Author Archives: Marcus Pietrzak

About Marcus Pietrzak

Marcus Pietrzak is Management Development Leader CEE and Senior Organization Leadership Consultant at IBM. - He works with all management levels in his organisation, and helps them to find new approaches towards their personal leadership philosophy and change. His personal and professional interests include organisational psychology, adult education, management & organisational development and management innovation. "When connecting the dots of my career, I realized that developing people in each stage of their leadership career has always been at the core of what I've been doing. From studies to research, from workshops to coaching, from assessment to training: identifying and shaping the very best of the leadership capabilities within my clients, has always received my undivided attention and formed my mantra: the success of the people who look for our support and guidance - this will always be the ultimate measure of our success in leadership development." - (mp)

The cookie thief

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A woman was waiting at an airport one night, with several long hours before her flight. She hunted for a book in the airport shops, bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book but happened to see, that the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be. . .grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between, which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.

So she munched the cookies and watched the clock, as the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock. She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by, thinking, “If I wasn’t so nice, I would blacken his eye.”

With each cookie she took, he took one too, when only one was left, she wondered what he would do. With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh, he took the last cookie and broke it in half.

He offered her half, as he ate the other, she snatched it from him and thought… oooh, brother. This guy has some nerve and he’s also rude, why he didn’t even show any gratitude!

She had never known when she had been so galled, and sighed with relief when her flight was called. She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate, refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate.

She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat, then she sought her book, which was almost complete. As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise, there was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes.

If mine are here, she moaned in despair, the others were his, and he tried to share. Too late to apologize, she realized with grief, that she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.

By Valerie Cox in “A Matter of Perspective”

About learning and education

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“We’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and “success”, defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.”

― Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

The crazy ones that make a difference

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“Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes – the ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them,
disagree with them,
quote them,
disbelieve them,
glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing that you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.”

– Jack Kerouac

Heute schon losgelassen?

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‘Ein Mann klatscht alle zehn Sekunden in die Hände. Nach dem Grund für dieses Verhalten befragt, erklärt er: “Um die Elefanten zu verscheuchen.” Auf die Bemerkung, dass es hier gar keine Elefanten gebe, antwortet er: “Na, also! Sehen Sie?”‘
– Aus: Watzlawick, Paul (2009): Anleitung zum Unglücklichsein, Piper-Verlag.

Dieses Gleichnis des großartigen österreichischen Psychologen Paul Watzlawick soll darauf hinweisen, dass der konsequente Versuch, das eine Problem zu vermeiden (die Angst vor dem Erscheinen der weissen Elefanten), in Wahrheit zur Verewigung des anderen Problems führt (wer kann schon angstfrei handeln wenn er ständig am Klatschen ist).

Viele Führungskräfte handeln nach einem ähnlichen Prinzip und sehen ihr eigenes, permanentes Managementhandeln als Voraussetzung für den Erfolges in ihrem Unternehmen. Wenn auch der Nutzen guten Planens, Organisierens, Einteilens von Ressourcen und klarer Entscheidungen unbestreitbarund notwendig für zielgerechtetes Handeln ist, so erkennen doch zuwenige Führungskräfte die Möglichkeit, gleich gute wenn nicht bessere und nachhaltigere Ergebnisse zu erreichen, indem sie auf die Fähigkeiten des Sytems bauen und vertrauen. Die Wissenschaft der Kybernetik nennt diese Selbstordungskräfte von Systemen ‘Autopoiesis’ (Luhmann, 1984). Die Crux dabei ist schlichtweg, dass sich Autopoiesis der direkten Kontrolle entzieht, und damit dem Selbstverständnis des traditionellen Managements.

Aus eben diesem Verständnis heraus lassen sich zwei scheinbar gegensätzliche Prinzipien der Unternehmensfühurung unterscheiden, nämlich Management versus Leadership:

– Management als Steuerung trivialer Prozesse.
Management handelt nach den Prinzipien von Ursache und Wirkung und kann so direktiv-zielgerichtet erfolgreich sein.

– Leadership als Umgang mit komplexen Systemen.
Leadership geht erfolgreich mit Systemen um, welche nicht-trivialen Ursache-Wirkungs-Prinzipien unterliegen, und vielmehr den Grundlagen der Kybernetik, der Wissenschaft von der Steuerung komplexer Systeme, folgen.

Die Implikationen dieser Sichtweisen sind so weitreichend, dass sie alles andere als einfache Lösungen anbieten – sie erfordern eine Änderung des eigenen Selbstverständnisses als Führungskraft. Im weitreichendsten Fall wird sogar ein Paradigmenwechsel von Führung erforderlich.

(MP)