What does People like that IT-Billionaire Jon Oringer, LinkedIn co-founder Konstantin Guericke or extreme mountaineer Reinhold Messner successful? Self-management works like a facade cleaning: The ability to organize yourself even in difficult situations is decisive for success in digital change.

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Learning from the successful: like a facade cleaning

Because at no other point in history were we more asked to work independently and to organize ourselves. The digital transformation works almost like a facade cleaning, it offers many opportunities, but also risks: The fundamental paradigm shift presents us with unknown challenges, stirs up fears and requires us to learn new skills. This post shows what successful people do better. And how we overcome these challenges – with ourselves, with Courage and passion, but also what is in our Society in the education system, for example.

One of the most impressive interviews I've had recently was with the Sales-Director of Google Ireland. The Internet-Riese is undoubtedly one of the most successful companies of our time, so I expected a typical high performer, i.e. someone who can't get out of the Office comes out. Instead, one sat me Ms. opposite, who explained to me very calmly that she leaves the office every afternoon at 16 or 17 p.m., does not take any work home and makes a point of having dinner with her children at 18 p.m.

“It's mostly my own conscious decision, how long I work and when I can be reached. My colleagues accept that because I tell them exactly the same clear communicate ”, she explained to me and clarified her argumentation:“ The requirements of Google are very high. Only when I switch off can I concentrate fully in the office. That's why I don't spend my free time with colleagues. " When I later published the story in my column in the WELT, there was Criticism: Meehan, so the interview, is in the position to be able to afford that. I see it the other way around: Exactly because Meehan sets limits calmly but clearly, she made it into such a position.

Efficient work organization as a common thread

In fact, if you ask extremely successful and famous personalities exactly how they organize their work, it sometimes reveals astonishing things, efficient Work organization However, one common thread runs through all of the interviews I've conducted on the subject: Fionnuala Meehan, for example, says she is very organized, orderly and able to make quick decisions. For example, she regularly makes lists to keep track and Tasks to prioritize. And she has learned, also thanks to seminars offered by the company, Energy to control and Problems sometimes leave it in the office to continue working on it the next day.

Also for IT billionaire Jon Oringer, Founders of the photo agency Shutterstock, working methodically, quickly and efficiently is the key to success - and he always has a notepad for new ones ideas included. The success of his Company is for him the product of numerous previously failed start-ups. For Oringer, productivity doesn't depend on time or place: “Sometimes I'm productive in the office, but sometimes I'm also very productive in places I didn't expect to be. It is therefore important for me not to be tied to a place or time in order to be able to work,” he says. "Productivity is by no means tied to the desk, on the contrary - that's why I use my smartphone and tablet a lot," notes Steffen Hopf, Executive from Yahoo Germany, firmly. He therefore prefers a tidy desk without distraction and can also work well at the airport.

Productivity arises from the exchange with others

Andrus Järg, Director General of Skype Estonia, is convinced that productivity comes first and foremost from sharing with others. Therefore, like everyone else, he is in the open-plan office and the sauna is also equipped with WLAN for Meetings equipped: "If there are problems, I seek an exchange with my employees and together we try to Solutions to be found,” says Järg. Unusual meetings, in the case of hiking, are also the insider tip of Konstantin Guericke, who in 2003 with four other Businessnetwork founded LinkedIn. That was the result of a longer development process in which several people were involved.

“But we talked about it a lot while hiking,” recalls Guericke. Back then, lack of exercise made him hike; today he is a partner at Earlybird, a Berlin venture capital company, and is getting more and more business partners excited about it: He has 10-15 hiking meetings per week - and they are anything but unproductive; Remembering important things works, according to Guericke, because of the spatial conception even better than sitting down: "I go through the path again in my memory and link content with experiences such as the rattlesnake at the edge of the path." A real market has long since emerged around unusual meeting forms, where resourceful organizers offer hiking meetings on pilgrimage routes or in volcanic craters, seminars in silence in monasteries or events in fjords.

