It is somewhat unconventional, the book "Handgepäck für Führungskräfte. Communicating & Solving Conflicts", written by Hans Bleuer and Peter Stadler: It is a "book for cross readers" in the literal sense. Because it is in A4 landscape format. Each double-page spread consists of concise but clearly structured texts and a graphic that visualizes the core statements of a chapter. In this way, the book can be used consistently as a workbook or reference work. The authors decided on this presentation because, according to their experience, rapid learning and sustainable retention of knowledge is possible in this way. "Two prerequisites for being able to immediately use what has been learned in everyday life," they write in the preface.

Since leadership is not possible without communication, this volume forms the first part of the book series "Hand luggage for managers". The other volumes deal with the topics "Leading Employees & Teams", "Leading Departments & Teams", "Procuring & Developing Personnel" and "Leading & Developing Yourself". The books primarily focus on the role of department and team leaders and deliberately maintain a traditional and function-oriented view of day-to-day operations. Thus, no "Rocket Science" and new theories are imparted, but rather known knowledge is placed in the entrepreneurial context.

The practical value is certainly the strength of this volume. The subject area "Communicating & Solving Conflicts" is treated in four parts: "Understanding & Improving Communication", "Leading & Structuring Conversations", "Communicating for & with Groups" and "Recognizing & Managing Conflicts". Within each of these parts, a sub-topic is presented on a double page spread - as mentioned above. The visualizations are kept slim, and the "handwritten" character stands out pleasantly from usual PowerPoint slide batteries. Readers can easily find their way around the chapters and quickly find the information they need. Turning the pages in landscape format may take some getting used to at first, but this settles down with regular use of the book.

Hand luggage for executives" is recommended reading for all those who, for example, are preparing for an examination as part of further training or will soon be entrusted with an executive function. But also "seasoned executives" will find useful knowledge in it to recall it as needed.

Hand Luggage for Managers. Volume 1: Communicating & Resolving Conflicts.
By Hans Bleuer and Peter Stadler
KLV Verlag, ISBN 978-3-85612-443-4, 144 pages.
www.klv.ch

Business failure is no longer the reason to kill a career: In a global survey of 321 chief financial officers (CFOs) by the human resources and organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry, only eight percent said that failing to meet business goals was the most important reason for dismissal. In contrast, 41 percent of respondents said that a falling out with the CEO led to their resignation. And more than half consider such a rift to be the most important reason why the CFO himself throws in the towel.

No. 1 reason for CFOs to resign: falling out with the CEO

"The numbers back up what we've been seeing for years," says Marcus Schneider, senior client partner and CFO staffing specialist at Korn Ferry. "People are hired for their technical skills. And dismissed again due to a lack of personal fit with the corporate culture."

Chief Financial Officers are in most cases the number two in companies and work very closely with their CEO. Accordingly, there is a high degree of mutual dependence. "When hiring a CFO, boards of directors and CEOs should pay particular attention to: Does this candidate fit with me and the corporate culture with his character traits, individual motivational drivers and on a human level? And not just on the basis of professional experience and expertise," says Marcus Schneider. "This realization has led to a significant change in personnel searches in the CFO environment. Away from: Where are there suitable candidates in the first place? Towards: Who are these candidates really? And most importantly, do the candidate fit with the CEO and management team? While a candidate can develop his or her full potential in one environment and culture, it does not succeed in the other. Identifying this 'fit' is one of the most important tasks of an HR consultant today." Hence the Anglo-Saxon credo: "Hire for attitude and train for skills."

A quarter of the CFOs surveyed want to become CEOs

While a large proportion of respondents (one-third) would like to continue their role in a larger organization in each case, one in four CFOs (23 percent) would also dare to take on the role of CEO. "In recent years, we have seen a number of CFO promotions directly to the top of the company," says Marcus Schneider.

