I AM HERE TO COLLABORATE WITH YOU
The Story
"Replacing the HOW we organize the world today and moving from a competition1st to a collaboration1st approach, can bring us the turnaround we all aspire as a community of human beings living in an interdependent ecosystem."
I am a Mechanical Engineer by education. Early in my work life I realized that I much more connect to people than to machines and technical drawings. Having had that on my mind I became a technical project manager and later a Sales Engineer, trying to connect the intersection between technology and human beings. In these roles I worked for small enterprises as well as international corporates.
During this time in my life, I still believed in the excitement of the vertical career. So, I climbed the ladder to the top, becoming a C-level executive in a medium-sized organization. However, this only lasted for a couple of months.
Why was that? - ....well, I would say I had some eye-opening moments such as witnessing out of the sudden a different behavior from colleagues towards me. Only days before the promotion people trusted me and were openly interacting with me. That changed in the second I was announced to become the new CSO. Instead of the desired impact I was aspiring, my relationships with the people that I would have called friends, suffered under this new title. In 2015 I made the decision to leave this environment and in fact decided for a hard cut and leave the employer-employee relationship forever.
Then something happened that completely changed my direction. The interesting twist in that, I cannot explain until today, how a book called “Reinventing Organizations” ended up in my mailbox. My only explanation is that I unconsciously ordered it online and forgot about it. But then again, why in the world would a mechanical engineer, a CSO in the Renewable Energy industry, order a book like that?
This little memory loss has turned my life upside down, though. The book includes 12 stories of self-managed companies from around the world, which inspired my brain to connect with my heart. It felt like I had never been closer to my purpose.
Following the advice from Frederic Laloux, the author of this book, I became a Holacracy Coach, which was considered an out of the box solution to become a self-managed organization. However, I quickly learned that this turned out to be just half of the truth. Collecting more experiences and experimenting with different cases, I realized there must be more to it. In 2017 I started developing my own organizational model together with the likeminded Gebhard Borck. With this highly individual, integrated, and dynamic approach several customers have become fully self-managed organizations and teal organizations, how people int hat space would call it. The #AdaptiveOrg has proved to support companies in different industries, sizes, and maturity levels in their successful transformation. I stand for a Collaboration1st world.
I am a German native and speak English as well.
THE COLLABORATORS
GEBHARD BORCK
Thought Leader
After his first employment Gebhard decided that he would never again join a company as an employee. Frustrated by his early work-life experiences he went on to become a freelance consultant working for companies who want to adapt their way of doing business for the better. This happened more than 20 years ago, and so Gebhard is today one of the most experienced experts for self-managed organizations and based in Germany.
TINE
BIEBER
Conscious Entrepreneur
Tine is based in Amsterdam, NL, holds a MBA and specializes in organizational cultures. She is an experienced self-management practitioner and has pioneered New Work approaches the past 5 years in a purpose-driven Dutch company. Her focus area has been in organizational purpose and emotional intelligence. She worked for multiple organizations of different sizes & cultures in industries as Web Services, Pharma, Education, Advertising, Gastronomy, Oil & Gas and Textile to understand the patterns & challenges over the years. She is the co-founder of UNI Emotions and the co-founder if iandê.
JOSE
LEAL
New Work Researcher
As a C-level executive, Jose experienced the disconnection of the heart and the mind in the way business is majorly done around the globe. At some point, he decided to leave this paradigm to research the actual needs of human beings and what a thriving organization needs to succeed on the long-term. He is an expert in self-management and teal organizations and based in San Francisco's Bay Area.
ELAINE
FAVERO
Emotions Entrepreneur
After being a tax lawyer for 9 years, Elaine transitioned her career in order to bring more happiness and lightness to organizations.
She has been a consultant and mentor for 5 years, working directly or indirectly to improve the quality of life in companies. In her studies and work, she realized that the cause of all misunderstandings, distrust and difficulty in working in collaboration have a common root: emotions. Today, she is an expert in emotional intelligence and based in the center of Brazil, close to Brasilia. Elaine is the founder of UNI Emotions and the co-founder of iandê.