"When you read this, I will no longer be here ..." Without a greeting, without a salutation, without "Dear ...!" anyway, is written at the top of the letter he finds at the empty kitchen table in the empty kitchen of the empty house. And he asks himself: Where is she? Why is she gone, and where has she gone? Does the stain at the end of the letter come from a tear, he continues to ask himself, hoping in the same breath that if it did, it was not a tear of joy ... - a classic with which many novels, films and short stories begin. Stories that are not usually found on the comedy shelf.
"When you read this, I will no longer be here ..." I could also put at the beginning of this blog post, however, I will be here, but no longer there . Since yesterday, I am here - in the new office of El Story Duderino - and writing this down.
"Why are you leaving your old office, it's so nice, isn't it?", I've been asked a lot lately. The answer has several parts. The simple part is, firstly, since I no longer advertise with my company, I hardly need any space, and now, after three years, it's not too early for a bold "no soonersaid than done", is it?
Secondly, what I do - and thus the way I work - has changed so fundamentally in the meantime that changing the place where I work is an almost logical consequence of this. It's now almost like it was from 1999 to 2007: during that time, I worked completely alone, mainly as an author, did everything myself, without a back office, completely self-sufficient - a founding member of the digital bohemia, so to speak. And without a smartphone, dear girls and boys, which sounds like an impossibility today. But after all, they say, God created the whole world without a smartphone, and that in six days. - On the other hand, who should he have called? Zeus?
But now, fortunately, I have a smartphone and, on top of that, a back office around Katharina, who, in personal union of Petrus (vulgo: the rock) and Sisyphus, rolls the rock of my organisation over all mountains with such persistent agility that the stain at the end of this blog post is definitely one of my tears of joy. It is certainly not a drop of sweat from Katharina's forehead, because despite her irrepressible commitment in the work camp named after me, it always remains dry as dust and Katharina herself is in the best of moods. Sometimes that even scares me a little, I admit.
I also owe the fact that we are now sitting in the new office between many boxes to Katharina to a very, very large extent: "Thank you, Katharina!
And that brings us to the third part of the answer: "I'm not leaving the old office, I'm moving into a new one!" This sounds like splitting hairs, but it makes a huge difference to the whole story. Are we leaving something, or are we going somewhere? - What story are we telling ourselves? What is our perspective, and thus: "What is our focus on? Because that is exactly where we are moving.
You know this from cycling: When you want to go around a bend, please look at the end of the bend, then you automatically go towards it, as if pulled through the bend by magic. You don't even notice how you turn in, how you lean a little. - Everything follows your gaze.
If, on the other hand, you only stare at your front wheel or even in a rear-view mirror, you fly out. If you anxiously focus on the oncoming traffic, you'll crash head-on.
You never forget how to ride a bike; we have to try out life anew in each of its chapters and experience and learn it anew again and again. Often we learn what we already know, but we still need training wheels. And a little security, someone to stand by us as a mentor, to walk beside us, at least put a hand on our shoulder and say at the right moment: "Look at the end of the curve! If we don't, we might crash.
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Whatever we do, whatever we want - our inner story gives us orientation and direction. If things go well, even the right one. But orientation is the most scarce commodity.
The question I hear even more often than the one about why I'm leaving my old office is: "Where is it all going in these confusing times, and where should we go so that everything turns out well? I am asked these questions by CEOs of international companies as well as founders, team leaders and people like you and me who want to find their way in these confusing times and often cannot find the right perspective.
Can you get support with this? Absolutely!
This is exactly why I created the PowerHour and have already been able to accompany a whole series of positive realignments with this powerful online coaching. Among other things, this has brought about tangible results such as the saving of tens of thousands of euros, or a new understanding of one's own role in the team, or entire business models. If you have the feeling that you could use this too, then you will find everything you are looking for here.
Above all, you will then find your perspective, your orientation together with me, and you will discover your inner story anew or rediscover it. Because you can always recognise, learn and apply anew, and our inner story gives us the power to do so - as people, teams and as a society. In the PowerHour we will write the next chapter of your inner story together; at least the beginning.
