“The beauty of OKRs is that they engage right away the people who are responsible for executing the strategy. This outcome thinking - which is the main theme of OKRs -  is  very powerful. Basically, when we do work on our client’s strategy, we convince them to use OKRs as a strategy implementation tool”  - Frank Radeke

In today’s episode “OKRs in Strategy and Product Development” we talk about how every company became a technology company and why an outcome-based strategy - flexible and adaptive - is the right way to go. We contrast that with the “old way” of doing strategy - setting 5 year plans -  and how to build “strategic thinking” into a capability inside your organization. We also touch on how startups use OKRs but also how corporate innovation departments can use them - and Frank shares the data from a recent study they did at neoverv, where an alarmingly-low rate - only 10% of respondents, believe they are actually achieving their targets, despite 81% confirming that they do understand the company’s strategy. Finally, we discuss how OKRs are what brings strategy execution to life, in weekly discussions, and how they provide the critical link between company and product vision, priorities and daily work.

Frank is Managing Director at neoverv. At neoverv we enable organizations to  become innovation and sustainability leaders through technology. Neoverv designs and accelerates digital technology strategies, builds and scales digital products, and boosts teams for agile scalability.

Facts about Frank:

Where to find Frank Radeke:

LinkedIn

neoverv

Where to find Johannes:

LinkedIn

Resources mentioned on the show:

Agile Product Management  - Roman Pichler

Measure what Matters - John Doerr 

neoverv - Our Agile Organization Playbook 

neoverv - Our OKR-Playbook 

This Podcast is a product by Workpath.

In today’s podcast, we talk with Cristina Popa on the role of leadership styles and how they facilitate or hinder transformation programs in the enterprise space. We also touch on the shifts that are needed in the current environment and in order to perform large-scale enterprise transformation projects. Finally, we  discuss the role of OKRs - as they are used in these projects and how OKRs relate to the leadership styles.

Cristina joined the consultancy consistency.de in 2015 and was the first female partner. During this intense period, she has dedicated herself to business psychology and led digitization projects in the energy transition. 

Currently, in addition to her role as partner at consistency.de, she’s also the CEO at the tech startup Contractuo - which helps companies streamline and automate their contract management processes. 

With the prevailing tiredness of digitization, Germany is making a mockery of the global economy. We should finally discard sluggishness based on our ego, ignorance or fear! This is the conclusion Cristina draws after 17 years of professional experience in numerous companies. She has identified a pattern that distinguishes successful companies from others. The most important factor here is a differentiated view of human behavior. For Cristina, psychology and digitization go hand in hand in today‘s world. Companies need to recognize their own wasteful behavior in order to use valuable energies and resources more wisely.

Where to find Christina:

LinkedIn

Consistency

Contractuo

Where to find Johannes:

LinkedIn

Resources mentioned on the show:

Podcasts

Publications & books:

“Organizations were readjusting in the past 3 years - from Covid-19 to the economic crunch. But now we are in a period when we need to start implementing. And realizing that when you’re adapting on the leadership level - how do we get people on board? How do we get them engaged? I think leaders realize that Outcome Management is key to be successful.” - Felix von Held

In today's podcast with Dr. Felix von Held we talk about robust leadership. Robust leadership highlights organizational and leadership capabilities that see change and uncertainty as opportunity and chance. 

We dig deeper into the robust leadership survey, and Felix shares that the biggest challenge to embrace change and adapt fast are oftentimes tensions. Tensions for instance between stability and agility as well as balancing strategy and culture. We discuss that specifically with regards to strategy development, this process and its implementation cannot happen without proper change management. Leaders need to thus enhance skills that combine providing strategy and stability while also balancing out a participative approach and opportunities to adapt quickly. 

We conclude that these skills are vital in the context of thinking in outcomes. If we plan and execute on outcomes, we need to be able to adapt quickly without losing our culture and employees while doing so.

Dr. Felix von Held is one of the founders of the Institute for Innovation and Change Methodology (IICM) in Munich. In his work as a consultant and coach, he focuses on innovation and leadership in the context of transformation in the fields of digitalization, sustainability and new work.

In the last 14 years, he has worked globally in more than 10 industries and over 100 innovation and transformation projects. Before founding the IICM, Felix worked in innovation management and strategic change management at the BMW Group.

Since 2008, he has been teaching at the Center of Digital Technology Management in Munich as well as at the ESB in Reutlingen and the University of Zurich. In his doctoral thesis at the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Pedagogy at the University of Regensburg, Dr. Felix von Held focused on the topic of "Collective Creativity" as part of organizational learning.

