David Nyeste

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility Meetings have become more ubiquitous during the pandemic. I am engaged in a constant competition to manage my own time and schedule against various interests. Therefore I regularly spend a reasonable amount of time in order to contemplate on the best ways to invest my own and sometimes also my colleagues' time. The best thing I could come up with so far are a few principles that serve as checks and balances against wasting time. But before elaborating on those principles, let me give you a visceral truth about the use of your own and other people's times in a business context: "If you are conducting a one-hour meeting at your company, you have effectively stolen one hour from every person in the room. If there are twenty people in the room, your presentation is now the equivalent of a twenty-hour investment. It is therefore your responsibility to ensure that you do not waste the hour..." [Matthew Dicks, Storyworthy] The Dem...

The Power of Inclusion My first post on this blog was in German. At the time it was a spontaneous idea to share a unique experience that I knew would mark a significant moment in my life. I shared it foremost with my friends and the members of my sports club. Later I started to write posts in English just to test how it feels. As a German native speaker I only speak English as a second language, so why would I write in English? A simple and obvious explanation is that English is spoken by a lot more people than German. I do not intend this blog exclusively for a German speaking audience. In order to grant access to this content for as many people as possible is of course a very obvious, however not my most important reason. More Eloquence is More Potential for Clutter During my professional experience on multiple international projects and assignments I have realized that English native speakers can sometimes fall into a squabble where they talk a lot but say very little. Especially Am...

Digital Minimalism Is Overrated Over the past years I have strived towards a more self determined digital and professional identity. Minimalism is a huge and timeless topic. Social media, video and streaming platforms, books and magazines are filled with digital and material minimalism content. It seems the present value maximizers (e.g. #yolo) are currently losing ground in the battle for attention against the end value maximizers (e.g. #firemovement). However I am convinced a focus on minimalism only misses an important point: the road to happiness in modern day's fast paced communication cycles is not a question of principle, but a question of the right balance. Hence the answer to the question of the right digital strategy, regardless whether private or professional, can not be answered by a one time decision to embrace a monk like minimalism. Rather you should continually reevaluate your options, necessities and focus on balancing your digital habits. Why I Turned Off All Push...

The fairy tale of excess capacity In consulting it is fashionable, sometimes even mandatory to work hard and to work excessive hours. Of course when it comes to formal documentation of the hours worked everybody is 100% compliant with German labour laws...'of course'. However the 'informal reality' often gives a different impression. The notion that anyone is capable of working more than ten hours highly concentrated on a daily basis over several days or weeks time by pure willpower is something I always considered suspicious to say the least. I witnessed a decent count of occasions of late work and night shifts, where a team had to hit a deadline for a proposal or some documents for workshops or a steering committee and so on. On these occasions I noticed two different types of colleagues: the ones that were staring holes into their laptop screens while typing and clicking away on their computers frantically and the ones that were not. You guessed it: 4 out of 5 of the...

Focus on Impact You might know this 'law of the vital few' under one of its synonyms: the 80-20 rule, pareto efficiency, the rule of diminishing returns, to name a few. There's a wide range of matters where this rule can be applied successfully and some others, where it cannot. In this post I will build a strong case why you should apply this rule in your everyday work life and how to best leverage it on some of the most vital aspects of life. Theory Basics According to the 80-20 rule 80% of outcome is caused by 20% of input. For instance this could be applied in sales as to a company that makes 80% of profit with 20% of its customers, or a carpenter that uses 20% of his toolset for 80% of the work, or that most people spend 80% of their total time consumed by their smartphone on 20% of the apps and so on, 80% of global CO2 emissions are caused by 20% of the nations worldwide (probably even significantly less). One significant fact to note is that this rule is indifferent t...

Popular work ethic in consulting  has aspects of self exploitation. Most consultants I met had a tendency to stretch the definition of 'fit for work' to its limits. I remember an assignment a few years back where I took the 6am flight on Monday and flew to the next client in the middle of the week or home at the end of it. The problem was that at one point during the winter I caught a really nasty flu that would not go away for several weeks. At its peak it was so bad, my ears would pop on the Monday flight and I would only be able to hear everything in a damp, silent mode. It always took a few days until my hearing was back to normal again, and guess what: that was usually just the time I would take the flight back - back to square one. Another issue was that this situation occurred a few weeks before a major go live of our client and the entire project team was on fire pretty much 24/7. After a successful go live and the first week of hypercare, when the excitement of any maj...

Why Recovery Is Existential The most valuable lesson I learned in my years as a competitive swimmer was that the human body has one major advantage over machines: the power to super-compensate. Supercompensation is the capability of the human organism to restore above the initial performance level after exercise. Basically how this works is this: Training/ physical exercise does damage to your body - muscles, mitochondria, neurons, tendons are strained, energy reserves are depleted. After your workout your organism immediately starts to rebuild your body. The exceptionally cool thing that distinguishes living organisms from machines is that your body is smart: it will recover a notch above the initial level - this magical behaviour is called ‘supercompensation’. If you manage to hit the right volume, intensity and most importantly: the appropriate recovery repeatedly, you will improve over time. If one could apply this principle to machines you could for instance buy a Fiat Panda and w...