"Many of them have now been serving their companies as CEOs for years and have contributed significantly to increasing results. Their financial know-how also helps them a great deal. However, such a step is almost impossible if the respective aspirants have not already arrived in the company culture in their role beforehand and have developed a strong positioning internally. Conversely, this means that a CFO who is tolerated rather than desired because of his or her expertise will presumably not be able to take this step in his or her current organization." This is matched by the fact that only one-third of those surveyed believe they would be considered as a successor to the CEO in their own company.

CFOs consider operational experience important - too few actually do them

Beyond the personal fit, professional experience naturally continues to play an important role: on the way to the CFO role as well as when moving up another level. According to the respondents, the most important building block of experience for becoming a CFO is general management (27 percent), followed directly by strategy/M&A (26 percent). A high affinity for IT is becoming increasingly important, say nine out of ten CFOs. "Digitalization has long since arrived in the finance sector," says Marcus Schneider. "Corporate finance, controlling and classic CFO areas have been increasingly broken down into individual processes in recent years and are thus ideal for targeted automation. In many cases, this has already happened or is in development. Of course, a CFO doesn't need the same knowledge as a programmer or technician, but he must understand the basics in order to continue to align his departments with the future."

Career to CEO: Taking the plunge

When asked about reasons preventing a career as CEO, 24 percent of respondents said they lacked sales/commercial experience, 21 percent lacked a deeper understanding of the industry, and one-fifth lacked sufficient experience in operations. Marcus Schneider says: "Even though people believe that general management is an important building block for becoming a CFO, the reality is often different. CFOs often start their careers in finance - and end up presiding over it. But that is not enough to manage a company in its entirety. That's why I recommend that especially young talents who are still a few steps away from a CFO role deliberately enter the cold water to take on operational responsibility: as sales or production managers, managing directors of national subsidiaries, or by playing an active role in corporate transformation. The sooner they start, the more experience they can build up away from the finance function. And the better equipped they will be once the CEO question comes up."

Source: www.kornferry.com

On May 2, various online media reported on the proposals of Council of States members Karin Keller-Sutter (FDP, SG) and Konrad Graber (CVP, LU). Both aim to amend the Labor Act to give employers more flexibility in recording working hours. While Karin Keller-Sutter is calling for an exemption from the recording of working hours for "senior executives and technical specialists," Konrad Graber's parliamentary initiative wants to abolish the weekly maximum working hours, especially for individual areas in the service sector, and replace them with a yearly model. Not surprisingly, various employee organizations are up in arms against this. Trade unions in particular fear that such deregulation could open the door to the "exploitation" of employees. The Syna trade union, for example, reckons with "potential free labor" to the tune of 2.9 billion francs, as described in "2o minutes" was to be read. Council colleague and president of the trade union federation Paul Rechsteiner speaks in the "View"The "biggest attack on the labor law that Switzerland has ever seen".

The fact is, however: The current labor law dates back to 1966, a time when factory work was still commonplace. To date, it has been amended by countless ordinances, but has never been fundamentally revised. Since the world of work is set to change dramatically - especially in the wake of the digital transformation - a reform of the Labor Act is certainly overdue. The topic of working time recording must not be left out of this either. In the 4-2017 issue of ORGANISATOR, we already reported on the two parliamentary initiatives mentioned above and also interviewed experts from various fields.

Here go to the ORGANISATOR contribution.

By the end of 2017, analog fixed network connections nationwide will be replaced by digital telephony via the Internet Protocol (IP). In the course of this changeover, the Internet provider green.ch is further expanding its Internet telephony offering for SMEs, and the company is also cooperating with partner companies that are available to customers on site. According to the company, its customers have already been benefiting from VoIP telephony offerings since 2013. As a result of the current technology change, these are gaining in importance and will be expanded accordingly, it adds. In addition to the existing offering for private customers, green.ch now also offers four VoIP solutions for SMEs: greenTalkPlus replaces the classic ISDN offering for smaller companies with up to five phone numbers. For larger companies, VoIP gateways are available, which have the advantage that customers can continue to use the conventional telephone system. At the same time, green.ch offers complete VoIP telephone systems under the name greenPBX; a combination of a new, physical telephone system with a VoIP trunk is also possible.

