Klaus Friedrich Hepp

Different work styles of team members are natural and have a very positive effect on the productivity of the team and richness of the discussions amongst the team members. Always thinking that in a diverse and multidisciplinary team all members should complement each other and not compete amongst themselfes. Chaos is for me more related to weak leadership than to team diversity. A really good leader knows how to make a diverse multicultural and/or multidisciplinary team work nicely and with high productivity because of the different work styles of all members, including successful avoidance of unwanted conflicts and chaos.

Sorry, but frankly spoken, if Your team is facing unintentional conflicts during organizational change, You as the team leader have failed. Organizal changes have to be well thought and perfectly prepared before You implement them. But sometimes such conflicts are fully intended and make part of the leaders strategy. For me conflicts are not naturally and always negative. Sometimes You need to provoke conflicts for "breaking the ice". Fully in Schumpeter`s sence of the "constructive destruction". But what You need to maintain anyhow through all change processes is full control of what is happening in order to avoid damage for all involved and last but not least for the company.

In today`s highly volatile business environment, permant changes and adaptations are absolutely normal and necessary. This has to be made clear for all team members and must find itself firmly established in the company culture. It has become one of the most important responsabilities of modern leaders to transmit this to all employees in a way which makes them lose their fear and rejection to this and allows them to be open and positive towards change processes. Only through quick, efficient change processes organisations like companies can prepare themselfes for facing new challenges and gain competitive advantages.

To drive change as a leader within a company is not always easy. Especially when it comes to needs for financial support from the top management or the owners of the company for the realisation of change projects. Then trust is what mostly matters. At first You need the trust of all decision takers in Yourself as person & manager and secondly You need their trust that, what You propose to do with their resp. the company`s money, makes really sence for the company. I personally have found myself in such situations quite often during my career. Just one example: investment in the set up of a completely new development department for products, processes and applications although the company was massively loss making at that moment. We did it.

As a really inspiring and exemplary leader You need to reserve sufficient time and capacity for doing really important, creative work by Yourself. Therefore You need a toolbox of self-developped or personalized standard tools for Your self-organization and for minimizing Your own "muda" (waste) activities. Thus You can attend with high efficiency Your priority tasks. To work constantly in a highly volatile and complex environment, You need to have an infallible own planning, follow up, documentation and archive systematic as office backbone. This enables You to utilise Your energy for beeing fully productive in terms of becoming able to put Your total focus on what really needs to be done and for creative and inspiring subjects.

As an assertive leader I have to face challenges as opportunities and with the necessary courage, to "swim" against the stream of common opinions, interpretations and solutions. The more AI becomes a highly welcome, appreciated and helpfull player and contributer, the more human incl. emotional must leaders, who want be named as leaders of the future, become. Sometimes there is need for irrational emotional behaviour and decision taking in management. Without this plenty of great and extremely important discoveries and successes of mankind would never have been achieved. I am clearly of the opinion that the future lies with leaders who are impactors, more than with influencers. Here`s my open breast.... Shoot!