The thing with the flow: Success factors at a glance

Finally, extreme mountaineer Reinhold Messner sees top performance as the result of passion and goal focus. resistors must be accepted and overcome. That's why Messner went on projects like the Antarctic crossing only with people who had exactly the same Objective to: “Otherwise they would have given up after a week, which would have meant certain death. The whole motivation seminars are therefore thrown out Money, Motivation is only in ourselves, ”he notes.

It is no coincidence that almost all of these examples come from the IT sector: it is particularly innovative and forward-looking when it comes to improving productivity. If you look at them more closely, they crystallize fast some success factors: such as passion, confidence in decision-making or communication skills. An overview:

With passion: motivation

What Messner says makes sense: people work better when they are motivated and enjoy what they are doing. Because if you just want to do your job well, you usually think forward-looking, positively and optimistic. He assumes that he can handle the upcoming tasks well, that makes him productive. In this context, the psychologist Mihály Csikszentmihályi speaks of flow, which Lust the drive for curiosity and total immersion in a task that drives people to move forward and solve problems with enthusiasm. The reason for this is the biochemical processes in our body:

We owe the euphoria that we feel when we have satisfactorily completed a stressful job to the hormones norepinephrine and serotonin, among other things. These call positive Feelings emerge as a reward for previous effort act. If this so-called eustress occurs regularly and in doses, it stimulates the immune system and has a motivating effect. Recent results of brain research even show that Stress promotes faster networking of brain cells. And because skills grow the more you do the job, new challenges will need to be faced if the flow experience is to continue. This creates new ideas that help people move forward.

Only targeted work leads to success

However, this only works if you work in a goal-oriented manner and the challenge suits your own abilities. If the requirements are too low, boredom sets in, if they are too high, frustration and excessive demands. In both cases, motivation suffers. Seen in this way, perfectionist striving, which is considered a cardinal virtue in our society, is anything but good for them Career.

Apart from the fact that you can drive the individual into a dangerous vicious circle, which often leads to Burnout paradoxically, it often even hinders the professional one Ascent. Because if you want to be perfect and flawless at all costs, you can quickly overwhelm yourself. Because nobody can always give 110% and most people know that too. This means that they approach the matter negatively from the outset, because it is at least unconsciously clear to them that they cannot actually solve the problem; the fear of failure is then greater than the will to succeed.

Yes, no, maybe ... Courage to make a decision!

This is particularly disadvantageous where decision-making and leadership skills are important in everyday working life. Out of Anxiety, the wrong Choice to make, some prefer to try to delay the decision as long as possible, to avoid it or even to pass it on to others. If, as a result, important work is repeatedly postponed or neglected, or if actions are carried out in a headless and panicked manner instead of well-considered and calm, this becomes a problem. Because this fear also prevents the courage that is needed for good and clear decisions.

Because you feel overwhelmed and fear becomes the driving force behind your own actions, negative distress arises. This always occurs when you don't know a way out, because the human Brain due to a lack of experience, does not have a quick solution mechanism available for this problem. In contrast to eustress, we do not experience flow in such situations, but feel often helpless and at our mercy. Distress can even cloud our memory. Cortisol is released from the adrenal cortex to protect the body from overexertion. Among other things, it blocks memory performance and leads to high blood sugarspiegel and over-acidification of the blood and a weakening of the thyroid function.

Fear eats productivity: set limits

In most cases, the result of a wrong decision is far less dramatic than you imagined in your horror scenario. Even the boss won't freak out if you're "No”, like Fionnuala Meehan, reasonably reasoned, but just respect you a little more. But whoever makes the positive experience once, that mistakes don't equal the Head costs, is motivated in this way to courageously tackle even more difficult tasks. Those who recognize that mistakes are inevitable and learn from them instead of complaining will find it easier to make decisions. And if you do your work less stressed and nervous, you have more time to build up important ones networks.

