Create Future Today

Petra

You know, sometimes you meet people who seem to be ahead of the time. And today's guest is certainly one of these people, Dr. Michael Thiemann, we connected through the Forbes coaching council forum. And I loved his content. I loved his take on innovation and the future of work. So we connected, and I'm really excited to have him on today's show. And mind you, it is three o'clock his time. So thank you so much for making it solution liking.

Hello, many things. It's a really fun being on your show to be on your podcast. And I'm very, very curious versus this talk. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your dedication. Now, what stood out for me straight away was a hashtag and a mantra that you live by. And that's create feature today. Can you give us a little bit background as to what made you interested in fascinated in innovation and the future of work?

Dr Michael Thiemann

Absolutely, thank you. I think, since I was a little boy, just to give you a little story, I'll tell some stories. I was a little boy, I was always very troubled my mom, how she was doing all the cooking and stuff like this. And that time already, I was, I think, four years, five years, I want to invent a potato peeling machine something like this. And to make just to live your daily work much easier. And I build something out of you know, this Lego bricks, I don't know if you if you know that. And sure, didn't work and but it was ever since I was always interested in things like doing anything newly freshly, and to innovate and to bring new solutions to existing problems. And as well, your time, I saw as well, lots of new trends, new crisis coming up, and how can you solve those. That's the starting point. That's why my mantra is, I want to help people to find solutions for their clients, even as for themselves, how to solve existing problems, but as well as upcoming problems, which are caused by trends, new trends, and as well crisis like trends is just an accelerator of, of change. The basics of bad behind my mantra

Petra

You've basically prepared all your life for today's economic economy and landscape, because as you said, crisis, just past strikes, innovation and the need for change.

Thanks, I'm fascinated, fascinated by change, because the whole life is constant change. And you have to use different tools that you've developed tool sets to cope with change and changes the constant and therefore create future always means you have to use trends and to benefit from those trends to shape a better future. And that's I think, the internal intrinsic value for me I have in change and how to cope with change,

I love it and you're so spot on, it's more important than ever to embrace the change and do something with it. Also, in your book, craft futures today, you highlight that innovation and research and trend isn't just for the nurseries and the scientists, but it's important for everyone. Why is that? And how can we get better with it?

Dr Michael Thiemann

I think if you look at today's Times called VUCA times this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times, but what is it about these in the end we, as I mentioned, we are surrounded by change all the time, but we have some big, big influences at the moment like digitization, like big data, like artificial intelligence, just to keep just to take one out of it. And those trends they will have impact people, really people in there typically must have some demands in the basic demands is well in the upper demands. And if you can find out what those impacts on people are, and if you analyse a little bit how you can improve the positive impacts or diminish a little bit the negative impacts, you can create solutions for people for your target customers, if you like and therefore it's so important for a company in not to be surprised by existing trends. 

If you look at COVID so many companies were surprised by COVID because they didn't do the homework due to digitization. They never thought about how to to put their processes more in our internet in a digital world and therefore to to find out what the impacts on people to make solutions on that and to incorporate those solutions somehow in their their their business models. That's something people for the set for themselves as well for companies have definitely to do.

Petra

Absolutely and also one of your goals, which I find very inspiring is that you want to help 1 million people to turn ideas into success.

Now, how do you go about it? 

Because one of the biggest challenges that we see with people, especially if they've been in a career for quite a while, is that they can't see anything beyond their current job title or their industry. How do you help them to innovate and reinvent themselves to come up with those ideas?

Dr Michael Thiemann

When it's not like this, you go into a little chamber and being inventive just you press a button you invented that doesn't work. But it's so important. 

If you look at today's business world, many people more and more people want to have that personal brand. 

They know I'm working for companies one thing, but you have to really to fight first of all your inner values, what you're standing for, what is your own purpose, what is What does he want you to achieve with your time with your life. 

And therefore, I have to think about this is this company aligned to your values is that what you're doing every day aligned to your values to your inner drive, your purpose, your big why, and that's I think people realize more and more that. 

And to have an imprint on this world is more important than just doing a job, which I'm not interested in. And therefore, I'm coming from Germany, Europe, is the mentality of the German celebrate the Austrian similar.

