Its time to rethink work

[Music]

[Applause]

today

i often hear people talk about the new

normal

the normal after the covet 19 pandemic

and i sometimes wonder has there always

or ever been the normal don’t things

change

all the time constantly

i was born in 1980

life and work were a lot different than

this old normal in the 80s it doesn’t

look so promising when you look at it

from today’s point of view take my

father’s office for example

back in 1990. i used to go there after

school

drove home with my dad for lunch and it

was normal for employees to smoke during

work

and they did most of them all the time

all day long

they didn’t work for eight hours they

normally worked

longer and some people didn’t even for

didn’t even work for five days but they

worked for six days

in germany that only changed in 1994

when the 40 hours five day week

was legally regulated imagine 150 years

ago people worked for 85 hours

on a six day week schedule

this eight hour work day was a

breakthrough

and a new normal but today

people think when people still think

it’s the only

reasonable and the only possible number

of hours people should work

aside from the hours many other aspects

of work life

were very different too they just didn’t

have the tools we have now

computers sorry use your typewriter

emails send effects

mobile phones sorry not there yet they

didn’t have the technology it just

hadn’t been invented

in many families you would find the

classic approach where the father

handled the money

while the mother took care of kids

household and so on

cost of living was half of it than it

was today well then it is today it

almost doubled or it

more than doubled over the last 20 years

and today many families can only keep

their standard of living

when having two or sometimes even three

jobs that’s partly due to all the

technological progress we’ve seen

many of them well the inventions many of

them

brought a lot of comfort into our lives

and apparently today we all need a new

smartphone

every other year

just as television took over the living

rooms in the 60s

suddenly we had a sony walkman mine was

black

for mobile music consumption the

commodore 64 for personal computing

and now smartphones tablets laptops

portable speakers in almost every room

all of these great inventions made life

not only more costly

but also also speeded it up

suddenly we were always on always

available

we wake up every morning in a world

where almost nobody has time

for anything anymore we are all running

at full speed

in this world of technological progress

and high speed society

i started my own business back in 2007

and we worked hard in long hours just as

i thought how it has to be this is how

it has to be

and just as if you could only decide

between a life full of work

or a life full of self-determination

i felt like it i could either be

successful and have

or have time for private matters but

never for both

and that there was just no alternative

as a business owner

of course running a company with 40

employees or more

is often stressful but even in my

personal time

i’ve often had work related thoughts in

my mind

there were project deadlines there were

emails there were clients calling at any

time of the day or even at weekends

so often i wasn’t really present when

with my wife my kids my family my

friends

or even with myself

when my father suddenly died 10 years

ago i realized life is short

and life should include more than just

working all the time

i felt that life should be more than

that and we need to adjust work

to today’s world a world full of

complexity full speed global business

models

technology like where everything is

connected with that

with everything don’t get me wrong

i really love my work i really love

working hard

but delivering high quality creative

work and output

is just not it just doesn’t work for

eight hours

the old equation of long hours equaling

maximum output is just not true when it

comes to brainwork

and with computers artificial

intelligence and robotics

more and more of our business tasks

become brainwork

that’s where we are so

the right environment and the right

balance become crucial

perhaps you experience it yourself

there’s not much in the way of creative

thinking and you’ve just had an argument

with your partner in the morning

or with a colleague with your boss

or when you just couldn’t cope with all

the personal and business tasks

that are that are around you all the

time

achieving the right balance in a world

of stress having no time for anything

else is hard to achieve

my idea for how to solve it changed the

way we work

that fits the world around us a way in

which people can be just as productive

while living a happy healthy and

self-determined life

my approach the five hour work day

while honoring existing salaries and

holiday entitlements

and this is what i introduced in 2017

for not only me but for all of my

colleagues too

when we started this experiment in

november 2017

the world seemed to go crazy we

were suddenly we ended up all over the

place from local news

papers to international television

channels from the wall street journal to

the new york times

and what happened apparently we hit the

zeitgeist

people long for new work concepts

especially for those

that promise more personal time more

time for your personal tasks

and therefore we were news apparently

no good news for some some employees

didn’t seem to appreciate my approach

they were afraid they would lose

something

even some friends and relatives couldn’t

understand it they were wondering

at a conference an entrepreneur even

asked me do you only leave your house

with bodyguards these days

and i was puzzled because i never looked

at it that way

for me business doesn’t have to be a war

zone

where some people win most of the other

people lose

when considering the five hour work day

it wasn’t about

working less it was about finding a

better way to deliver high quality work

and output

only for me again but for all of us

