Dr. Dominic Lindner, Autor bei agile Companies

Careers in IT 21. March 2021

Negotiate better and achieve more – is negotiation training worthwhile?

A negotiation is the treatment of a decision with one another or by an authority such as a court or mediator. We negotiate numerous small and large decisions every day. A big negotiation for many at work is the salary. With the right negotiation strategy in particular, significantly more can be achieved here. Reading tip: Get a raise Negotiation seminar – is it worth it? Negotiating is not easy and certainly not everyone was born with this talent. But the good news is that you can learn to negotiate. There are numerous seminars on this. The contents of such seminars are often basics and strategies, checking facts, the give and take principle and numerous practical exercises. For this I have the negotiation training from www.engarde-training.com/de looked more closely. Engarde is a professional with many years of experience and conducts first-class negotiation training at various locations. Tips for better negotiation In…

Agile organization 21. March 2021

How companies successfully shield managers – agility despite bad managers

Micromanagement, bad ideas and strange behavior characterize the management in your company? Unfortunately, you are often not alone in this. Often in the course of my consultancy career I have seen managers who almost had a reputation as circus clowns before the workforce. If the name of the manager is mentioned, one only experiences a mischievous smile from the employees. It is sometimes surprising that companies are successful despite these managers. For this purpose, I had employees tell me in various telephone calls through interviews how such managers are shielded. I would like to show you the shielding of managers in a funny way in the form of a case study and then give you tips for solving the scenario. The following story is of course completely exaggerated and I use typical clichés. Reading tip: Case study: Scrum in a corporation A funny story: the top management and the shielding…

Careers in IT 21. March 2021

You don’t get a raise for a better job – it really works!

“Money alone does not make you happy, but it is better to cry in a taxi than in the tram.” (Marcel Reich-Ranicki). The salary is and will remain an important factor in professional life and the “Labor Market Study 2018” by the personnel service provider Robert Half asked 1,000 office workers about factors behind the raise. The results are: Change of job to a new employer: 30%Company-wide salary increase: 16%Internal job change or promotion: 16%New collective agreement and company bonus: 10%Target achievement: 9%Duration of employment: 8%Additional tasks: 4% The results of the study show that the majority of workers received a raise when they changed jobs. I have also examined other studies and these are almost the only and best way to get a raise. In view of the other factors, an employee also seems to have almost no influence on the salary. In particular, we cannot actively control company…

Medium-sized companies 4.0 21. March 2021

Using storytelling and video production correctly for companies – this is how it works!

Companies are encouraged to convey messages to customers in a meaningful and entertaining way. One way to do this is to convey messages through videos and tell a story in them that touches customers. Videos are trending – in one Study by the BiTS-Business and Information Technology School 1000 test persons aged 18 and over from Germany were examined. A special focus was on learning with and without videos. Over 70% of the subjects were able to absorb content much better with short explanatory videos than with conventional written documents. One way to make videos even better is storytelling. Storytelling According to Wikipedia is storytelling: “a narrative method with which explicit, but above all implicit knowledge is passed on in the form of leitmotifs, symbols, metaphors or other means of rhetoric.” Storytelling is telling stories and conveying business information through metaphors or personal experiences. In short, these are structured as…

Agile organization 21. March 2021

Spotify Squads in companies – two ways of implementation

Spotify is on everyone’s lips with an agile model made up of squads. Squads are loose groups that have a specific purpose and work in an agile manner. Each squad has an elected squad leader who represents the interests of the team. The squadlead is a “weak” professional leadership role – in my experience, technical knowledge is very important. He is an escalation authority and reports to a TribeLead, Teamlead or department head. All squads have a full IT infrastructure to work autonomously. In the course of my role as a consultant to the board of directors, I worked out a model for a company to sensibly establish squads in the company with both classic hierarchies and agile departments. Of course, an agile coach can now say: It is not intended that way – but agile concepts always apply to the current situation – and that is often the classic…

Agile organization 21. March 2021

How do I test the performance of managers in uncertain environments? – With methodology to success

How do I check if someone is driving properly in the fog? In the same way, you can currently imagine your job as a project manager, manager or department head in times of Corona. For a long time I have been accompanying managers in times of complexity through my advice and consultation hours. Especially at higher management levels, it is important to assess managers quickly and correctly. Imagine: when a manager does not seem to agree on a job and has been approaching a project or organizational development incorrectly or not at all for months. Not only his performance incl. Salary does not generate any benefit, but also the team with often up to 20 employees. High costs in the case of misjudgments by executives I would like to start with a concrete example: I recently had my telephone consultation again and the following happened: A department head had a…

Agile organization 21. March 2021

Change organizational structure: This is how it works in self-organization

“The only constant in the universe is this change . “( Heraclitus of Ephesus). Team and department structures change regularly, especially in companies. Be it in agile Scrum organizations or Spotify models (Squads). But how can such changes be simplified in such a way that the organization can almost always renew and change itself? The problem is that, especially in agile organizations, changes represent chaos for management and the HR department (self-organization -> HR department loses track of things) and are often almost impossible in classic organizations due to the sheer number of regulations. So how can an organization change itself in a self-learning manner and this in coordination with management and HR? In this article I will only devote myself to the organizational structure. Of course, you still have to anchor processes and culture in a meaningful way. I have the following reading tips for this: Changes according to…

Digital change 21. March 2021

Formulate corporate strategy: realistic and tangible visions

If you ask employees about the strategy and vision of their own company, one often hears the following sentences: “We need a clear strategy”,”What is my company’s strategy? No idea”,”With us, the strategy is hardly tangible”,”Ah that’s so wischi, wash with us””That is very little concrete””I can not do anything with that””Is too high-level for me” Strategies and visions are difficult to formulate It is difficult to formulate strategies and visions – especially from my time in management consulting, IT service providers were always striving to find a strategy – but basically the strategy was always as follows: “We do it – what the customer pays for”. This goal was packed into visions that were not tangible for anyone. Sentences such as: The human being as an enabler of IT or the agile service provider in the digital transformation have hardly stimulated dreams. Here I always asked myself why not…

Careers in IT 21. March 2021

From team leader / staff position to department head – this is how the step succeeds

Many want to take the step into top management and become department heads. But the way is not easy. As a team leader, I suddenly no longer manage 8 but 80 employees and taking on the leadership of executives becomes relevant. Strategic topics are also on the agenda, which is new for many team leaders. Conversely, strategic topics are nothing new for the staff units, but leadership. Such a climb is worth it, according to Stepstone – While a Team leader in IT Earned 65,000 to a maximum of 76,000 euros a year – comes in Head of department in IT to 76,000 to 90,000 euros. The rise brings a lot of salary again and I think that the magical 100,000 is also possible after 4-5 years. In 2019 I was also able to rise to the position of department head and would like to report how I managed to…

Work 4.0 21. March 2021

Advantages and disadvantages of the “practitioner” and “hands-on mentality”

Hands-on means solving a task as quickly and pragmatically as possible. Pragmatic stands for factual and quick action without thinking too much. The two terms are often combined under the heading: “practitioner”. In general, this type of work is helpful to a healthy extent. Unfortunately, being a practitioner often means that you act exactly as you know it, without thinking theoretically and thinking about the effect or the exact reason. You then hear sentences like: “It is always done that way”, “I have a lot of experience with that”, “I know that!””I’m just a practitioner” The pragmatic practitioner The term practitioner is often mentioned in relation to the hands-on mentality. A practitioner is the opposite of a theorist. Jeanne Moreau describes the practitioner as follows: The great practitioners do not talk, they act. Certainly there are advantages and disadvantages of being a practitioner. In general, it is important to keep…