Fionnuala Meehan is also the best example of the importance of setting boundaries. Saying “no” has nothing to do with laziness: Instead of confidently saying “no”. Competencies to score points, the eternal “yes”-sayers, in their striving to do everything right and to please everyone, show that they are not at all convinced of themselves. So why should the boss put faith in skills? And despite all efforts, such people are not really reliable either, because the shot backfires: because those who constantly take over all work from colleagues and superiors without complaint for fear of negative reactions soon have a problem, if only for reasons of time, all the work that needs to be done to do. Important tasks are then always postponed or not finished at all. That's not particularly productive: The economic researcher Winfried Panse, Professor at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences, even calculated that fear-driven employees at least 20 percent less Performance provide.

In addition, such hard work is often not even noticed. The boss, who only comes at 9 a.m., does not even notice that you were there by 7 a.m. to get the project concept ready on time. He overlooks the fact that you don't take a lunch break because you still have them eMail-List through list. And when he leaves at 18 p.m., he no longer notices how the worker bee tends to the night because it is still working on the files.

Get out of the hamster wheel: prioritize

It is also necessary to separate the important from the unimportant, but it is difficult, especially in particularly stressful situations. Because under stress clear thinking becomes more and more impossible and soon you are meticulously spinning around your own axis on the hamster wheel, blocking yourself and, in the heat of the moment, overlooking the fact that there are also easier ones in many situations ways would give. You would only have to manage to approach things a little more loosely, instead of blindly actionism to expire. Instead, many people run the risk of thinking about something for so long, of really brooding over a decision and getting so worked up in fears and worries that they are no longer able to act. An experimental study conducted by psychologists Neil J. Roese and JR Kuban at the University carried out by Illinois shows that the longer one ponders, the harder the brain has to exert itself and the more difficult it appears to be in the end to solve the problem.

But what can you do about it? As Steffen Hopf explained, a tidy working environment can actually help. Because the solution to the problem begins in the mind: First of all, you have to realize that you are spinning in a hamster wheel, which can quickly become a vicious circle: If you just try to keep performing at your best out of fear of making mistakes, you will quickly get there to the limits of his motivation and performance. To prevent this, you have to convince yourself that less is usually more. And the best way to do that is to start small test balloons: So instead of starting with plowing through in the morning, you should first calmly consider which tasks are really important. The less important work should be approached with a little less perfection. It helps to be realistic Eyes what could happen in the worst case if you don't do this or that job perfectly. Or the boss, who turns the corner with the next extra order, simply says “no” in a friendly but firm manner.

Absence as a status symbol: switch off!

Anyone who considers what happens in the body at such moments will quickly realize why it is important to be able to simply turn the switch in the brain to “off” – even if that is not as easy as it sounds. Sport or at least regular exercise, for example, which breaks down stress hormones in the body, is helpful. You should build this into your workload. It shows how important and useful here the Method of Konstantin Guericke is not to hold his meetings while sitting down, but while walking. One quick fix is ​​the rubber band trick. You attach a rubber band to your wrist and whenever you start thinking about a certain problem again, you pull on it and say out loud: stop.

Those who are clever even increase their reputation with occasional phases of unavailability. Because if everyone can be reached at any time, it becomes a rare luxury not to have to answer constantly. And those who allow themselves the luxury of communicative absence show: “Look, I can afford it!” Absence as a status symbol. An example: Managers who want to prove their leadership skills today go on vacation for 10 weeks – and are simply not available! Besides being that's his own Health and performance, he is showing something completely different: namely that he understands his job because he has organized the shop so well that it can also be done without him, while he not only relaxes, but also has good ideas for them Future hatches. On the other hand, a manager who is permanently stressed and is always on call has no time left for his actual management task and innovative thinking. The Harvard business manager even recommends as a deterrent measure: “Every time a manager calls his office during this time, his year-end bonus should be reduced by 20 percent. Every time an employee had to call the manager, he would be deducted 10 percent of his bonus."

