„The underlying concept of our modern, very fast communication tools is to lower the transactional cost per bit of communication.” 

Christoph Magnussen calls himself “the New Work guy” – he helps people use New Work tools to improve collaboration and communication, making their work lives more “user-friendly” in the process. 

Of course, the concept of New Work has been around for a while – and Christoph actually sat down to talk to Frithjof Bergmann, its originator. “We agreed on one very simple thing: we have technology that can help us to organise work in a different way,” he says in this podcast. 

This is where the idea of effective communication is so important. It has the power to transform our work lives – and we should absolutely use those tools in our private lives too, he says. Speaking from my own experience, I know that anyone who’s been on their school’s PTA or even a kids-birthday-whatsapp-group will know why „lowering the transactional cost per bit of communication“ is so important outside of work too 🙈

One of his tips is to use different channels depending on what you’re communicating. Keep kids-logistics-questions and love-language with your partner as separate conversations, even online. This could help divide the mental load of childcare and home-logistics more fairly between partners too, because that communications channel remains strictly practical. 

At work, he recommends asymmetrical communication, as he puts it. That means fewer hours that everyone spends together in zoom meetings – and more short and to-the-point messages, short videos or presentations that only take one person’s time to prepare, and that everyone else can then digest and act on relatively quickly. 

The overarching aim is always to use New Work tools to live and work better. Parents have always been trailblazers when it comes to flexible work, mostly out of necessity. So I love the idea of taking some of those work tools back our home lives too ❤️

Speaker: Christoph Magnussen – CEO & founder @Blackboat · Author · Speaker · Youtuber · Podcaster · Dad

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Photo: Christoph Magnussen 

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #leadership #newwork #thenewworkguy #communication #flexiblework#changemakers #getinspiredpodcast #ImpulseSessions #parenthood #parentalleave #elternzeit

Antonella Mei-Pochtler has combined parenthood with an incredibly successful career – a linear trajectory first, taking her to the top management level at Boston Consulting Group – and then branching out into advisory boards and politics, as well as social engagement in the field of education.

„For me the question was always, how to live a rich life?” she tells me in this podcast. For her, a big part of that was managing expectations. „We always have to strike a balance of, how do I deal with these expectations, and how do I do the life in a way that I feel is most appropriate for what I feel comfortable with?“

Women (and men!) returning from parental leave today have the option of achieving that balance by working more flexibility than ever before. But Antonella cautions that anyone returning part-time and flexibly needs to ensure that not all of those part-time hours are spent working remotely. 

“If you want to get to the really interesting jobs that motivate you, that you are burning for, then you have to have a certain interaction with other people – and particularly also with the people who make career decisions,” she says.

Having said that, you’ll also be coming back from parental leave with valuable skills. „Leadership demands have become significantly more human- and team-centric,” she says. “To become an excellent leader you have to have the capability of empathy and understanding others. And this you definitely learn!” 

Speaker: Antonella Mei-Pochtler, Strategist, Supervisory Board Member @TUM Venture Labs, iSi Automotive & Plenitude, Head of @KofiAnnanAward for Innovation in Africa

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Photo: Antonella Mei-Pochtler

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #leadership #femaleleadership #womeninpower #equality #flexiblework #newwork #diversity #changemakers #equalpay #equalopportunities #getinspiredpodcast #ImpulseSessions #parenthood #parentalleave #elternzeit

This was the podcast that turned me into a football fan ⚽️🙌💙

Ariane Hingst is arguably one of Germany’s most successful soccer players. In an international career spanning 15 years, she won four European Championships, two World Championships, three Olympic medals and the World Cup. But this being women’s football, “no one recognised us, there wasn’t money to be earned,” she says. 

Like most female professional footballers, Ariane had to work two other jobs – first as a bank clerk and then as a physiotherapist – to make ends meet. Today, most female players in the second and third leagues still have to work other jobs outside of football, often full-time — which would unthinkable in the male leagues. 

Ariane is working to change that for the next generation. In 2022, she joined a group of female entrepreneurs as co-founder of FC Viktoria Berlin, with the aim of transforming the sport. „Of course it’s about soccer, but it’s more than soccer,” she says. „We want to establish a brand, we want to have visibility for the players, we want to have diversity, and obviously female empowerment!” 

2022 was a big year for women’s football in Germany, with a record 18 million viewers tuning in to watch the European Championship final between England and Germany. But there are still hurdles, and I saw so many parallels between the challenges that female footballers are facing and the issues that we’re dealing with in the business world: 

👉 the need for new work models! Especially in the third league where the new talent is, and where players still have to juggle training with paid jobs; 

👉 the fight for equal pay – women shouldn’t be earning less for the same job; 

👉 understanding that parenthood doesn’t change us for the worse, but for the better. Parents have “resilience and a never-give-up mentality,” says Ariane. And the fact that your body changes? “It could also be a positive thing!” 

