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