With each other instead of against each other: communication and teamwork

For Andrus Järg is Communication and teamwork an important aspect of productivity. In fact, those who have a good connection to the right people often climb the career ladder faster. This has to do with the fact that human beings are naturally designed less for competition and more for cooperation. The neurobiologist and doctor Joachim Bauer explained this very clearly. Accordingly, the basic human motivation is interpersonal recognition, Esteemto find and give attention or affection - and not according to the motto survival of the fittest to eliminate the competition. And the relationship with the boss also gets better if you cooperate with him.

This does not mean that you constantly sacrifice yourself for him: it is much more about supporting the boss and the company in their goals by putting yourself in their shoes and knowing what they want before they say it. The point is to always be informed about the processes in the company in order to be able to act correctly if necessary. And it's about expanding your own skills so that they are useful for the company. According to the motto “do good and talk about it”, you should put your skills in the right light. Because hoping that the others will notice their commitment and talent of their own accord often leads astray. Quite a few people secretly dream of accomplishing something really great that surprises and overshadows everyone else. But it rarely happens that the increased commitment is actually noticed, because the performance is taken for granted for most bosses.

Mistakes without culture: the self-optimization trap

The self-management heading is misleading. Because constant self-optimization can become a self-optimization trap, as the writer Juli Zeh said in an interview with the Süddeutschen Newspaper analyzes:

“We are currently following the mistaken belief that we can rule our fate, i.e. our future, by constantly doing everything“ right ”and constantly optimizing ourselves - at work, in health and nutrition, even in love and sex. Everything is competitive sport. We believe that through this we gain control over our lives. In truth we become manipulable and unfree. "

This is shown, for example, by the fact that mistakes, even the fear of them, are taboo in everyday working life: Mistakes are considered embarrassing, in fact we are firmly convinced that every little misstep is something we look upon and respect Status can cost - and thereby lose the chance to us constructive deal with mistakes and learn from them for the future.

Mistake: A taboo!

Quite a few people prefer to spend their working time denying mistakes, covering them up, glossing over them or even foisting them on others, sometimes with absurd results: It is not the head of the marketing department who decides on an advertising text, but the accountant has the last word. And when an order is placed, the manager of the company's own kindergarten (as a member of the works council) must not be missing, because the boss doesn't want to ignore anyone. That may seem at first glance sympathisch and democratic, but in reality it shows a deep-seated insecurity of the decision-maker. the actual Objective, to achieve something productive together takes a back seat.

In such a corporate culture, there is hardly any space for innovations and entrepreneurial action. Because instead of taking all their energy to achieve goals and risks, and accept setbacks, failure avoiders behave cautiously and defensively, so important decisions are often not made at all. How great the fear of risking something new, especially in Germany, can be seen particularly well from the example of professional independence: A good example of how much Germans prefer to stick to their groin rather than risk something new a survey by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor: 46,5 percent of the Germans aged between 18 and 64 interviewed would rather not take the step into self-employment immediately - for fear that they might make a mistake. For comparison: In the United States, 79 percent of those willing to start a business can also be prevented from doing so by fears.

Mistakes are useful here, and this can also be documented in euros and cents. A study by organizational psychologist Michael Frese showed that companies with good error management are up to 20 percent more profitable. Many a top product was only created because the right conclusions were drawn from a failure. However, if the error tolerance is low, productivity drops by around 20 percent. Frese also found that people learn significantly better from simulations of disasters caused by mistakes than from just being told how to do it right. So mistakes can be productive, but avoiding mistakes at all costs is not optimal Strategy. Better: Accept criticism, analyze what exactly went wrong - and do it better next time. A constructive error management.

Fuckup Nights and Co: lived error culture

FuckUpNights are events where people talk publicly about their failure so that others can learn from it. The fact that there are such events shows that a lot has happened in Germany when it comes to error culture - but also a lot has to be done. A few years ago, failed entrepreneurs met at the anonymous bankruptcy. Today, the bosses of some large German companies openly admit their mistakes in the media such as Impulse and Wirtschaftswoche.