Lots of people wants to work for the government, they don't want to. In the past, they don't want to set up their own enterprise. And I think that's wrong. If you want to shape the future positively, if you want to create an culture, which is independent, and liberal and free, you need lots of entrepreneurial spirit, you need to make people want to change the world in the sense that they have a solution, or they can help people. And this whole thing is changed, especially in our times in vuca times dramatically, people realize it's not so important to go to the office from nine to five and do somebody edit to fulfill somebody else's dreams, it's much better to fulfill your own dreams. And that's by my mantra, which you mentioned, I want to help 1 million even more to set up their own business in terms of to, to realize who that where they are themselves as well to help, by their knowledge, by the experience, by their purpose in their intrinsic purpose, what they want to do. And probably helping people is one of the best things you can do with your life.

Petra

I love it so much. And probably COVID has actually fast tracked the importance of you setting up your own commercial opportunities, because we already see the freelance in the gig economy is increasing, because companies have to lay off staff or have more agile and flatter structures to be more competitive. And there is no job security, quote unquote, anymore. And the love that your take on to build a sustainable business is all about you knowing exactly what you stand for, What's your purpose in life? 

And what's the value you create? And you also talk about the sustainability of business models. Can you talk us through a little bit as to what kind of changes have you seen in business models over say, the last two, three years? And what is the future of a sustainable business model?

Dr Michael Thiemann

Just going back for one once today, if you look at typically business models or in business systems environments, you have sometimes peers are very stable environments where we are modelling some dominant plays are evolving and lots of other plays. Settling around this big dominant player, just really, you know, this time from IBM, they came up with this, this How is punch card, and they only produce big, big computer machines. Yeah, and they put in the punch card, and everything was fine. 

It was kind of a stable system for a long, long, long time. Then suddenly, somebody like Bill Gates came up with the idea. 

Software could be more important like a brainer. And a high intelligent person without input without a software doesn't work. It's deaf, a software is more important, very purpose, everything to more, the software is the driving part of a computer, then Microsoft went up in the 80s and 90s, then bro, you can say the next step was with a change that's that, that the combination between hardware and software like Apple is the solution, and so on. It's always the periods of stable environment, which has been after a while, challenged by new innovations by new way of thinking and this gets a little bit destabilized. Sure, like, that's the moment of chance and in this moment of chance, if you're a trial and error trying out new things in a more flexible and adaptive way. 

You can test this market the customers if they want. Take advantage of this change as the new possibilities definitely have always been stable periods after we have some vuca times extreme vuca times like we have in the last few the last 1015 years. And that's a big moment of chance with companies as well. intrapreneurs can use and they can attack old business model with a more agile mindset with a more agile organization form. And presence adds a little bit your questions already means therefore vuca time agile mindset being more agile, more be more in trying learning, adapting, improving the cycle is what we had the last 15 years, even 20 years. 

If you look at companies like Google, like, like Facebook, they're quite young. In terms of typical types of companies very young. And then as well, if you look, I love agility, if you look, look at cities like Rome, they exist over 1000s of years. And they're completely chaotically. There's nothing organized. 

And the typical company, which is very organized in terms of old business models where command and control you try to mimic a machine, even human resources, a resource you have to optimize. And this is proven not work.

Most of companies live 20 to 50 years old, going out of market. And this whole way of thinking is changing. And as well, the management theory, which is teaching at Business Schools has changed dramatically. 

But they're not still there, they're still to learn how, how they can adapt their own business theory models to modern agile mindset. Agile world, 

Petra

it's such a good point that you made. I love the phrase moment of change because we've seen so many opportunities to create commercial answers to a problem that we are facing. Now, those chances come from trends, what are some of the ways how we can be or stay on top of the game, see those trends and changes coming before they are here and be more agile in the way how we act and engage with those changes?

Dr Michael Thiemann

I think every company should really start to build in kind of a trend.

That means you must have a little raw you can see that there are lots of trends on it, and in which are more far away, not very developed. And some trends are much more developed like digitization, which everybody experienced now, if you didn't do his homework, that's one and you don't have to be in front of the wrist whatsoever. You can use research material as well from think tanks from futurists, they are publishing it every day. 

And you can see lots of different trends which are already described in very detailed way. But how can you measure if that trend is for you relevant or not? 

