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Again and again I hear and read that we have to meet the people on their ground and have to win them over for a successful change. I consider this very encroaching and paternalistic. Since people don’t resist change, but being changed, as Peter Senge already stated, trying to win people over automatically leads to passive-aggressive resistance. A completely different strategy helps to ensure that the change penetrates the organisation well: starting from a few “influencers”, people infect each other with the new behaviour underlying the change as if it were a virus.

Less working hours lead to more and better results. What may sound absurd has recently been impressively demonstrated by Microsoft in Japan. In August, all 2,300 employees had five Fridays off – with the same salary, mind you. The result of this experiment were happier employees and 40% more productivity. More working time does not automatically lead to more or better results in knowledge work. Nevertheless, the culture in many organizations is characterized by the simple formula “more attendance = more work = more performance = more career,” as Cawa Younosi, Head of Human Resources and member of the Executive Board of SAP Germany, put it in an interview on the change in values regarding working time. So it’s high time to correct this formula in our minds and unleash people’s creative potential through a better balance between focus and idleness.