Agile Evening

On September 28, the 7th Agile Evening took place at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences under the motto »We’re changing the world of work.« What can still inspire talent these days? In an age when people don’t live to work—but work to live. What can employers do now to not only attract employees but also inspire them? Over 100 participants were guided through the evening by Karin Foidl-Mehrlänger, Senior Lecturer in the Department of »People & Organization Development«, and the event was brought to life by four outstanding female speakers.

Manuela Fuchshofer, Diversity Manager at dm drogerie markt Austria, and Julia Voßmann highlighted the pros and cons of shared leadership and shared their experiences with job-sharing models at DM. The evening focused not only on new concepts like these but also on the timely topic of »remote work« which has now become an integral part of the new world of work. After nearly eight years in a corporate career, Dr. Julia-Sophie Ezinger took the leap into entrepreneurship and founded the startup Rhome. The mission? Bringing work to life. And for them, that means above all ensuring that the flexibility of where one works becomes a more natural part of everyday work life. Rhome is an innovative app that removes all barriers to (mobile) work abroad and helps companies give their employees this freedom. A graduate of our »Innovation & Management in Tourism« program also shared her expertise on the topic of »remote work«: Selina Schwarzenbacher founded her company, Euro Yachting, at just 22 years old and inspired the audience with her »out-of-the-box« thinking and fresh approaches. Another highlight of the evening was Sarah Irina Dörler, CEO and founder of Rock your Work: She empowers companies to turn their employees into fans—people who neither burn out nor burn through—and captivated the audience with her enthusiasm for her work.

What are the three building blocks for building digital competitive advantages?

1. Content: a company’s classic USP
2. Experience: the experiences of customers and employees are becoming increasingly important
3. Platform: What IT platforms are available to support the rapid launch of new (digital) products and services?

At the 6th Agile/Digital Evening on May 3, 2023, at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Josef Hackl—one of the most experienced business managers and developers specializing in prosperity and turnaround cases—provided unique insights into how these three building blocks were implemented at the Wild Group (part of Liaunig Industrieholding AG).

What are the key elements of these three building blocks at the Wild Group?
Minimal inventory levels with maximum delivery reliability, as well as agility in terms of quantity and time (Content). Ongoing solution recommendations for customers and customer satisfaction analysis (Customer Experience). Human 4.0 (Platform).
Josef Hackl also put forward another thought-provoking statement: Managers’ past experiences can be the greatest obstacle to future business success.

One open IT position, several qualified applicants. Meeting current business challenges by: agility, digital transformation and empowerment of employees.

Massive technological, social and economic upheavals present companies with major organisational challenges. With increasing digitalisation and increasing complexity, central control collapses. Questions of meaning and justice are increasingly being asked. There are limits to economic activity through stable growth rates and the underlying idea of efficiency. Socio-political concepts of plurality, equality and justice are increasingly coming to the fore.

In order to meet these challenges and be successful as a company, it is necessary to enable people for the new world of work, as well as to align companies with agility and digitalisation. The agile.kreis has the three components – Agility, digital transformation and empowerment – embedded in a model that structures the content and shows central adjusting screws. This resulted in the 3-component structuring model for agile and digital corporate development.

Programme

• Mag. Daniel Rossgatterer, Managing Director of ACP TEKAEF, showed how the company successfully masters the entrepreneurial challenges.
• Presentsion of the 3-component-structuring model with central parameters for entrepreneurial challenges of members of the agile.kreis.
• Moderated exchange in the room. Participants had the opportunity to position themselves spatially in the 3-component structuring model, to exchange ideas in dialogue and to learn from each other.

Corporate Culture: Yesterday - Today - Tomorrow Interlocutors: Edgar and Peter Schein

The #agile.kreis invited to the 3rd Agile Evening. Over 200 participants accepted this invitation and joined Edgar and Peter Schein in a virtual room to examine corporate culture under current and future challenges.

Edgar H. Schein is one of the most influential management pioneers worldwide. He is considered the inventor of the "corporate culture" approach, co-founder of organizational development and process consulting. Together with his son Peter Schein, he founded the Organizational Culture and Leadership Institute, or OCLI (www.ocli.org), where he continues to develop his approach to unbiased leadership ("humble leadership").

On Monday, May 3, 2021, there was a live connection to Edgar and Peter Schein in Palo Alto/USA as part of the 3rd Agile Evening. Together, they discussed derivations for the agile transformation of organizations, addressed current challenges and discussed exciting assessments of future developments.

Program:

• Check-in and impulse by Herbert Gölzner on "Agile Transformation: Agile Organization Design - Agile Methods - Agile Mindset"
• Live link to Palo Alto "Dialogue with Edgar and Peter Schein". The conversation was conducted by the #agilen.kreis as well as students of the FH Salzburg based on the submitted questions of the participants and attendees.
• Review and reflection on the conversation

At the beginning of the event, Herbert Gölzner, Head of Human Resource Management at FH Salzburg, gave a keynote speech outlining the three components of agile transformation: Agile Methods, Agile Organization Design and Agile Mindset. He emphasized the importance of the agile mindset as the most critical component.

Afterwards, Susanne Hager and Stephanie Zorn, both students at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences majoring in Corporate Development, together with Matthias Csar, designed the exchange with Edgar and Peter Schein. In addition to the current challenges, such as the possible effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on corporate culture or the role of organizational culture in the digital transformation, the connections to agile transformation were also elaborated. Edgar and Peter Schein referred to their iceberg model of culture or humble leadership and related these to agile mindset.

On November 4, the 2nd Agile Evening took place at the FH Salzburg - this time all online of course. More than 250 participants attended the interactive evening. In addition to students from various degree programs, entrepreneurs and externally invited guests were also present.

The motto of the evening was "Organizational development and leadership of the future - the culture of unprejudiced questioning". As a guest, Dr. Gerhard Fatzer a pioneer of German-speaking organizational development, provided exciting input. Based on Edgar Schein's 58 years of work, Gerhard Fatzer described the five stages of organizational development of the future.

Two central questions were explored during the evening:

• What will organizational development and leadership look like for the future?
• What core competencies will be required of leaders in the future?

In five acts, the development of organizational development was highlighted, from the emergence of certain interview techniques, to coaching, to process consulting, to organizational culture & leadership and humble leadership. For example, cultural, interpersonal and emotional intelligence were explained as new core competencies. Technical complexity also has an impact on the leadership of the future. Information technologies enable collaboration from different locations, face to face contacts become less, new concepts of communication, trust and collaboration are needed.

"Agility - Digitization - Empowerment" Disruptive market dynamics and rapidly increasing complexity force companies to constantly evolve. How can we successfully advance corporate development in a volatile world?

We are increasingly encountering such questions both in teaching and research and in the exchange of experiences with our corporate partners. The increase in complexity that companies perceive externally and have to organize internally brings existing structures and processes to their limits as well as new challenges for employees.

To successfully advance corporate development in a world of disruptive market dynamics and rapidly increasing complexity, we recognize three central components that companies must address and make manageable, as it were: Agility - Digitization - Empowerment.

Program:

• Use of digital technologies: Mag.(FH) Herbert Wenger, Head of Product Management Automotive Smart Finance, Porsche Informatik GmbH
• Experiences with agile forms of work: Markus Aichhorn, Head of Software Development, Service Center ORG/IT, Raiffeisenverband Salzburg eGen
• Empowering employees for agility and digitalization: Mag.a Christina Zimmermann, Head of Learning and Development, Employees Department, DM Drogerie Markt GmbH