Any day you need some facts, some statistics, for example, if you see artificial intelligence, you can look at statistics and to see what is the typical spending of companies already have or what kind of money they're investing into trends like artificial intelligence, or what is the trend of going back to the region is this a big trend after globalization people need to kind of more stability in terms of what they are knowing therefore they're like much more to buy in a regional farmers shop recipe as an example of to have a regional business that has nothing to do with nationalism if you like but as more people needs more stability, they feel a little lost in this in this global world sometimes there's another trend and they can as well look at lots of statistics how people are is this trend buying the internet? 

Yes, it's still there. 

But as well as for food is much more coming over to regional approach not buying these strawberries from Chile in the wintertime. 

And in Europe, the environmental mindset of people is there I want to do good to the earth on Earth Day, very shortly, I guess your way or the world already consumed the then renewable resources of the earth already. 

And therefore you have those trends and you can see lots of Statistics are really important you should incorporate them and then to make that yours you have really to analyse what is the impact of a trend for example if you look at the trend of big data with artificial intelligence and you your producer of play toys for children and so you can see a big pain people have is this puppy of his placing spying on my child because there isn't there's an artificial intelligence fit in there which is then communicating by by 5g and by internet of things with a computer somewhere, it is somewhere that somebody is watching it like ziri, like, like Alexa from Amazon. 

And there's a big pain point in that if you find solutions, how you can protect that this the security issue people have with it. And as the inside if you look what is the gain side of artificial intelligence together with blockchain together with Internet of Things, there's probably intellectual property rights, you don't big gains, you don't need probably a lawyer to transfer from one person to another or just in the house, the to the lien, whatever, you don't need a lawyer probably an infusion because everything you can do quite securely in the blockchain. 

And therefore, you have some gains, and some pains trends are causing to people really to people's personal demands and problems, wishes and hopes. And you have to analyse that and then the next year for it to come up with ideas how I can solve those problems and build an offer. And there's free most of companies do, they're always the wrong approach, they're thinking much too much in products, they should think much more in results for the clients results in that dream customers. And they have to build an offer. If you as another thing if you want to.

If you buy a drill or as a customer, you're not interested in the drill itself, you need a hole in your wall in your water wherever you need to solve and you don't care if this hole is done by a driller by a laser or by whatsoever and therefore trends gives you new possibilities as well probably technology and technology wise to solve problems in a different way. 

Therefore, you have to think much more out of the box. Think the unexpected more not only the expected and my experience where I'm coming from large crops as well come from corporate finance. 

And you see the loss of management they're only looking for these quarterly results and innovation or trends for them is only interesting for them if they can see for the next quarter results and impact and therefore innovation sometimes especially with big companies, the only painting a blue fridge green that's innovation but for the for the customer would say I don't pay more money if the fridge is green or blue or pink I expected anyway. 

And the same is with the circular economy is another trend of the Sustainable Development Goals is not only a trend is as well, highly discussed for years already with the with an economic world forum, which just was this week. And it's fascinating what of what of impacts that could have on people. 

And if you try to find out if you look at the top of the fridge, I just had this example you buy it then after 10 years or whatever the lifespan of this fridge is a huge fraud away. And with a circular environment, economy the company should use all these raw materials this whatever is in there to recycle and reuse it and much powdered metal probably is that would be in business model innovative business model. Just put it you have a flat rate for the for the fridge and that they they're replacing it every time it's needed. And you don't have to throw it away. 

Same you're doing with a with a with a phone, I guess it's a similar approach. You're still you're throwing it away. But there are lots of important materials in this, this trend to be of this suit of the green trend. If you like it, then environmental trend is a big one. And it's an old one already. But the solutions, technically they're coming up now and you have to be part of it.

Petra

So many golden nuggets to unpack. You said earlier that people are aware looking for stability, but clearly in this poker world that we live in, there is no such thing as stability. The only way how we can create stability is by being ahead of the game by researching by Reading by being more proactive, not relying on somebody else to create a career path for us because, you know, who knows what our industry or profession does in two years, thanks to technology and artificial intelligence, and all those changes. 

Now, you also mentioned that we need to look at a problem from different angles, it's not so much what we actually create, but how we what kind of outcome we are creating, not how we get to this outcome. thinking differently and being more creative, what are some ways to actually do this very practical tips that we can apply it to throw the box out of the window and actually have a different perspective to a problem

Thinking of boxes kind of buzzwords, in more than out of the box or three buzzwords already, but important is really I think, to work cross functional with other company to have as diverse teams should not be in whole, it should be an empty wording, you should reapply it diverse means you have different angles, it's I'm, I'm myself, I've only my circle of influence, I can read I need input to have output in my brain. 