This shows the increased willingness of companies to learn from their mistakes and experiences - sometimes with sophisticated error management systems. The fish factory Frozen Fish International, for example, analyzes its mistakes in so-called one-point lessons: If a mistake happens, those involved get together and clarify exactly what happened. There are minutes of every meeting that can be called up later at any time. When an employee is entrusted with a new task, they have to work through the important one-point texts so that they do not repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. The pharmaceutical company Schwarz Pharma also introduced so-called Lesson Learned Meetings, in which joint breakdowns are critically assessed and problem solutions are worked out. And at the school book publisher Ernst Klett, the managing directors write “flop reports”.

Kaizen: mistakes made by tradition

Internet giant Google shows how it can be done even better: failure has been declared a business principle - success proves him right. Because the company encourages its employees to simply try out ideas for new services. In this way, for example, the extremely successful Google Mail was created. Of course, many ideas failed in advance, never got through the test operation or could not prevail on the market. But failure is considered normal, so it doesn't hurt as much if a test run doesn't work. But there is always a chance that the next idea can be a direct hit. Before the Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, other American companies were very successful in following this principle: IBM founder Thomas Watson took the view that doubling the error rate was the quickest way to success. And Jack Welch, ex-chief of General Electric even went so far as to reward mistakes.

Japanese companies like Toyota rely on the Kaizen method: The first question here is never who is responsible for an error, but the first thing to analyze is how this error came about and how it can be eliminated quickly and permanently. Production is therefore not considered a subordinate area at Toyota, but the last and most important instance of quality control. Because a problem in production cannot be solved at a desk three floors up. If a problem occurs, every employee can stop the production process at any time and make a suggestion for improvement. Then employees, production managers and engineers or logisticians get together on site and work on a catalog of Ask ex: Why did this happen? Could the problem be repeated in other parts of the production? How do we ask for surethat it does not occur again? The goal is not a huge leap in innovation, but a calm, continuous improvement that takes place in small steps, which everyone involved - employees, supervisors and customers - keep exchanging ideas. Everyone knows that they need the others for this process and that the way to the goal sometimes takes detours and detours.

Work ethic at the turning point: Ditgital paradigm shift

We have the ideal of the Protestant work ethic, which was described by the sociologist Max Weber, among others, to thank for the fact that the pursuit of flawlessness and perfection had a positive social connotation at all It was Luther who turned the hitherto value-neutral work into a holy one imposed by God mandatory made and declared idleness a sin. For Puritans in the 17th and 18th centuries, following their calling became a sacred duty, and material success through hard work was a mark of God's mercy.

However, these changes were only made possible by the fundamental economic upheavals of that time: industrialization. The rapid increase in population led to an increased demand for goods that had to be served. In addition to technical progress, the optimal utilization of human labor through the centralization of work in factories and the systematic division of routine work processes, the division of labor, became necessary. The strict organization required for this and the dependence on rigid working hours were only made possible by the invention of the clock and electric light, which made it possible to work even without daylight. As is well known, we are now again at a historical turning point: routine tasks are increasingly being taken over by machines and we should turn to creative tasks. When previous structures disappear, only one thing remains: rethink, away from the Protestant work ethic, towards more creativity, cooperative working together and ultimately more joy at work. The more I deal with digital technologies, the more I am convinced that thanks to the Internet, social media and mobile technologies, we are on the verge of a drastic paradigm shift in society and Working world to stand.

Opportunity for networked thinking

The Internet offers excellent opportunities for networked cooperation, in which cooperation is also possible over large spatial distances. Many people still have the disadvantages in mind. During my lectures, I notice again and again how great the need for clarification in this regard is, so that the Internet is understood as a positive development. Because change scares many. In my books “Nude on the Net” and “The 110% lie” I have dealt extensively with the insecurities of employees and managers in a professional life that is rapidly changing due to digital media:

Constant availability and supposedly constant communication, teamwork with spatial separation or constant distractions are stressors that directly affect the performance and thus the productivity of companies and which we have to face. In other words, in order for us to be able to take advantage of the Internet and networked cooperation, we have to say goodbye to the dogmas of the Protestant work ethic: in the digitized age, completely different skills are required for self-management - this is what the next section will deal with.