In order to be able to provide optimum local support to SME customers, the Internet provider has entered into cooperation agreements with electrical installation companies, which are available to the companies as local partners for questions relating to telephony installation. "The increased cooperation with partners in the field of electrical installations allows us to combine the two core competencies - Internet technology and building services. This enables us to offer SMEs a suitable telephony solution with the necessary installation service in almost all cases," explains Frank Boller, CEO of green.ch AG.

Source and further information: green.ch AG

Claus H. Widrig has been elected president of the new industry representation for interim management. He will lead the organization together with attorney Marcel Gross and entrepreneur Daniel E. Bubendorf. Widrig has many years of experience in management functions and is active in various business associations. He is a profound expert on this form of work of the future in business and at the political level.

Interim management is the temporary assumption of line, project or result responsibility and is likely to gain further importance as a future work model. the industry association interimsuisse therefore wants to "communicate through various channels with leading exponents from business, politics, science and the media world", as it states on the website www.interimsuisse.com is called. As a network for the Swiss interim market, the organization also wants to make an important contribution to creating legal certainty in the use of interim managers.

Companies are interested in keeping their employees healthy. Absences, absenteeism and reduced performance as a result of illness or stress cost billions each year. Fit im Job specializes in sustainable occupational health management (OHM). The consulting firm uses scientific methods to analyze areas for action and measure the impact of individual measures.

Comprehensive offerings for corporate customers

The Medbase Group offers medical and therapeutic services in its 13 Medbase Medical Centers and 23 Santémed Health Centers in Switzerland. Medical and preventive offerings for corporate customers are combined in the Corporate Health unit. The current subject area is being expanded with the acquisition of Fit im Job. The Medbase Group's broad portfolio of services enables companies to solve their health, human resources and leadership challenges in a holistic manner, according to the company. Medbase has also been working closely with Migros Fitnessparks for over ten years. The idea: medical offers and intervention mutually support preventive measures such as fitness training or wellness.

Occupational Health Management 4.0

To ensure that health promotion measures have a long-term effect, Medbase and Fit im Job work with innovative online tools that complement each other ideally. Fit im Job, for example, has developed a health portal that can be customized for companies and digital tools such as the Micropause or the Drink Timer to improve employees' vitality at work with minimal effort. Medbase offers online coaches for exercise and nutrition, which help to sustainably anchor health-promoting behavior in employees' everyday lives.

Information: www.medbase.ch, www.fitimjob.ch

Family businesses are an important element of economic life in practically every country in the world. For them, the regulation of business succession plays a particularly important role, and, depending on the case, so do inheritance taxes. Inheritance taxes can be decisive in determining whether and how a business finds its way into the next generation of the family. The question therefore arises: Who pays the most inheritance taxes where in the world, and who pays the least?

The Center for Family Business at the University of St.Gallen (CFB-HSG) has worked to answer these questions together with EY published the "Global Family Business Tax Monitor" for the first time. The results of the research project show a worldwide comparison of the resulting inheritance taxes in 69 countries around the globe based on a standardized case of a business succession in family businesses.

In addition, there is a lot more information on the website:

• An interactive world map shows at a glance the minimum and maximum inheritance taxes of the respective country, the inheritance taxes in the standardized succession case and the legal system applicable there.
• Various economic indicators are compared with the respective maximum tax rates.
• The legal systems are compared in the context of the resulting inheritance taxes.
• A sortable and searchable table summarizes the results from the countries studied.

The website (only available in English) can be found under http://familybusinesstaxindex.com/

At the beginning of the 1970s, kits and hobbyist systems such as KIM-1, AIM 65, Ohio Scentific, Altair and IMSAI kicked off the PC era, but from 1977 onwards, companies such as Apple, Commodore and Tandy Corporation made it possible for private users to enter the computer age without any problems.

