David Nyeste

Deliberate planning and acting make teams more resilient Brittle bridges over beautiful Bonn As a “self made Bonner” it worries me to see what is going on in Bonn. Because of my deep affection for Bonn it hurts me that lately it has frequently been the center of attention in the media for reasons nobody can possibly enjoy: One of its three bridges over the Rhine river was shut down on short notice due to risk of failure. Apparently a combination of insufficient maintenance, inadequate oversight, and decades of increasing traffic led to severe damage that went unnoticed until some dangerous cracks were discovered. Most Germans still remember the sudden and unexpected collapse of a bridge in Dresden in September 2024. One incident is a tragedy. Two are patterns. However Bonn’s Bridges merely symbolize a wider misconception: people’s illusion with change happening ‘by accident’ or being brought to them, rather than having some agency in it and driving change. Von Moltke, Eisenhower and Ty...

  AI Doesn't Change the Most Important Leadership Question Every endurance athlete eventually learns an important lesson. When training starts paying off and your aerobic engine gets stronger, there is a temptation to simply train more. Ride another hour. Add another interval. Fill every available minute with more work. Ironically, that's often the moment progress slows down. Experienced athletes know that improved fitness is not a reward to be spent. It is a resource to be invested wisely. Sometimes the smartest decision isn't another training session. It's recovery. It's refining technique. It's improving nutrition. It's studying race tactics. It's preparing for tomorrow rather than exhausting yourself today. The goal was never to maximize training volume. The goal was always to maximize performance. I have the feeling that organizations are about to face exactly the same challenge. The Wrong Question Artificial intelligence promises significant produc...

Good leaders give good answers - great leaders ask the right questions Yet most organizations spend enormous effort debating answers while hardly questioning whether they are asking the right questions in the first place. That may be the single biggest reason why so many strategies fail. Strategy is important … and so is culture “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is a famous quote for the importance of organizations’ behavioural framework over their business strategies. I agree to disagree. Pitting culture against strategy is like discussing whether your left shoe is more important than your right. Organizational culture and business strategy should be regarded more like the Yin and Yang, since in a best case scenario they complement each other and enable a virtuous cycle. The world’s greatest cooks will fail to satisfy customers with bad recipes and vice versa. The question is not which one is more important, but how to create a great, durable culture and create consistently good s...

What can we learn from Germany’s failure in the FIFA World Cup 2026? Germans have a special relationship to soccer. According to Jürgen Klopp, a famous German football coach, “Soccer is the most important of unimportant things on earth.” So after being kicked out of the tournament in the round of 32 the most obvious question in the room might be:”What can we learn from it?” Here’s my personal five take-aways: See the bigger picture Football unites people all over the world. It makes no practical sense to watch 22 men chasing a ball for 90 minutes - actually there’s little activities imaginable that are less productive. Nevertheless those people that watch games for fun are usually all fired up and really emotionally invested. If we could all just see past our local affiliations and acknowledge our broader affection for the game itself, rather than just for “our team”, we might actually enjoy the rest of the tournament as well. Don’t play the blame game It did not take long until a ste...