Where to find Dr. Felix von Held:

LinkedIn

IICM

Where to find Johannes:

LinkedIn

Resources mentioned on the show:

Robust Leadership Report

Dear to lead  - Brene Brown

5 Dysfunctionalities of teams - Patrick Lencioni

Radical Candor - Kim Scott

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In unserer heutigen Episode sprechen wir mit Dr. Maximilian Lude über Familienunternehmen und den deutschen Mittelstand. Er teilt, warum seine Doktorarbeit das Interesse an Familienunternehmen geweckt hat und seine größte Erkenntnis:  Familienunternehmen werden in der Öffentlichkeit anders wahrgenommen.

Ebenso beleuchten wir, wie sich familiengeführte Unternehmen von Konzernen unterscheiden, deren Vor-und Nachteile und was es mit der Enkelfähigkeit auf sich hat.

Maximilian gibt außerdem Einblicke, wie Familienunternehmen ihre strategische Steuerung verbessern können und wie Outcome Management integriert werden kann. Und warum es durch zunehmenden Innovationsdruck sowie ständige Marktveränderungen gerade jetzt wichtig ist, die Verlagerung hin zu Outcomes in Betracht zu ziehen.

Abschließend sprechen wir darüber, wie es der Weisse Arena gelungen ist, Outcome Management und OKRs erfolgreich einzuführen und wie sich so Zombie Ideen aufdecken lassen.

____________________

Dr. Maximilian Lude ist Geschäftsführer und Mitgründer von Philoneos, einer strategischen Unternehmensberatung für Familienunternehmen, die sich auf Innovation, Transformation und die Zukunft der Arbeit konzentriert.

Er engagiert sich auch in der akademischen Welt und ist Gastprofessor und Dozent an der Polytechnischen Universität Mailand sowie an der Zeppelin Universität Friedrichshafen.

Seine Leidenschaft gilt inspirierenden Marken, Kultgeschichten und unabhängigen Familienunternehmen. Er ist Forscher, Innovationsagent, Redner und Gründer und immer interessiert an  neuen Trends, Technologien und Geschäftsideen.

____________________

Hier findest du Max:

LinkedIn

Philoneos

Hier findest du Johannes:

LinkedIn

Im Podcast erwähnte Ressourcen:

Buch

Wolf Lotter: Zusammenhänge: Wie wir lernen, die Welt wieder zu verstehen

Podcasts

Inspirierende Persönlichkeiten

Reto Gurtner - Executive Chairman bei Weisse Arena Group

____________________

Dieser Podcast ist ein Produkt von Workpath.

In today’s podcast, we talk with Niels Rasmussen about outcome-based thinking and participative strategy development - a method of involving a large part of the organization coming together and creating and implementing the strategy - that’s gaining more and more ground.

This method comes to address rising problems that result in over 70% of all strategies not coming to fruition, problems fuelled by demographic changes, the pace of changes and the need for enterprise transformation.

We also talk about why it is so challenging to move toward participative strategy development and what it takes to make it happen. One is culture and the second one is our lack of belief in a true ownership culture. 

We touch on how the OKR framework is a key factor to getting participative strategy development off the ground. 

Lastly, we discuss briefly about the 12 steps required to execute a shift towards participative strategy development, which will appear in an article co-authored by Niels in spring 2023.

Niels Rasmussen is founder and Managing Partner at +RASMUSSEN, a consultancy and executive training academy focusing on helping senior leaders and business owners grow their business and their leadership capabilities in areas such as Vision, Strategy, Structure, Role & Responsibility Development and Implementation.

Niels has more than 25 years of top management and consulting experience in Germany, Australia, Denmark and USA (Managing Director Hewitt Associates in Germany & Europe CEO, Equity Partner KPMG), as well as diplomatic experience - serving as Commercial Affairs Officer with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark. 

Passionately Danish, he’s engaged to serve as Copenhagen Goodwill Ambassador - following his 2014 appointment by HRH Prince Joachim of Denmark.

Lastly, loving all things Danish - from a distinctive culture centered on lack of hierarchies and easy communication at all levels - as well as anything design-related (including Organizational Design), he’s trying to bring this approach in the consultancy he founded: + RASMUSSEN.

At +RASMUSSEN he leads a team of talented people who drive meaningful transformation work at global Fortune 500’s (Allianz, Daimler, Merck, Valeo, Continental) as well as public and semi-public organisations such as GasNetz Hamburg, the city of Freiburg and pronova.