But if you if you're surrounded by people, which are different, they have different angles, different experience, different education, different skills, and you, surrounding yourself by those people, you get much more input for yourself.

And then you're much more prone and able to think out of the box. And it's one thing I mean, surround yourself with people who are as well, like- minded, not happy with what they have, they want as well to, to get out of the comfort zone and to develop themselves. 

Because we live in a world of change. I mean, life is a constant development and a constant change. And if you should stick into what you have, you want to keep it conservative about that, then you don't get out and you can't develop.

That's one thing. The next thing is read as what you mentioned, read, inform yourself, do the best you can do to develop yourself besides Yeti in surrounding yourself with interesting, people were positive, and grace minded. 

And probably the third thing is more experimental in especially in vuca time, the proper approach is probably you have to shoot fast, then you have to, to measure and then aim again. It's not like the typical old way you first analyse probably need to understand what the problem is. And again, what the problem is, and you never try something out. Yeah, because you don't understand the problem. 

And that's exactly what a vuca means you haven't, it's too complex means you have too many variables, which is driving the result, you don't have an root cause relationship, which is obvious at the moment. And therefore the approach is really try experiment. 

And then learn from this experiment. And then do the next step do more from what's working and do less from is not working. 

I compare sometimes if you're walking in the middle of the night through what you can see something you have to go one step ahead, if you hit the tree, okay, change the direction. And if you don't hit the tree, you can do is to search in three sets, and so on. And that's the way you do. And if this fails forward, it's another buzzword means you have to shoes, little steps, extra mental and do them. 

Don't do this big step means write down your business plan for the next four years. And it's paper. You don't know if it's working out and my experience over 30 years, most of business plans don't work out because life's changing constantly. And what you expect is anyway, happens in a different way. And therefore excellent, experiment more and don't do this. Planning and doing pink word on paper. Just do it. what's on paper, do the next step and try it out.

Petra

I love those tips. 

It all comes down to just being a lot faster thinking on your feet, and not being afraid of anything to not go the right way. 

Because we don't know until we've tried whether things change and work out and because there are so many other elements that come into place that we have to respond to. And it's only getting more complex. Now that leads us into our next question in terms of what the future of a business model is since we're already seeing organizations getting leaner and flatter. Where do we see the future of business heading into also with more highly skilled professionals exiting the workplace and the truth is are the same in Europe at the moment, we are discussing the great resignation, that highly talented professionals leaving organizations because they don't want to go back to the, the workplace, nine to five or simply in the workplace. As such, they want to explore and experiment more with working from home having flexible work hours, certificates, experience through COVID-19. Where Where do we go from here?

Dr Michael Thiemann

I think what he said in the beginning, people realise the only thing which is the most valuable thing is Time, time of your life, and what you're doing with this time in your life, and the one tactic makes it possible that you can work from anywhere, and not even from home, you can work from anywhere like me, I'm living in Europe, something lower from southern France, from London, or at the moment to me, during the night and in Germany. That's one thing people realize they want to use that time wisely.

And just to fulfill, waited as well to just to fulfill somebody else's dream, like a company or just to as well-educated people, they have their own dream because they are smart and know what they want to do. And difference well ideas, but they want to try out. And in moments of crisis, you realize if you work from home, you're more isolated, that people think about what I have done the last 20 years, the last 10 years, should I do that the next 10 or 20 years. What I want to do, therefore this is a trend 

This is a trend companies have to adapt to that. And there's mentioned that as well as gig economies nothing as well new means lots of educated people they're there but much better often say I came I'm just offering my brain on an hourly rate on a daily rate and helping people but I don't see there my nine to five 220 days working here there. 

And that is constantly changing. People have to attract those people.

 They have to and the whole world is more experimental word and spoken that is much more projects. I've noticed typical waterfall projects, I don't know whether you know this, this you a project plan and little bit Greenwood again, and it's going to an agile approach, you have to get more agile organizations. 

Agile organization means really, that you try to work not only in CBDs, you need cross functional teams, which could be internal teams, external teams and a good mix around the world. 

You need diversity and that people realize it as well work in a silo for 20 years. if you for example account and working on in a silo, you have only a small picture of the whole of the whole company in terms of figures, what was the result, last year was result last month, people was well what's happened perspective in upfront because by myself, I started with Ernst and Young just to give you an example. And did auditing after university because I thought it's big money as an auditor and blah, blah, blah. 

