Gunther Fürstberger, Author at MDI Management Development

5 Characteristics of Modern Leadership

by Gunther Fürstberger | Nov 24, 2020 | International leadership development, Leadership Tips, MDI Inside | 0 comments

The mission of MDI is to support leaders who strive for a better world.

Investing in leadership development and unlocking the development potential of leaders guarantees companies long-term benefits. Furthermore, they promote creative solutions in innovative change processes.

Therefore, with this article, we make MDI’s view of modern leadership even more transparent.

Mag. Gunther Fürstberger

CEO | MDI Management Development International

Gunther Fürstberger is a management trainer, author and CEO of Metaforum and MDI – a global consulting company providing solutions for leadership development. His main interest is to make the world a better place through excellent leadership. He has worked for clients including ABB, Abbvie, Boehringer Ingelheim, DHL, Hornbach, PWC and Swarovski. His core competence is leadership in digital transformation. He gained his own leadership experience as HR Manager of McDonald’s Central Europe/Central Asia. At the age of 20 he already started working as a trainer.

1. Modern Leadership is aimed at improvement

Leadership provides a definition of meaning.
Leadership creates, develops and completes.
Usually a status quo can be transferred into a better future, sometimes maintaining a good status quo is a leadership task.
Leaders are disruption surfers: they are aware of the changes in their environment and choose the right disruption waves to ride.

2. Modern Leadership deals responsibly with resources

The goal is a circular economy and no longer unlimited growth.
Leadership always considers the consequences of its actions for people and ecosystems.
A responsible manager strives to leave the world better than he found it.

3. Modern Leadership restrains itself

Only as much leadership as necessary.
Hierarchy is still needed, e.g. if the employee has little experience, if there is manager liability, if personal and organisational goals are contradictory.
Leadership goes in both directions, employees also lead their managers.
By exercising restraint, leadership creates an environment in which everyone is happy to contribute their own strengths and concerns.
Leadership aims at the self-management of the people entrusted to it.

4. Modern Leadership is as cooperative as possible

Leadership does not see employees as subordinates, but as partners at eye level.
Leadership is based on agreements
Leadership tries to win over the commitment of employees for concerns and thus builds more on intrinsic than extrinsic motivation.
Just as companies are paid for services by their customers, employees are paid more and more for agreed and achieved results and less on the basis of working hours.

5. Modern leadership serves the system

The Leader is more concerned with the collective good than with the individual good.
Leadership supports learning.
Leaders continue to learn on their own (When was the last time I did something for the first time?).
Leadership develops the potential of employees.
Leadership makes itself aware of the effects of its own actions and interactions in the system.
Leadership ensures that decisions are made on the basis of short- and long-term considerations.

Home office accelerates the overall trend from hierarchical to lateral management.

But what exactly is changing in lateral management?

Summary: Keeping it Short & Sweet

Modern Leadership strives for improvement
Modern Leadership holds back and lets others come to the forefront
Modern Leadership happens at eye level
Modern Leadership serves the system (and sees itself as part of it)
Modern Leadership deals responsibly with resources

What serves you next?

What are the benefits of the OKR system?

What are the benefits of the OKR method and how does it work exactly? MDI trainer and OKR master Susanne Spath gives us an introduction and a story to visualize the OKR method.

Read article

Agile leadership - orientation and basics

There are plenty of agile methods – but what are the benefits of each method? MDI trainer Alexandra Sock talks about her agile leadership seminar, which gives you an overview of different agile methods.

Read article

Scrum & Agile leadership

Scrum is one of the oldest agile methods and is the mother of all agile methods in many people’s opinion. Susanne Spath is OKR master and Scrum certified gives us an introduction to this method and tells us for whom it makes sense to implement Scrum.

Read article

Agile Human Resources – The Future of Learning and Development

by Gunther Fürstberger | Nov 17, 2020 | Agile Leadership, learning effectiveness | 0 comments

“In the future, learning should be understood as a continuous process to which a certain amount of time and financial budget is dedicated. After all, those who see learning as a project could run the risk of losing valuable time between projects and the learning projects themselves losing relevance even before they have been completed.

Mag. Gunther Fürstberger, CEO of MDI Management Development International.