How digitization is changing the world of work

Anyone who writes about self-management cannot avoid one topic: digitization. It changes our entire work organization like no other. We constantly have to adapt to new work equipment, tools or faster communication in order not to be left behind verlieren – Self-management becomes a lifelong learning task. Only: Our education system is not geared towards that at all.

A few months ago, I was a guest at a conference of the Westpress personnel marketing agency in Hamm. The agency founder and father of the current boss, now 80 years old, still works there with a BTX device, he cannot operate the PC. I was told that it was extremely difficult to connect the old device to the new fiber optic network. As human and original as I personally find this example, it emphatically shows what can happen if we ignore digital change: we are left behind.

Work better: How the world of work has to change!

Nevertheless, entire companies sometimes act exactly as a representative survey by the market research institute GfK Enigma shows that DZ BANK has commissioned it. Of 1.000 medium-sized companies surveyed in Germany, 77 percent are clear that digitization will fundamentally change the economic processes in terms of speed, possibilities and reach. Nevertheless, surprisingly, the topic of digitization is currently not relevant for 49 percent. Digitization is only part of the corporate strategy for every second company. In turn, 30 percent actively promote the topic, the rest only respond to customer requests or competition requirements.

In order to discuss how to react to the changed conditions in the world of work in the context of digital change, I was invited to a panel of experts some time ago as part of a research project of the foundation new responsibility entitled “Politics of Work”. Were also there Dr. Ursula Engelen-Kefer, former chairman of the German Trade Union Confederation and lecturer at the University of the Federal Employment Agency, Dr. Agnes Dietzen of the Department of Competence Development at the Federal Institute for Vocational Training, and Dr. Stephan Pfisterer, Head of Education Policy and Labor Market at BITKOM. The topic: The advantages and disadvantages of competence-based work, as many digital workers already live, compared to traditional, clear job profiles with fixed training structures.

Tasks and jobs are changing rapidly

According to a survey by the job exchange Stellenanzeige.de, 85% of those questioned would like to have a job Candidate better findability of jobs. Clearer language as well as more precise task descriptions and requirement profiles were mentioned among the suggestions for improvement. The search in Jobs: Because with the popular method of simply entering a search term, many job seekers do not find the jobs that match their skills. For example, a job advertisement was looking for someone to do organizational tasks in the office for the management, actually a kind of go-to person. In the past, in times of classic professions, one would probably have said secretary. Today, however, that person should also use Twitter, Facebook, Xing, etc. “on the side”.

So was the position advertised as a social media manager? Or provided with one of the more traditional names: Assistant to the management, project manager, project coordinator, employee in human resources or accounting? No. As it is a non-profit organization and the person wanted should also coordinate the collection of donations, the position as a fundraiser was advertised. I would not have thought of it. Due to technical progress, areas of responsibility are changing faster than job titles or training and further education. I remember the professor at a Hamburg university who trained journalists and admitted to me that he didn't know what to teach the students - they learned app development today, but you don't know if the publishers will even ask for that tomorrow be. And employers are often at a loss because they don't even know how to label a job ad sensibly.

New forms of job search

No wonder many Digital Workers look for other solutions. Just like Regine Heidorn, who dropped out of several courses and an IT apprenticeship without any formal qualifications qualification has been working successfully as a programmer for years. She has another very efficient platform to Job Search Found: Twitter. Here she is a successful bit boutique, is in constant contact with her network and tweets about her hobbies and interests. For example, she tweeted about her hobby, geocaching; this led to a dialogue on Twitter, and she ended up getting a teaching position at a university. As she says herself, she would never have thought that she would be in demand with this qualification.