The role of the West Coast Computer Fair

On April 16-17, 1977, Jim Warren and Bob Reiling organized a trade show in San Francisco at the Civic Auditorium to popularize the emerging home computer. It would soon become the most important trade show for the nascent personal computer industry. At this fair, a certain Chuck Peddle showed an all-in-one device called the Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) and two young computer enthusiasts named Steve Wonzniak (27) and Steve Jobs (21) showed a well-built Apple II. 180 exhibitors, including Intel, MITS and Digital Research showed their revolutionary products and ideas to the 12,000 visitors.

The West Coast Computer Fair continued to be a source of new announcements. For example, at the 4th edition (May 79), Dan Bricklin introduced the first spreadsheet, "VisiCalc". Or at the 5th edition (March 1980) Microsofts showed its first hardware product, the Z-80 SoftCard, which gave the Apple II CP/M capability (operating system by Gary Kildall of Digital Research). And a year later, Adam Osborne announced the first transportable, 11 kilogram, computer, the Osborne 1 (designer Lee Felsenstein). Or at the 7th edition (March 1982) the Winchester hard disk with 5 MB from Davong Systems for the IBM PC (announced in August 1981) experienced its baptism.

From the basic developments of the PC to today's everyday life

Around all these basic developments, a large industry was built up worldwide in a short time, whose products and services were to fundamentally change our daily lives in business as well as in private life. But most people never realized this fact, because mobile devices, wireless communication and the Internet are part of everyday life. To illustrate this rapid development, the first PC history poster was created in 1997 to mark the 20th anniversary of the PC. To keep up with the pace of constant innovation, the poster had to be changed, updated and expanded again and again.

From computer history to digital evolution

This is already the 5th poster by Micha and Robert Weiss on the history of digital evolution. Increased requests for when an updated poster would be released (last edition 2009) prompted them to produce a greatly expanded new edition. The redesign includes an extensive expansion of the prehistory from the beginnings of writing, numbers and arithmetic to the birth pangs of the PC. Furthermore, the future section was significantly expanded with the help of the IBM research laboratory in Rüschlikon. The focus of the content has also been set in line with the latest trends. Cognitive computing, cloud computing, 3D printers, security, wearables, virtual worlds, big data and tablet computing are all of great importance.

Dimensions and use

The new two-part poster is a total of 256 cm long and 90 cm high. It includes around 1,500 images, logos and graphic elements, over 30,000 words with around 215,000 characters. If this content were converted into a book in A4 format, the result would be between 550 and 600 pages. The poster is suitable for schools as illustrative material, for anyone interested in computers and technology as a reference work and, thanks to its high-quality printing, also as a decorative element in any office, computer room, classroom or even at home.

The link www.computerposter.ch/download.html allows a detailed view of the poster and under www.computerposter.ch it can also be ordered.

Everything talks about change - and SMEs are right in the middle of it. This inspired those responsible for SME Day 2017 to choose this year's motto: Confidence in Change. The title can certainly be understood ambiguously: The ongoing change around digitalization, Industry 4.0, the world of work, etc. also requires companies to have new forms of confidence...

Entrepreneurs and thinkers among the speakers

Host Prof. Dr. Urs Füglistaller from the KMU-HSG and his team succeeded in putting together an interesting panel of speakers for the SME Day 2017:

• Ludwig Hasler, publicist and philosopher
• Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Jenewein, Full Professor of Business Administration at the University of St. Gallen
• Philipp Riederle, Digital Native and Young Entrepreneur (Image)
• Wolfgang Frick, Managing Director Marketing of SPAR Switzerland
• Gabriela Manser, head of the smallest mineral spring in Switzerland
• Martina Gerster, CEO of Härterei Gerster AG

Poetry slammer and columnist Hazel Brugger will provide pointed "heckling". This year's moderator will be Patrizia Laeri, business journalist at Swiss Television.

The detailed program will soon be available on www.kmu-tag.ch is switched on.