Meetings, Minefields and Mindfields Today I will elaborate on why it is necessary to have a strategy for focused work. In case you don't have a clear strategy for how you can finish complicated, demanding tasks on a regular basis, you should start to think up a solution for this problem immediately. How and why I do this is revealed in the next lines. This will hopefully stay an exception, but let's start with a rant: it often strikes me with what level of ease and with what level of total disregard for people's time and schedule some colleagues invite to meetings of questionable purpose on short notice. By 'questionable purpose' I mean those meetings, where you don't have any agenda, you don't get any info on your expected input or why you're being invited in the first place and of course -the classic- : no documentation of the outcome. My impression is that as I proceed through my work-week those spontaneously created 'alignment-meetings' keep ...

Negotiation Strategy Basics Before engaging in any negotiations you should set up some rules and guidelines for how you plan to approach the situation. Let me elaborate on some basic principles of negotiation and focus on some specific strategies that I was able to apply effectively on multiple occasions. I was able to negotiate multiple work contracts that were mutually satisfying and I was always happy to sign each one of them. Most importantly however: looking back at all the deals I am still happy with each one of my decisions. I accredit this fact to successful negotiations. Principle I The Invariant of Negotiations: Foster Relationships All negotiations should lead to better relationships between the parties. Your paramount objective ought to be to enjoy the debate and to learn something, regardless if a deal is cut or not. Remember you all have a mutual interest and both parties will do their best to find common ground. Hence your focus should not be on convincing your counterpa...

The Image of Leadership Whenever I think of the vital aspects of leadership I think of a cartoon sheep with a red tie: the Leadersheep (google it!). Words like values, vision, mission, purpose and all those ingredients flare up in my mind. I think of principles, role models, charismatic people and of Barack Obama. In fact 'What would Obama do?' is a question I sometimes ask myself - first off he would start a sentence and then in the middle pause for a minute. Only when we have to put leadership into action do we realize the first hurdle: communication. For instance change management, admittedly one of the more challenging fields of leadership, is virtually all about the right communication strategy. Mindset of an Agile Leader To be an agile leader you have to be prepared to improve on a daily basis. Take every opportunity and everyone you encounter - every client, colleague, mentor, memo, every email, every pitch, every conversation, status meeting, project kick-off, and so on...

Winning is great, not losing is greater Professional traders on the stock exchange close multiple deals each day. When they close a deal they have certain expectations of how much risk and how much profit is implicated in the deal. One common way to limit the risk is to set a 'stop loss'. Let's assume a trader buys oil for 50$ a barrel and hopes to sell it later for 55$. He will sell  as soon as the price has reached 55$  and take the profit. At the same time he will hedge against failure and set a 'stop loss' limit, in case the price should dip below 48$. At this point he will sell for 48$ with a loss of 2$. This way he is able to exit the deal at a predefined point and avoid any further loss. Master Class MFR The minimum feasible requirement (MFR) works the same way. The point is to define absolute limits prior to negotiations which you will not break under any circumstances. I usually go with a set of three items: fixed annual salary, days of vacation, ability to...

Prepare For Impact Prior to the actual negotiation, you ought to be clear on three things: 1. Your Maximum Plausible Demands (MPD) 2. Your Minimal Feasible Requirements (MFR) 3. Your concessions strategy All three aspects will determine the success of the negotiations. They can make all the difference between you coming out of the negotiations beaming while hovering above the ground or like a beaten dog carrying your head under your shoulder. It is key to be specific and as precise as possible on all three of them. The more you are aware of what you want and what you don't, as well as what you are willing to sacrifice, the more you'll be able to make an impact at the negotiation table and to achieve your goals. For now I will focus on the first: Maximum Plausible Demand - MPD In a job interview, whether with a headhunter or with some staff member of your potential employer it is likely they will ask you for your desired salary or to share information on your current salary. Be ...

The Vehicle This simple model may help you to lay out your strategy for the development of your skills, your personality and ultimately a large part of your identity, that will be influenced and defined by your work. Over many years I have developed a model for work that generally resembles a generic type of vehicle that will take you from A to B. Anybody is free to pick their own type of vehicle according to their personal preferences and thus embark on their individual journey. Basic Idea The basic idea behind the model: Different types of vehicles with different kinds of implications make up the unique work experience of the individual. Whether you would rather focus on the journey itself or rather on achieving certain goals, you can make your choice accordingly. For instance there is the hot air balloon,  which could represent the work within a large corporation. With minimal attendance it moves slowly and comfortably -pretty much on autopilot all the time- and is only mildly s...