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As we take the next steps on our hero's journeys, we would do well to focus precisely on the new, because, as the wise Richard Buckminster Fuller told us, "You never create change by fighting the existing. To change something, you build models that make the old obsolete." So let's leave old stuff behind, let it go, above all, let it be good, have been good. Old stuff, old beliefs above all. Unlearning is what we like to call it today.
That seems to me to be more than half the battle, that we can free ourselves from old entanglements, get rid of ballast, say goodbye to faded patterns and worn-out views. - Old, but good? Yes, absolutely, but absolutely no longer good for me.
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It's better to travel light, and even that is heavy enough for me anyway. You forget from one moment to the next how heavy books really are, crucifix!
Yes, books!
"Are you crazy? Haven't you ever heard of eReaders?" is what I often hear when someone sees the amount of books I have or straightens my back after moving. Because: eReaders are much more practical than books. But who wants it to be practical? Since when has that been a criterion for reading?
"Books are the soul of a room", says a proverb whose origin I can't remember, but it's certainly in one of my books. Probably even in one of my notebooks, but reading my writing ...? Hm ...
So your books, the books you have read, leafed through, learned from - are part of your life story. That's why you don't give books away! And because you don't give away old books, but you do give away old beliefs, I gave away a lot of books this time. My stately library of promotional books will soon be at a suitable technical college, where I hope it will do what it did for me: inspire, arouse wonder, spur on. You don't give away old books, but you can pass them on. Like a torch. And in the light of this torch, the books that are passed on come to life again and remain part of one's own biography, I think.
Bob Dylan, probably the best singer among the winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, sang it like this 55 years ago:
Leave your stepping stones behind now, something calls for you
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, baby blue
By the way, boxes full of CDs are also quite heavy!
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Departure, probation, comeback - the Little ABC of every story, every chapter - is now beginning for me and my team in a new base camp, in another district of Vienna, with new methods, processes and the spirit of today's creative knowledge workers. In the past weeks, we already integrated collaboration via video calls, which we had long had ingrained anyway, as an everyday tool, just as many others have done. Thanks to the many laptop cameras on earth, I have seen more nostrils from the inside since March than in all the years before, and there will certainly be an app for correcting this perspective at some point. Then every government will also be able to look up our nostrils. Even better would be functioning video call platforms that play all the tricks and can be used by all employees of large, nervous companies.
By the way,the Little Story ABC has four letters. There is also a D. That stands for Disruption. There's always something, there's never a moment's peace and the day is not far away when the journey will continue. One way or another. By then there will certainly be a lot more on the bookshelf.
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The district where we are now at home is considered a hipster district in Vienna. I don't want to guarantee whether we can contribute to this image by setting up here, but we will eat here a lot, because there are plenty of casual restaurants.
Around the corner is the supposedly best kebab producer in town, in front of which queues of people always form like in front of a DIY store on 14 April, although I have yet to see a single baby elephant. Maybe they're all already in the kebap? Or kebab makes you herd-immune? That would be super practical, of course, and the kebap would be like the eReader among the food. Or the unlearning has already taken place there - because hipsters are always a bit further ahead, so to speak - before the learning even started? Or it helps a lot that the place was built against a church wall? What do I know ...
Puzzlingly, the Kebaptist is called "Berliner". Why? Another secret I don't want to reveal, just as I will never stand in the queue there. So if you want to meet me by chance, you don't have to look there. - On the other hand: if you arrive late enough, at the Berliner, you have a lot of time to read in the queue. And that could be a hot lead to solving the mystery of the name. You wait for your kebab about as long as the Berliners wait for their new airport. Or is that too complicated a concept?
Be that as it may, I don't eat a kebab, because you are what you eat, and I'd rather be a lentil dish than a Berliner, if I may choose. Even if John F. Kennedy is somehow right to this day with his cry: "Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was 'Civis romanus sum'. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is 'Ich bin ein Berliner'. “
On the other hand, you are what you read. And a well-stocked alphabet soup, administered several times a day, opens up the World of Freedom, and: "Not All Readers Are Leaders, but All Leaders Are Readers" knew Harry S. Truman. He was president before Kennedy, not the worst - certainly not by today's standards. The very fact that he established the Marshall Plan should make us Europeans open to his idea that "leaders are readers".
