Gerd Buehrig spent more than 25 years at Bertelsmann SE, a media, services and education company that operates in about 50 countries around the world. It includes the broadcaster RTL Group, the trade book publisher Penguin Random House, the magazine publisher Gruner + Jahr, the music company BMG, the service provider Arvato, the Bertelsmann Printing Group, the Bertelsmann Education Group and Bertelsmann Investments, an international network of funds. The company has 119,000 employees and generated revenues of €17.2 billion in the 2017 financial year. During his tenure Buehrig is credited with building a diverse range of internal learning programs and institutions–e.g. the Bertelsmann Corporate University with Harvard Business School, INSEAD, IESE and other renowned partners. While at Bertelsmann Buehrig was responsible for the HR function of an international division and served as country CEO and also involved in organizational development projects under the headline of digital transformation. He is currently a member of the faculty of futur/io, a new education and research institute focused on exponential technologies and how Europe might use them to create desirable futures. He recently spoke to The Innovator about how exponential technologies are changing the work place and what corporations need to do to adapt.
Q: How do you see the workplace changing?
GB: Since leaving Bertelsmann SE last July I have been in a kind of hyper reflection mode. The futur/io project is a good opportunity to contribute to shaping the future and not just future thinking about tech. The way technology is evolving and new forms of working together and living together are amplifying each other and will require us to frame a different form of community in our companies in order to thrive. This next generation is not going show to up at 8 a.m. , sit in some kind of cubicle, work as instructed and leaves at 5 pm. They need time and space to be creative and focus on problem solving. And we need to look at what people would be able to do differently as a way of looking at change. The whole exponential story implies change but very often change is done to people, and they have no choice or time to react. But once you give people an idea of what kind of change in terms of progress is coming it makes things much easier — even if the outcome for the individual is complicated, tricky and hard. It can mean having to change professions or even saying goodbye to people in an humane and authentic way.
Q: What type of leadership changes will this require?
GB: This notion of transparency and compassion is where leadership needs to go in the future. Transparency means leaders no longer need to looking for reasons why not to share information.. Transparency also goes in the direction of building a shared consciousness. This mult-brain shared consciousness happens when you invite people to learn together and whitness their personal growth process. This is one thing we were able to build at Bertelsmann SE when we founded one of the first corporate universities in Europe in mid-90s. We created a sustainable development platform for top management and high potentials which has always been brought up-to-date over more than 20 years now.
Q: What else should companies be thinking about?
GB: Some people look at the whole notion of digital transformation as a move from point a to b and once you are at b you are done. The important thing for leaders to understand is that this will never, ever end. It is about ongoing transition rather than linear transformation. The speed and complexity will only increase. In the future we will not even discriminate between digital and non-digital but the relevance of you what you do will constantly be called into question. The danger is you end up like Kodak and Nokia. Some companies have to die to raise themselves up again. If your responses and resources are weak and the challenges are very hard this is what I call torture. This is when you start to come up with all the wrong things you can do and finally end up in the graveyard. But even if you meet the challenges and survive you will have to constantly figure out how to stay there. Stay-up is much harder than Start-up. When you are in the lucky space called survival there are two other things that come into play — execution and opportunity. You can survive because you execute in a better way or you can decide execution is not so important but seizing opportunities is, so experimenting makes more sense than your next excellence initiative. The cost of excellence should not exceed your investment in experimentation.
Q: What is your best advice to corporates?
GB: Place resources around customer projects and look at your people in terms of potential, let them know that their contribution shape the company’s future and they have the opportunity to be a part of that. The ultimate idea would to be to create a flow process that allows emergence of new projects and ideas to happen. Management needs to move the roadblocks out of the way. And there needs to be a focus on consent rather than consensus. It is ok to disagree and commit at the same time. This requires trust so people invest in their relationships without holding too much back. Trust is the primary workforce enabler, it reduces complexity and powers the flywheel. Building a different way of relating to one another is very important. Create networks over hierarchies and ensure the networks are loosely coupled but highly aligned and send the message to the teams that they have the freedom to act, enable and authorize. “Is it safe to try?” is a great question to speed up. Go beyond purpose — dare to share what really matters and be vulnerable. Emotions will play a much bigger role in the future — people need to get used to bringing emotions into the corporate world. When people put their skin in the game, it changes everything. And finally , there is no future without story telling so don’t shy away from taking on the role of a social architect — this will be expected of future leaders. Create stories that people can relate to emotionally. And for this we might need some new job descriptions on the C-level, what about a CEO becoming the Chief Experimentation Officer, the COO could take over the job of the Chief Orgdesign Officer, CTO could stand for Chief Transition Officer and the CHRO of the future could be described as the Chief Happiness and Resilience Officer.