Why did we choose Coople as our name? The name is short, simple and concise and embodies the simplest connection between employee and employer. Last but not least, the rebranding is also a consequence of the global expansion course that the company started last year with a major financing round and the market entry in the UK. The previous name was already protected there.

Synonymous with the modern working world

The timing for the name change is also ideal for the company because Coople has evolved significantly since the company was founded six years ago, according to a media release. Coople's vision is to use digitization and automation to create opportunities for all, not just benefits for a few. The new name stands for a job market where the relationship between employee and employer is not one of dependency, but of mutual benefit. "Coople connects people who want to adapt their jobs to their lives, and not the other way around, with companies that meet a changing world of work not with rigid concepts, but with flexibility," it continues.

Completely redesigned platform

In parallel with the rebranding, the company is going online with a completely revamped version of its platform, through which employers and employees can find each other directly for work assignments. Built on the latest technology, the architecture allows for the handling of any volume of data. It features intuitive and more user-friendly navigation and provides even better support for employers to create and manage their own pools of favored employees. The platform is regularly developed according to the latest market and customer needs.

From staff leasing company to HR service provider in the modern world of work

Coople is currently strategically repositioning itself to pave the way for the future of the working world. Viktor Calabrò, Founder, CEO and Chairman, says: "We have big plans. We want to make history with Coople and change the way the world works. We've evolved from being just an online staffing company for short-term and short-term work assignments to a comprehensive HR service provider for the flexible work world." With its new strategic approach, the company continues to expand its business areas and also becomes a software and services company. In this way, Coople aims to help companies find the right answers and solutions for the increasing complexity of the labor market. With the strategic application of the HR concept of the "Flexible Workforce" in connection with Coople's software, the company can have a direct influence on increasing the efficiency of the value chain and optimizing results. This includes, among other things, work planning, pooling, recruitment, competence evaluation and the processing of work assignments. With transparent work assignments, Coople supports employees in making self-determined work a socially accepted and secure way of life.

Source

If you want to understand what waves may be coming to your company and your industry, it is imperative that you operate a technology radar. In other words, you need to be able to observe closely and assess the situation. There's even a saying in Silicon Valley for this. It's "Which Technology or Business Model is going from deceptive to disruptive." There are eight areas that are turning your industry upside down, that are currently undergoing major upheaval, and where development is progressing very exponentially:

1. Communication and networks
2. Energy
3. Fight against diseases and cancer
4. Stem cells and longevity
5. Transportation
6. Robotics and Workforce
7. Materials, production and 3D printing
8. Computation and artificial intelligence

Ask questions

The following examples show how difficult it is, however, to make the right decisions from such exponential questions that are currently being asked. An important basic prerequisite for this is to ask the right questions. These include: What does it mean for my company if

• suddenly billions of additional people have access to the Internet?
• Everyone has the opportunity to continue their education online?
• Transportation costs can be reduced enormously by autonomous cars and trucks as well as drones?
• The transport of energy becomes less important than the storage of energy?
• diseases like cancer can suddenly be successfully fought?
• Artificial intelligence can make better diagnoses than doctors?
• people can live to be 100 or 150 years old?
• Robots and 3D printing make the manufacturing process a commodity?
• Can organic cells be combined with technology?
• Artificial intelligence becoming omnipresent in everyday life, for example to read lips or diagnose?
• When the simple daily tasks in the office are taken over by machine learning

Two variants are available

If you want to make your company competitive in the face of these challenges of our time, you can basically choose between two variants: First, you can reduce costs compared to your competitors, thereby producing more cheaply and offering correspondingly lower prices. Or secondly, you can increase the benefits of your products and services for customers and thus increase both your sales and your margin.