The current times promote the change to agile human resources development. Home office and LXPs (Learning Experience Platforms) make it possible and necessary. Human resources development controlled training programs with a transfer concept will continue to exist, but no longer as a core element, but as a supplement to a development concept that starts with the learner.

Development programs and learning transfer belong to the “waterfall view” of projects. Learning was seen as a project with a project goal and transfer had to be included in this project. The project was successful if what was learned was put into practice.

Google, Youtube, Netflix have in the meantime made demand-oriented, customized and up-to-date learning possible. If I want to know how to get rid of neck muscle tension or how to change the wheel of my micro scooter, I get instant offers on the Internet. Many programs learn along and suggest what I will need next.

Agile methods such as Scrum or OKR (Objective and Key Results) are based on the principle that in regular, rather shorter intervals we check where we stand and where we want to go. With OKR, goals are set regularly for the next 3 months and worked on continuously.

This year OKR proved to be a great method to overcome crisis situations. Never has it been more important to adjust continually to a dynamic environment.

The same principle applies to Learning & Development (L&D):

For example, once a quarter we check on the basis of target-oriented competences:

Where do we stand? – review
and again set new learning targets – Outlook

1. Outlook – New Learning Targets

The target competences are defined by the learner and often the manager, supported by the human resources development department. The learner knows best what he needs now. At the same time, human resources development can ensure that important core competences are considered in the Learning Experience Platform. If the Learning Experience Platform has artificial intelligence, the learner is given learning suggestions based on his past search queries.

The new learning objectives can be defined, e.g.:

As target values on scales ranging from 1 – 10 and representing the desired level of competence
As result descriptions, such as “I can jump 1.80 m from a standing position”.

During the quarter, different a-synchronous and synchronous learning offers are available to the learner:

A-synchronous: e-learning from inside and outside the company. The LXP “crawls” the Internet and accesses paid and free educational offers
Synchronous: face-to-face events and virtual measures such as webinars, master classes, etc.

2. Review – Where do we stand?

For the retrospective, we use simple or more complex diagnostic procedures, such as self-assessment, impulse feedback from others or even test methods. It promotes motivation if the learning path is made visible over the quarters. Gamifying the entire learning path with bonus games, treasure hunts and continuous feedback will contribute to the joy of learning, especially among younger people.

The company can provide the learner with a budget and/or draw up a plan, discussing which measures will be charged with the manager.

Learning as a continuous process

Since many things are constantly changing anyway, learning is understood as a continuous process to which a certain amount of time and financial budget is devoted. If there is a lot of change, more change is needed. But if you see learning as a project, you could run the risk of losing valuable time between projects and the learning projects themselves losing their relevance even before they have been completed.

In summary, this results in the following paradigm shift:

The learner takes over decision-making competence about learning contents and methods from the human resources development department.
Continuous iteration of learning goals and content replaces the previous waterfall learning project view
Learning effectiveness gains importance at the expense of learning transfer
Self-learning search algorithms become a constant learning companion

Summary: Keeping it Short & Sweet

Learner instead of human resources development as designer
Iteration instead of learning project
Learning effectiveness instead of learning transfer
Search algorithms instead of learning plan

What serves you next?

What are the benefits of the OKR system?

What are the benefits of the OKR method and how does it work exactly? MDI trainer and OKR master Susanne Spath gives us an introduction and a story to visualize the OKR method.

Read article

Agile leadership - orientation and basics

Read article

Scrum & Agile leadership

Read article

Lateral Leadership in Virtual Times

by Gunther Fürstberger | Oct 2, 2020 | Lateral Leadership, Leadership in the digital transformation | 0 comments

Home office accelerates the overall trend from hierarchical to lateral leadership. The architecture and use of office buildings have an effect on the people who work there. First, the floor in the office tower marked the importance of certain departments and functions. Then came the open-plan offices with a lot of horizontal space: here the proximity/distance of the workplace to the center of power tells us something about the importance of the function.

In agile desksharing spaces, the hierarchy has further lost in importance due to the choice of seating, and in return self-coordination has gained space. With home office, workplaces have adapted to the World Wide Web. Except perhaps for the speed of Internet access and good hardware, there are hardly any distinguishing features left by which hierarchy could be recognized.