Where to find Niels:

LinkedIn

+Rasmussen consultancy

Where to find Johannes:

LinkedIn

Resources mentioned on the show:

- McKinsey

- Roger Martin is a writer, strategy advisor and in 2017 was named the #1 management thinker in the world. He is also former Dean and Institute Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto in Canada.

- The Journal of Enterprise Transformation - out of print.

Books

- The 4 Hour Work Week

- Designing Your New Work Life

- Chip War

This Podcast is a product by Workpath.

Marie-Luise Lehmann is an executive with over 15 years of experience in the fields of finance and agile transformation. Currently, she’s Chief of Staff to the Deloitte Consulting Germany and EMEA CEO and COO as well as Office Lead for the CxO and Agile Finance Lead.

She’s also the founder of Finance goes agile - a Think Tank for agility and corporate finance in German-speaking countries where she tackles topics such as:

She is a regular speaker and author as well as lecturer at the University of Lucerne.

In today’s podcast, we talk about what is the role of Finance and CFOs in steering their companies in times of volatility and uncertainty. We also debunk the myth that Outcome Management and OKRs are not an HR tool, but rather one for better strategy execution.

We challenged the established norms in controlling and finance, stressing the need for agility and flexibility of the finance function especially as more and more companies embrace digital transformation.

We also tackle the up and coming topic of outcome-based finance and outcome-based budgeting.

Finally, we touch on the challenges of making this shift.

Where to find Marie-Louise Lehman:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marieluiselehmann/

Where to find Johannes Müller:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johmueller/

Resources on Beyond Budgeting:

A short intro here

Beyond Budgeting Institute.

Resources mentioned on the show:

Books

Managing for Happiness

Magazines

Podcast

Lage der Nation

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This Podcast is a product by Workpath

Welcome back to Superkinetics!

In todays episode, we are talking to Ana Pacios Escudero and Philipp Schoel from Workpath about mastering change.

In our fast changing working environment, it is hard to keep up, and you have to find ways to adapt to those changes. Our guests will tell us how to adapt to this change, and how to use your data to make the right decisions.

Further resources:

VUCA

Superkinetics Season Kickoff: S4E1

Would you like to co-create this podcast by contributing your own questions? Head to community.workpath.com to do so.

Follow us on Spotify and Apple Music and leave us a 5-star recommendation if you like what you hear. We appreciate your praise.

This Podcast is a product by Workpath

Welcome back to Superkinetics!

In todays episode, we are talking to Workpath's Product Lead Simon Bock. You might already know him, as he has been in our Podcast before in some episodes.

Simon is giving us some insights into the topic of outcome execution. We are talking about productivity killers, focus, and routines that influence our ability to reach our outcome oriented goals.

Further resources:

Superkinetics Season Kickoff: S4E1

Would you like to co-create this podcast by contributing your own questions? Head to community.workpath.com to do so.

Follow us on Spotify and Apple Music and leave us a 5-star recommendation if you like what you hear. We appreciate your praise.

This Podcast is a product by Workpath

Welcome back to Superkinetics.

In today's episode we are focussing on the second problem we introduced in episode 1 of this season. We talk about alignment - the advantages that arise with good alignment, and the problems that arise when it is missing. To discuss this topic we invited Isabell Stahl , Product Manager at Workpath.

Here you can find the separate sections of the interview:

(02:49) What does alignment mean for a company?

Further resources:

Guide: Organizational Alignment

Article: How to succeed with cross-functional alignment

Would you like to co-create this podcast by contributing your own questions? Head to community.workpath.com to do so.

Follow us on Spotify and Apple Music and leave us a 5-star recommendation if you like what you hear. We appreciate your praise.

This Podcast is a product by Workpath

Welcome back to Superkinetics!

Today's guests are Katharina Ortkrass and Constantin Möckelmann from Hella - one of the world's largest automotive suppliers. They are leading the transformation process in their company and will give us some insights into their work. 

To continue the topic of our last episode, we will keep talking about the concept of clear outcomes and talk about the challenges and chances that come with this topic.

Here you can find the separate sections of the interview:

(03:31) The state of the automotive industry.

Case study: OKRs at Hella

Would you like to co-create this podcast by contributing your own questions? Head to community.workpath.com to do so.

Follow us on Spotify and Apple Music and leave us a 5-star recommendation if you like what you hear. We appreciate your praise.

This Podcast is a product by Workpath