Gerd Buehrig spent more than 25 years at Bertelsmann SE, a media, services and education company that operates in about 50 countries around the world. It includes the broadcaster RTL Group, the trade book publisher Penguin Random House, the magazine publisher Gruner + Jahr, the music company BMG, the service provider Arvato, the Bertelsmann Printing Group, the Bertelsmann Education Group and Bertelsmann Investments, an international network of funds. The company has 119,000 employees and generated revenues of €17.2 billion in the 2017 financial year. During his tenure Buehrig is credited with building a diverse range of internal learning programs and institutions–e.g. the Bertelsmann Corporate University with Harvard Business School, INSEAD, IESE and other renowned partners. While at Bertelsmann Buehrig was responsible for the HR function of an international division and served as country CEO and also involved in organizational development projects under the headline of digital transformation. He is currently a member of the faculty of futur/io, a new education and research institute focused on exponential technologies and how Europe might use them to create desirable futures. He recently spoke to The Innovator about how exponential technologies are changing the work place and what corporations need to do to adapt.
Q: How do you see the workplace changing?
GB: Since leaving Bertelsmann SE last July I have been in a kind of hyper reflection mode. The futur/io project is a good opportunity to contribute to shaping the future and not just future thinking about tech. The way technology is evolving and new forms of working together and living together are amplifying each other and will require us to frame a different form of community in our companies in order to thrive. This next generation is not going show to up at 8 a.m. , sit in some kind of cubicle, work as instructed and leaves at 5 pm. They need time and space to be creative and focus on problem solving. And we need to look at what people would be able to do differently as a way of looking at change. The whole exponential story implies change but very often change is done to people, and they have no choice or time to react. But once you give people an idea of what kind of change in terms of progress is coming it makes things much easier — even if the outcome for the individual is complicated, tricky and hard. It can mean having to change professions or even saying goodbye to people in an humane and authentic way.
Q: What type of leadership changes will this require?
GB: This notion of transparency and compassion is where leadership needs to go in the future. Transparency means leaders no longer need to looking for reasons why not to share information.. Transparency also goes in the direction of building a shared consciousness. This mult-brain shared consciousness happens when you invite people to learn together and whitness their personal growth process. This is one thing we were able to build at Bertelsmann SE when we founded one of the first corporate universities in Europe in mid-90s. We created a sustainable development platform for top management and high potentials which has always been brought up-to-date over more than 20 years now.
Q: What else should companies be thinking about?
GB: Some people look at the whole notion of digital transformation as a move from point a to b and once you are at b you are done. The important thing for leaders to understand is that this will never, ever end. It is about ongoing transition rather than linear transformation. The speed and complexity will only increase. In the future we will not even discriminate between digital and non-digital but the relevance of you what you do will constantly be called into question. The danger is you end up like Kodak and Nokia. Some companies have to die to raise themselves up again. If your responses and resources are weak and the challenges are very hard this is what I call torture. This is when you start to come up with all the wrong things you can do and finally end up in the graveyard. But even if you meet the challenges and survive you will have to constantly figure out how to stay there. Stay-up is much harder than Start-up. When you are in the lucky space called survival there are two other things that come into play — execution and opportunity. You can survive because you execute in a better way or you can decide execution is not so important but seizing opportunities is, so experimenting makes more sense than your next excellence initiative. The cost of excellence should not exceed your investment in experimentation.
Q: What is your best advice to corporates?
GB: Place resources around customer projects and look at your people in terms of potential, let them know that their contribution shape the company’s future and they have the opportunity to be a part of that. The ultimate idea would to be to create a flow process that allows emergence of new projects and ideas to happen. Management needs to move the roadblocks out of the way. And there needs to be a focus on consent rather than consensus. It is ok to disagree and commit at the same time. This requires trust so people invest in their relationships without holding too much back. Trust is the primary workforce enabler, it reduces complexity and powers the flywheel. Building a different way of relating to one another is very important. Create networks over hierarchies and ensure the networks are loosely coupled but highly aligned and send the message to the teams that they have the freedom to act, enable and authorize. “Is it safe to try?” is a great question to speed up. Go beyond purpose — dare to share what really matters and be vulnerable. Emotions will play a much bigger role in the future — people need to get used to bringing emotions into the corporate world. When people put their skin in the game, it changes everything. And finally , there is no future without story telling so don’t shy away from taking on the role of a social architect — this will be expected of future leaders. Create stories that people can relate to emotionally. And for this we might need some new job descriptions on the C-level. What about a CEO becoming the Chief Experimentation Officer, the COO could take over the job of the Chief Orgdesign Officer, CTO could stand for Chief Transition Officer and the CHRO of the future could be described as the Chief Happiness and Resilience Officer?