But what concrete changes occure in lateral leadership because of more online collaboration?

(more…)

Lateral leadership in the digital transformation

by Gunther Fürstberger | Dec 18, 2018 | Lateral Leadership, Leadership in the digital transformation | 0 comments

Do we actually still need leaders in times of digitalization? In recent years, we heard many voices calling the end of the hierarchy. One reason for this is the rising speed of technological progress, wherefore, those who have the expertise should make the decisions. We are living in a know-how economy. The average level of education has increased over the decades. Experts have gained more power within the company because they get more job offers from competitors. Whether a person with certain know-how feels comfortable in the organization or not has to do a lot with the leadership culture. Good arguments should prevail. If a leader shows off his hierarchical power, the willingness of the expert to leave the job increases. The impact of decisions can also be much easier and faster evaluated since most relevant information is available within a click on the internet.

Nevertheless, hierarchical leaders don’t need to be afraid that they will die out like dinosaurs one day. This has good reasons:

Managing directors have legal responsibilities and have to delegate some of them. In the case of a work accident or insolvency, it is the responsibility of the top management to deal with it and not the responsibility of the experts.
The hierarchy also has an important efficiency function, which is: resolving stalemate situations. Probably most of us know similar situations: different opinion-makers repeat their points of view and arguments but do not adequately respond to the arguments of the others. As a consequence, not only valuable time passes but also the working climate gets worse in protracted stalemate situations. Maybe both approaches could work well, maybe it’s just that different values and personalities clash together. The more complex our world becomes, the more likely, decision-making processes can turn in circles. In this case, it is the task of the line manager to bring about a decision or to make the decision himself/herself.
The leaders who are legitimized by the owners tend to be responsible for the corporate strategy as well. If employees from as many levels as possible are involved, there is a higher change of identification but the leaders must coordinate this process. In some cases, they even have to give clear instructions: for example if the employee and company goals do not match when it comes to change processes.

In some situations, a hierarchical leader is needed, for instance in stalemate situations. In this case, the leader has to facilitate the decision-making process or make decisions herself/himself.

Although lateral leadership is on the rise, it still needs both leadership approaches. How many consistently democratic company government systems (e.g. holacracy) have survived for more than 10 years? Very hierarchically organized companies are currently not in the winning position either. The right balance seems to count. And what representatives of situational leadership have said for a long time already, it depends on the specific situation.

O’Reilly III and Tushman went in a similar direction with the ambidextrous idea: Businesses are facing two quite different challenges during the digital transformation:

To disrupt themselves through innovation and thus avoid being disrupted by others and
as soon as the innovation arrives in continuous implementation, ensure that the relevant processes fit and are actually being lived.

Innovation management needs more lateral leadership, while process management needs more of hierarchical leadership. However, when processes are being defined and continuously improved, it takes again the input of many, especially from the people who work with it on a daily basis. In that case, lateral leadership can help. Even the control of the implementation of processes can be mostly done by transparent self-monitoring, for instance using KPI boards. On the other hand, it is also helpful for the innovation management if the company or the divisional management set strategic guidelines to move the development in the direction of the company’s vision.

Summary: We can say that the right balance between lateral and hierarchical leadership increases the probability that the best solutions prevail, that the employees are happy to participate which in combination usually leads to business success.

What serves you next?

Leaving the comfort zone - More courage for more training results

Lateral leadership impulse serious Vol. 1

Why do we need a new leadership approach? What are the reasons for that? The simplified answer is that our society and working conditions changed over the past years. Gunther Fürstberger, an expert in lateral leadership and CEO of MDI, explains why lateral leadership could help you to master the challenges of our times.

Read article

Boosting innovation by developing experts

The core changes of digital disruption

We can all see and feel that our world changed over the past few years due to the digitalization. But what are actually the core changes of the digital disruption? Khan identified 6 of them – interconnectedness, the abundance of information, increased complexity, increased transparency, less hierarchical and more empowerment, and the man-machine cooperation. What does that mean for leaders and companies?

Read article

International leadership development with Mondi

The 3 main principles behind agile tools

The jungle of agile methods is so big that you can easily get lost in. Some methods are known better such as Scrum or Design Thinking. To get a better understanding of the big picture, we got down and worked out the 3 principles behind the main agile methods: Transparency, iteration, and empowerment.