i was convinced that we all could win

the bosses

employees and even the clients bosses

because happy and motivated people

deliver the best

work they can do employees

because suddenly they have time to deal

with their life

and can deal with today’s challenges

and clients because in the end they all

pay for results they don’t pay for the

people

sitting on the chair to keep them warm

and by the way experts who are motivated

and have time and strive for excellence

in the job

they will always outperform the people

who just come to work

to keep their child with their chest

warm

look the way we work has changed

dramatically over the last 20 or 30

years

nowadays we have computational power at

our hands that no one could imagine when

i was young

with software and hardware improving

every day and in a way that’s not

limited to our industry

it affects all of us the changes the

mega trends

they affect us not only in a good way

over the last few decades the rate of

mental illness and company sick days has

risen exponentially

and at the same time attention span has

gone down

and still we all believe and try to

constantly work

faster or we try to work faster

but increasing speed continuously

doing more tasks at once will not fix

things

it will not result in better quality

work or output

especially when it comes to tasks where

tasks that cannot be speeded up

creativity needs time and some processes

need time

people need time people need balance

therefore today is rather the opposite

we need to slow down

slow down to get our priorities straight

slow down and fix our work culture

when we all including science know that

no one

can deliver creative work or brain work

eight hours straight why stick to it

we have moved away from the repetitive

work of the industrial age

and we can use computers for many

repetitive tasks now

most of us need our human capacities in

the day-to-day work life

but i will show you the brain wasn’t

made for eight-hour creative work

it just doesn’t work plus it’s hard to

stay focused

in a world of distractions

almost everywhere we have apps trying to

get our attention

apps from whatsapp to instagram from

push notifications to emails from

snapchat to tick tock

creative instant gratification apps to

constant use flows

as i said before our world is constantly

speeding up

nobody has time for anything these days

and our most common excuse is

sorry i don’t have time no time for

anything

so we all experience stress every day

we need to calm down society needs to

calm down

people need to get that time back to

cope with today’s challenges

they need to get back in balance and

then

magic can happen when do you have your

best ideas

probably while taking a walk in the

forest or on holiday at the beach

or was having a shower not while sitting

at your desk staring at your screen and

blinking curses

and then suddenly our approach makes

sense

we gave people that time back because we

need them in a state of balance

in a world of high complexity we need to

give people time to sort themselves out

to cope with today’s challenges society

and the press all to often reduce our

approach

just to the numbers of hours we work

right not eight but five

but it’s a lot more than that it’s about

how we work together

how we create an environment of safety

and how we

create an environment of well-being for

everyone

it’s about how we communicate with with

each other

how we discuss imperfect processes and

just

change them and find ways to improve

them

we have to look at structures and tools

that don’t fit or might be outdated

take the fax machine for example we need

to look at distractions that

continuously get us out of the zone

we need to discuss the culture in which

we excel

and we need to be honest and open with

each other

we need diverse views we need

relationships with each other

we need a shared vision of where we’re

going

we all need to take care of the big

picture

but we all need to take care of

individual needs also

over the last three years there were

lots of findings

colleagues tell me that they are more

mindful when it comes to their general

lifestyle

sports healthy diet

they picked up long forgotten hobbies

that make them happy

don’t feel as stressed out because they

have enough time for all their personal

tasks for family issues or even for

personal growth

they have time to find some quiet time

before taking on their personal issues

they have time for the kids for

relationships

they have time to learn new things again

some of them work related

which benefits the company and some have

picked up volunteer work

some realized that they wanted to do

something else and

left my company do i think that’s bad no

i think it’s fine

it’s great why because they realized

they’re not

reaching their full potential and wanted

to be somewhere else wanted to do to

work somewhere else

despite all the good parts about the

five-hour workday

of course things didn’t go as easily as

it sounds

we had problems of course and it didn’t

or just doesn’t work out every day

suddenly problems arise in projects

some things didn’t go as expected

project deadlines have to be shortened

but in the end we’re happy to have done

it

we have constantly improved and adapted

and that leads me to the main lesson

we all need to be able be agile

be aware of change and adapt to it

because we can’t plan the future

these days business models are disrupted

all the time

things just happen like the corona virus

we have to be able to deal with it

but you’re only able to deal with it

when you have the energy to do so

we need to give people time back to deal

with the complexity of today’s world

today’s world and society

with their self-development and their

personal issues and happiness and we as

entrepreneurs and we as society we will

benefit from it

the current state of work is outdated

it’s time to change the work for the

better

we need to create the new normal for

work

it will help us it will have our

business

our families our kids the society and

the world

thank you

you