👉 the importance of role models – why we have to tell the stories of people who are blazing the trail, even if they’re not famous or top of their game. Their experiences pave the way for others. 

Speaker: Ariane Hingst, Co-Founder @FC Viktoria Berlin, Co-Trainer DFB

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Photo: Ariane Hingst

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#Gamechanger #getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #diversity #changemakers #womensfootball #football #soccer #equalpay #equalopportunities #leadership #equality #getinspiredpodcast #ImpulseSessions

Tanja Dr. Prinzessin zu Waldeck turned her sitting room into an office just after she had her first baby – she used the space for her brand new startup, @NetMoms.

 Since then, she’s been a living role model for a variety of new & innovative working models, between working remotely and choosing flexible working hours, as she had three more children and built a career that took her from NetMoms to Tomorrow Focus News and now to COO at @Burda Forward. 

 This experience means that she embraces that flexibility as a leader too. “I think COVID showed us that you can run a company completely out of 800 home offices,” she tells me in this week’s podcast. “We don’t want to go back to 100% in the office, nobody wants that and I think it’s not useful anyhow. But we do expect people to invest 20% of their time in networking and team time.”

From my perspective at MyCollective I thought this was really interesting to hear from an executive level manager like Tanja – because this is something that we encourage new parents to do too, in the knowledge that networking (much like maintaining friendships outside of work) is one of those things that’s first to fall by the wayside when you have a baby. So whether it’s part of your corporate culture or not, I think aiming to invest 20% of your time into face time with colleagues or networking in general is a pretty good goal. It could be vital to your career at some point – as we say, “build the network when you don’t need it, so that you have it when you need it!” 

Speaker: Tanja Dr. Prinzessin zu Waldeck, COO @Burda Forward

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective 

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Tanja zu Waldeck / Burda Forward

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #getinspiredpodcast #ImpulseSessions #changemakers #leadership #sustainability #talentsustainability #parenthood #parents #workculture #newwork #network #stayintouch #workingparents #startup #womenleaders #parentalleave #elternzeit #changingthenarrative

Those of you who know me well will know that I’ve been on what feels like an eternal search for a role-model. It may even have been one of my motivations for founding MyCollective…

And yep – you’ve guessed it – that perfect role model doesn’t exist. It’s in the hundreds of stories lived by so many of you who constantly give me cause to stop and think and re-evaluate my choices.

But speaking to Ali Mahlodji for this week’s podcast I have to say – if you’re looking for a role model, especially a male role-model – I think we’ve found him 😊

Ali works with school-age children, corporate managers and NGOs to improve diversity everywhere from schools to businesses. So being a role-model is kind of what he does for a living. But his whole life story is a role-model for overcoming adversity and achieving success: after his parents fled Iran when he was a baby, he grew up as a refugee, had a stutter and didn’t graduate high school. Today he’s a member of the Forbes Business Council, an EU youth ambassador and a UNCEF ambassador; he runs his own business, has authored five books, given thousands of keynote speeches around the world and won dozens of awards, including the UN World Summit Award and Innovator of the Year.

We agreed that everyone can be a role-model, a hero for diversity. If you don’t have a community of like-minded people in your place of work, start one yourself. “You will see that maybe in the beginning you are only two people or three,” Ali says. “But then it grows. Don’t try to be the lone wolf. Find other men you can learn from and connect with each other, and then you will see you are not alone. Then there is a community of men who want to do it better than the people before them.”

We talked about how our workplaces have been transformed in the past couple of decades, driven not just by those change-makers, but also by the internet, financial crises and huge global shifts. We, as individuals, have an important part to play too – especially after big life events like parenthood. 

„When people take time off – and it can be traveling around the world, having kids, whatever it is – when you’re not your role for some time and you see yourself from outside, you’re like, I’m not going back that way!” he told me. “One day when you die and people are talking about your life,  you don’t want them saying, he was the guy who raised the share price by 4%. You want to be the person who was able to touch other people, change something. Think about how the last months of your life should look like – this is the end of your story. Always start with the end. Then you know what to do now.”

Speaker: Ali Mahlodji, founder @whatchado and @futureOne, author, investor, keynote speaker. 

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: @Stefan Joham/Ali Mahlodji 

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #diversity #changemakers #menfordiversity #leadership #equality #getinspiredpodcast #ImpulseSessions #parenthood #superpower #workingparents #parentalleave #elternzeit