Read article

Transparency, Iteration and Empowerment – The 3 principles behind agile tools

by Gunther Fürstberger | Nov 27, 2018 | Agile Leadership, Digital Transformation | 0 comments

The jungle of agile methods is so big that you can easily get lost in it. Some methods such as Scrum, Design thinking, OKR are better known and used more often. But here, too, companies experience that complete introduction of e.g. Scrum is associated with too much set of rules for some employee groups and therefore is impractical. To achieve quick wins, it would be helpful to know and apply the principles behind it.

So, we got down to work at MDI to filter out the principles behind the main agile methods. We came across 3 main principles: Transparency, iteration, and empowerment (TIE)

Behind each lie a few detail principles:

Transparency:

Visualization and if possible making it tangible
Simplicity and standardization in the method

Iteration:

Early and continuous delivery
Experimenting is more important than detailed planning
Frequent evaluation and incremental solution development
Short work cycles (time-boxed) and prototyping
Fail fast to succeed sooner
Lean management and continuous improvement

Empowerment:

Lateral leadership is more important than hierarchical guidance
intrinsic instead of extrinsic motivation
focus on the purpose
Multidisciplinary team focus instead of lone fighters
Interactivity

The 3 principles behind agile tools – empowerment, iteration & transparency can be a good starting point for successfully managing your way through the agile jungle

Many companies are agile in their corporate culture. The 3 Principles (TIE) are a good starting point to tie an agile leadership and corporate culture. As a check-in we can start with a position determination in which we ask ourselves as a person/ team/organization the following questions:

How transparent are we?

Can e.g. everyone in the company see the goals and goals achievement of everybody else including the CEO?
Is there clear visibility on which projects are currently being worked on and does everybody have the opportunity to provide input?
Do we have clear internal processes for structuring everyday business? (e.g. Kanban Board, Daily Stand-Ups, Meeting Structure, …)

How iterative do we proceed?

Do we first want a perfect solution before we show it to the customer or is the (internal or external) customer regularly involved in the development of the solution?
Do we make regular interim evaluations?
Are we open to adapting our solution to changing requirements during the process?

How much empowerment do we allow?

Is our leadership more based on convincing and commitment, or hierarchical authority?
Are our employees motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose (DRIVE)?
Are our teams organized in an interdisciplinary and autonomous way to work as efficiently as possible on a project?

In addition, we can use these main principles to make the training and development concept of a company fit for digital transformation. By e.g. evaluating if and how these principles are currently used in the

Competency Model
leadership and cooperation principles/rules of play
and possibly even in company values.

If e.g. an automobile producer defines himself by perfection and thus needs long innovation cycles, it will make sense to consider to what extent iteration should replace the delivery of perfect solutions.

Or if confidentiality plays a central role in the financial service, then it might make sense to create a culture of transparency in at least some areas, where e.g. MbO is replaced by OKR (insert link to past blog).

As a third example, let’s take a look at retail: Here, in many businesses, it is common for a small number of head office employees to define the processes and rules for many thousands of employees in the stores. A shift towards empowerment means at least interaction on eye-level and a much greater involvement of employees at the point of sale.

What serves you next?

The disruption surfer

The world we live and work in is constantly changing, due to the digitalization and globalization. Changes are happening so fast that we can barely build on a solid ground. To lead your company successful through this digital disruption it is essential to keep an eye on the approaching waves of change. Gunther Fürstberger explained what you need to successfully respond to those changes.

Read article

The core changes of the digital disruption

Digitalization is a global megatrend that forces almost every company to change significantly. Khan identified 6 core changes of the digital disruption – interconnectedness, abundance of information, increased complexity and transparency, less hierarchical and more empowerment and man-machine cooperation. Gunther Fürstberger explains in this article how to react to those changes and what they mean for a company.

Read article

The agile transformation at MDI

At the beginning of 2017, we started to implement agile methods at MDI. The first method we introduced was the agile goalsetting system OKR (Objective and Key Results). Since then, we tried out many other agile methods and learned many new things. Being inspired by the story map of HR Pioneers, we as well visualized a “Change journey map” and looked back on almost two years agile leadership at MDI.

Read article

« Older Entries