But no matter which variant you choose, in any case IT plays an extremely important role. Companies that operate successfully in their respective markets today have long since recognized that they must not view IT as a mere cost factor. In fact, IT is in many cases a business enabler or even a business catalyst. However, the approach is usually more straightforward and obvious when it comes to reducing costs. If IT is used as an enabler, significant savings can be achieved in the area of both process optimization and process automation. In addition to "electrification," the area of process optimization also includes "digitization," namely the complete conversion of the previous analog process flows so that they can be completely redesigned and made more efficient in the overall context.

Learning from start-ups when it comes to disruption

If, on the other hand, the aim is to increase the benefits for customers, the optimal approach is no longer so obvious. This is why this area in particular is considered the absolute supreme discipline in dealing with new business models and technologies. For this reason, improving customer value is appropriately feared by large corporations. The main reason for this fact is that, thanks to the democratization in IT and technology that has already been taking place to an increasing extent for years, small start-up companies can act much more agilely on the markets and bring "improved customer value" to the market much faster than is the case with large corporations - not least because of the structures established there and the fear of their own cannibalization. Because these processes are exponential in most cases, it is much more difficult for market participants and analysts to make accurate predictions.

I invite you to dive a little deeper into the matter! Since my research would blow up this blog, I have for those interested a small Whitepaper compiled with many examples and sources from these 8 exponential areas. Be surprised with many practical examples and learn which technologies are already very advanced and where currently investors have their focus.

Social collaboration has been proven to increase work efficiency and empower employees to tackle current challenges in a targeted manner. In addition, modern collaboration tools support new forms of collaboration and change fundamental behaviors and attitudes of employees - especially by strengthening the innovation orientation and the sense of belonging within the workforce. These are the findings of the recently published German Social Collaboration Study 2017, the second wave of a joint time series study by the Department of Information Systems at Darmstadt University of Technology and the management consultancy Campana & Schott.

Social collaboration aims at digitalization and lived corporate culture

As the current survey shows, social collaboration is becoming increasingly important as a strategic element of digital transformation. "Most study participants use networked forms of collaboration not primarily to save costs, but first and foremost to further develop their corporate culture and drive the digitalization of their business activities," says Dr. Eric Schott, Managing Director of Campana & Schott. Specifically, 57 percent of respondents named cultural change in their company as a key motive for using collaborative technologies. In second place among the most important goals, at 53 percent, was the striving for greater innovativeness among employees. Only in third place, with 47 percent, is the desire to reduce costs and increase work efficiency.

Engine for greater efficiency and innovative strength

According to the study, the efficiency effects of social collaboration have a multi-layered interaction with corporate cultural factors: For example, an enterprise social network (ESN) increases work efficiency the more intensively the workforce uses the network in everyday work. Depending on the usage scenario, ESN users work up to 42 percent more efficiently than non-users. In addition, the intensity of use correlates statistically significantly with the innovation orientation of employees. "Social collaboration promotes network-like collaboration and has a positive effect on innovative strength, agility, technology affinity and corporate culture - all of which is also impressively proven by the second social collaboration study," comments Boris Ovcak, Director Social Collaboration at Campana & Schott and initiator of the study.

Conversely, the existing corporate culture also influences the success of social collaboration projects. The previous year's survey already clearly showed this connection. The current study builds on the results and provides more in-depth insights. And there is another study result from which direct conclusions can be drawn for practical implementation in the company: Wherever collaboration tools are available from the cloud and are used intensively, the efficiency gain is up to 13 percent greater than with conventional tool provision. Even 17 percent more efficiency can be achieved if various social collaboration solutions are optimally coordinated with each other.

Most opportunities are still open

So far, however, much of the potential demonstrated in the study remains largely untapped: On a scale between 0 and 3, the average degree of social collaboration maturity is currently 1.14. The 0 stands for exclusively conventional technologies or analog forms of collaboration, while the 3 indicates the universal use of advanced collaboration solutions. Due to the large increase in the number of participants, valid statements on the progress of adaptation since 2016 can only be derived from the responses of those companies that already took part in the initial survey in the previous year: In this segment, the maturity level increased by four percentage points.

Source and further information: www.collaboration-studie.de