offering systems that sustainably improve flexible workplaces in support of family lives of all employees, women and men
• finally, develop leaders to meet the requirements of growing diversity

As with most leadership decisions, we will be able to judge the success of such measures only retrospectively.

A women’s quota may not be a simple and easy path to power and diversity. But promoting women in leadership is not a simple question of pro or contra quotas any longer. There are more differentiated perspectives to the issue on the agenda today.

The media reports and the discussions I have had with various collegues and clients around the Deutsche Telekom decision made me change my mind. I believe it also show that this change is already taking place on a wider scale.

What do you think?

Just a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of working with a special group of young European talents on their future leadership. We covered some basics in leadership, but also talked about the limits of “training” for leadership. We looked at dilemmas and contradictions as leaders face them in any organization at any times, but maybe more consciously in rough times. These young people seemed to understand that there is an art to learn, a way ahead to go along with one’s own development as a person in re-sponsibility. Given my own background and approach to leadership as communication we also worked on how to challenge oneself with one’s own emotions in taking the lead and being re-sponsible, i.e. being able to re-spond to others. We also explored some of the challenges to lead people in intercultural contexts as their trainee experience had an intercultural context.
One evening of the week we had a prominent guest, the CEO of the Business Unit. He readily shared his own career path, the current challenges of the BU, and he also gave advice as to what he sometimes had to learn the hard way.
The participants even looked at me repeatedly with surprise, wondering how this could be as he was definitely not briefed…
One of these shared points of views, for example, was that the foremost competence of today’s leaders is dealing with uncertainty. A statement he attributed to the renown Pierre Casse. And he underlined this view by quoting his North German grandmother: „Every every disadvantage is an advantage, advantage is a disadvantage“.
Not only was this one of the rare occasion when I had top managers coming to talent training complementing the curriculum so impressively, I also finally found the German equivalent to one of my favorite stories. A story my father had once heard on the radio and told me when I was very young: „Missfortunes and blessings” or as the Chinese say:
Sai Ong loses horse – who knows if it is not a blessing?
“In the northern frontier of ancient China, there lived a man who was particularly skilled in raising horses. People knew of him and called him Sai Ong – literally “Old Frontiersman.”
One day, for some unknown reason, his horse got loose and ran off into the Hu territory beyond the Great Wall. The Hu tribes were hostile toward the Chinese, so everyone assumed the horse was as good as lost.
Horses were very valuable to the people living at the frontier, so they regarded this loss as a great financial setback. They visited Sai Ong to express their sympathies, but Sai Ong’s elderly father surprised them by remaining calm and unaffected. Much to their puzzlement, the old man asked: “Who says this cannot be some sort of blessing?”
Months later, the horse returned to the stable with a companion – a fine steed of the Hu breed. It was as if Sai Ong’s wealth suddenly doubled. Everyone came by to marvel at the new horse and to congratulate him, but again his elderly father showed no great emotions. He said: “Who says this cannot be some sort of misfortune?”
Sai Ong’s son enjoyed riding and took the new horse out for a ride. An accident occurred, causing him to fall badly and break a leg. Again sympathetic people came to console the family, and again they saw that the grandfather remained as calm as ever. Just like before, he told them: “Who says this cannot be some sort of blessing?”
One year later, the Hu people amassed and crossed the border into China. All the able-bodied young men were summoned into the army to take up arms in defense. Fierce battles ensued, resulting in heavy casualties. Among the inhabitants of the northern frontier, nine out of ten men died.
Sai Ong’s son did not go into battle due to his broken leg. Because of this, he was spared that terrible fate, and his family survived the war intact.
Thus, blessings may turn out to be misfortunes, and misfortunes blessings. They change from one to the other endlessly; the workings of destiny has a truly fathomless depth.” (Derek Lin, 2007, pp. 56-57).
Knowing about the uncertainty of answers, and yet being able to re-spond may be the most important lesson to learn for the young leaders to be.

Welcome to my new website integrating blog & social media!

I will talk with you in this blog about:

• global and intercultural leadership
• business innovation and creativity
• ethnography for organizational development
• virtual cooperation and management 2.0
• international people development and talent management

You will also occasionally read posts by invited guest authors. And I will, of course, integrate links to other sites, blogs, tweets relevant to the above and other exciting topics.

In this first post I will share some of the stories behind the development of this blog:

Last summer I started following an exciting discussion in the media on the future of marketing and communication, particularly pronounced by Amir Kassaei calling for “creative business consulting“. Reading some more on marketing and web 2.0., I particularly liked Jeff Swystun’s YP Edition on “Adopting a Professional Services Mindset“. Referring to Peter Drucker and Philip Kotler, he made me understand how we need to translate our “professional services mindset” and successful ways of immediate communication with our clients coherently to our digital communication: “Knowledge is the product and knowledge (shared) is powerful”. Many thanks here to the Doyle Dane Bernbach Group.

As always in life, coincidences abound, networks boost ideas, and friendships nourish us. One summer evening last August, I met my friend Mike Swain at the café. We talked about movies and marketing, and social media… He told about how his webpage, kino-zeit.de, a movie portal, continuously changes and grows, and how he started using twitter last May …
I had opened my twitter account since the attacks in Mumbai in November 2008, when Dina Mehta, an Indian blogger, ethnographer and business consultant, helped twitter outpace CNN. That was outstanding, I thought. But honestly, I did not quite know what I wanted with twitter.

Now, in summer 2009, Mike tuned my ears to twitter:

• how to find people who write valuable tweets
• how to build your own community of followers
• how to manage the information

I have since found twitter to be a wonderful platform and resource, search engine, news channel, “connector”, you name it.

Mike recommended Jennifer Moss, a wonderful web designer, who created the present design. The wordpress template Thesis provides optimal comfort in site and content management. Justus Leendertz took charge of the technical realizations.

Through all this, I have finally come up with this present site which meets my needs for interaction with clients, colleagues and other people.

Now the blog can develop. I am looking forward to our talks.