But then after three, two months, I realized why should I look only into the path what happened last year or the next 10 years? And what went wrong? I'm more interested in how I can shape the world how can I sell things to make people happy, whatever, then I changed my career already after half a year back to banking and did the asset management and employee of portfolio management just to help people out to structure there, their thoughts and morals. And as people are realizing this more and more what they want probably haven't been picked on the world. 

They want to do something good for their knowledge. And you can do it much easier in a smaller agile way on your own than being a part of a big company like I do. I don't want to name names about it where you're just a small. How do you say that small wheel in the whole machine?

Petra

Absolutely. You also mentioned one of the trends is more project based rather than task based. And also breaking down the silos especially within an organization that the entire team is not just my department, but the team is the people who need to have on board to get to an outcome.

It might be three different people from three different departments. But this is my new team. Now when we talk about careers, especially when everything has changed so quickly, where do you see the future of careers overall heading into is it more project based to be more a generalist Is it still better to be a specialist

Dr Michael Thiemann

You can summarise another word, personal brand, really sorry, it's just personal brand is if you have your knowledge, your authority, your trust with authority, and stand behind it behind your values, what you're standing for, that's what is your personal run. 

And you can help a company you can, you can work for a company, as an employee, or as an on a CSU, as a leader, or whatever you can be employed or just held it as well as an extra. And that is, I think, the way to think about this means you have to own personal brand, sometimes this this brand has this company, with my knowledge with my experience with my skills, and I create results for this company. 

And I think this result driven approach as well where people are leaving companies, they want to have to bring results to their customers to them to their people they want to help, they don't rush just want to do something in the process they don't like. Therefore, personal brand is the future of the basic the fundament of the future of work because by your personal brand, you probably influencer and can help the company because you have so many connections. And think of a salesperson, the salesperson, nothing else has influence and he knows lots of people hasn't big relationship portfolio and can help companies to sell their product if the product is in line to the internal value. 

Petra

So it's a great point that we're going away from a job title that we have boxed into this industry or profession but going broader and want to be known for our values, our traits or characteristics and the results that we can achieve for others. Now, especially for more traditional employees who have never thought about this concept of building a brand rather than a career, what are some ways how we can get started especially if we are in a industry professional even in the company for say 20 years? 

Do we all of a sudden have to be come an influencer and being famous? Or what are some of the steps that we can take to get started?

Dr Michael Thiemann

I think the biggest step you should consider mid trend digitization with Internet of Things is lots of jobs it's just going from the for the lower jobs means everything what can be done automatically will be done automatically the race is the machine cheap or the person cheaper this question will be answered overtime quite quickly, since they have to reconsider what they're doing with their skills but what they will wake up definitely the harsh way but I think what education has to start as well as university or school to make people more to bring the modern intrapreneurial spirit it's coming back to my mantra therefore I want to help people to think as an entrepreneur to they have to consider you I must pass myself I'm an enterprise myself I have a need my brand to sell myself not in a in a negative way but to help people to provide results and it's a testament of education they have to do that as well it's not so important to read Shakespeare in Old English it's more important to understand how the mechanics of modern world how it can economies working and that's an educational thing and for people in the middle of their career they have as well to think much more about what is fair result what are they offering really to this company?

Is there an impact with this standpoint? If there is none, then they're at risk losing anywhere they drop.

Petra

such a great point this probably wraps up the conversation now Where can we find more about you and also support your aim to turn a million ideas into successful businesses and commercial solutions

Dr Michael Thiemann

I'm quite new to social media and I think I started last year. With LinkedIn, I'm most of activity of LinkedIn if you want to follow me there you will find some quite good content I'm trying to do it daily but sometimes I'm doing only every second day I should improve myself definitely. Otherwise, I have my own company under the webpage, www.strategy-lab.com. 

And you can find more information about me and plus I'm as you we are publishing constantly on Forbes sitting there on expert panels that you can find

Petra

Excellent. I'll put all the links in the show notes because your content is very forward thinking very practical, very actionable. And this is exactly what we need in this very confusing and very complex time that belief in so thank you so much for being on the show for making a three m style work for us and I'm looking forward to learning more about your next steps.

Dr Michael Thiemann

Thank you. Thank you. And I'm so happy to be on your show today.