In this way, she finds jobs that match her skills exactly and where it is not a purely formal qualification that counts, but the actual skills. And yet Heidorn himself says: “I don't even need to look at job advertisements that only ask about formal qualifications apply. ” For me, this is where the advantages of competence-based work lie: The focus is on people, not formal qualifications and the Curriculum vitae. Of course, the skills have to be right. And the example of Regine Heidorn also shows the advantages the Internet offers here: you can quickly and easily find like-minded people on a wide variety of topics.

The education system is to blame: creativity as an illness?

When I write about self-management and competence-based work, I think of Gunter Dueck, former IBM manager and mathProfessorwho with his Lecture caused quite a stir at re:publia 2011. According to his prognosis, many professions will become theirs Significance because, thanks to the Internet, we can do a lot more ourselves – for example buying tickets or researching information. Even today, Dueck said a little sarcastically, many a patient who has surfed the Internet for two hours knows more than their doctor. What remains are the difficult advisory and administrative tasks, for which Germany needs more skilled workers.

However, complex tasks not only require specialist skills - a large part of this is provided by the Internet - but also social fluency, emotional intelligence, management talent, negotiating skills, personal responsibility and entrepreneurship. In a meeting of the inquiry commission of the German Bundestag “Internet and digital society” on the subject of “Change processes in the digital business and working world”, Dueck criticized the fact that creativity is viewed as a disease in school. In addition, teaching social skills is not part of the education system. According to Dueck, pure technical training is becoming less important and soft skills are becoming more and more important. He even goes so far as to say: "Only those who have the appropriate soft skills and adaptability to modern, digital society will make it."

Actively shape change!

Ursula Engelen-Kefer also sees lifelong learning as the solution. In our discussion, she cited the structural crisis in the mining industry in 1969 as an example. Since then, the unemployed have been actively promoted through further training measures. "Further Training must be fundamentally restructured, away from the life concept of education - Job – retirement. Aspects such as the excessive demands on people, social skills and Teamwork must be taken into account,” said Kefer. But the references and certificates of our educational landscape are still more based on queries from Background as geared towards imparting basic skills.

How do you want to measure soft skills? Or professional Education and compare university degrees? So far, nothing like this has been provided for in our education system. That's where the problem lies, how Dr. Agnes Dietzen explained: “The development of reliable methods for measuring competence (technical term large-scale assessments) is still in its infancy. Services from other areas such as voluntary work, social services or care services in the Family should be included in the competence assessment, but so far the lack of valid, objective and yet practicable standards and professional interests have made the comparison difficult."

However, one should not forget that this type of work often leads to precarious jobs. Cited as an example Dr. Stefan Pfisterer the USA, where skills that can be used in the short term are in demand on the labor market, which would undoubtedly offer opportunities, but in the long term thwart an employee: "Sustainable development, the bundle of skills behind a job, is not seen there." Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves: Is this what we want? Competence-based self-management also means the constant need to market yourself in all areas and to optimize yourself - just as Juli Zeh criticized.

Opportunities and risks of digital change

The international Bad Honnef / Bonn University of Applied Sciences has shown what this can look like in a discussion-worthy campaign: a full scholarship of 11.000 euros for distance learning was awarded as part of a competition. The participants collect “Votes” by sending them to friends, family and acquaintances via Facebook, eMail or contact list and ask to vote for them. The IUBH openly declares the ability to market itself as a goal of the competition. And whoever can do it best wins an education and a degree. Nice new ones Welt? Or will universities themselves soon be superfluous thanks to digital development, like some advocates of massive open Online Courses, MOOCs for short, in which lecturers reach thousands of people interested in education at the same time via online video?

This shows what opportunities, but also what risks, digitization offers for the self-management of the individual - right down to fundamental questions of lifestyle or education. But the increasingly flexible forms of work that we already know from the digital sector cannot really be stopped; rather, they will extend to other areas. We therefore have to deal with digitization and its opportunities.