Everyone leads, should lead: his or her life first and foremost. And they should lead themselves and not be seduced and led astray by self-optimisation hoses in various guises, some of whom are structurally confused with politicians just because they sit where politicians should sit. What really makes politicians tick could be read in biographies, or even in autobiographies ...
Thinking for yourself makes you smart, reading encourages you to do so. That feeds the inner story.
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If your inner bookworm needs a little fresh nourishment, then I once again recommend a visit to a bookshop - which admittedly smacks a little of "has been" in The Digital Age. In fact, it smells like the eau de toilette of many good spirits.
Every bookseller is still happy about your purchase and will get you any book in no time, even those in independent publishing like this one, written by a guy with the same name as me.
Sometimes the bookseller's hand is turned over two or three times ... The extra reward for your patience: during a visit to the bookshop, you always discover special books in such a magical way that the Amazon algorithm can't keep its mouth shut with amazement.
By the way, I really like the ORF editorial team 's regular compilations of recommendations for children's books, which fit into children's hands even better than children's mobile phones.
Not buried in some box, but at home, on top of my leaning tower of Liesmal, lies the latest work by Matthias Horx. Forecasts are notoriously difficult, especially when they concern the future. In this respect, trend & futurologist Matthias Horx has not chosen the easiest profession and has therefore hired not a pro- but a re-gnosis for the time after Corona, the clever man. Already in the first days of the shutdown in mid-March, he published a widely, widely circulated article on this, which has meanwhile swelled to the thickness of a book: "The Future after Corona".
A detailed interview with Matthias Horx on the book and the topic can be found in the Austrian magazine trend (where else?). There he states, among other things: "The Corona virus exposes everything that is right or wrong with a society." True! My bookworm has already got the cutlery ready.
Speaking of the future. For all those who survived Corona, there is still a lot left of the old normality in the new one, and as we know, that was anything but normal. For when man sees himself as the crown of creation, but then lets go of understanding, that has perhaps as much to do with normal as "the very normal madness".
Everyone lovedthis TV series by Helmut Dietl from 1979 at the time, especially the main character, the writer Maximilian Glanz (Towje Kleiner), who spent his life working on a monumental work with the meaningful title: "Why it is that the individual does not feel well, although we are all doing so well".
In real life today, the wonderful Charles Eisenstein, among others, thinks well about this and develops a lot of even better ideas on top of it with a great perspective, which he writes up in illuminating essays and books. In my old advertising days I would have put stuff like this in my "Wish I had done that" box, and I hereby guarantee that the box of Eisenstein stuff will never end up where the advertising box is now. Maybe it will soon become waste paper and a new book by Charles Eisenstein will be printed on it ...
This person always manages to make me try to applaud while standing on my knees, which is just as good for the back as lugging around boxes of books that are too full, but sometimes you have to do both, it doesn't help, and he doesn't publish that often - unfortunately.
I especially strongly recommend reading this essay on Corona, which is also available in German, as well as the essay on political activism and the real rebellion. This piece is available in German as a small booklet and makes an ideal gift for anyone you like; for yourself, for example. Don't worry - it reads easily.
Eisenstein publishes his essays according to the "Creative Commons" rules, so vigorous redistribution is not only permitted, but also encouraged. It may even be that these thoughts end up in government circles and make a difference. Especially in Austria, we have so many young people in government who, statistically speaking, are likely to experience the effects of what they decide now. But it wouldn't do the old Greens any harm to inhale some fresh air of the Eisenstein brand. They don't have to applaud standing on their knees; although recent experience shows that among the protagonists something like a spine doesn't extend too far into the danger zones anyway.
That's the way it is with money and power - and with Corona, too. The Corona story is such a multifaceted metaphor for our existence that one would like to write a book about it. It will certainly contain the sentence by Matthias Horx: "The Corona virus reveals everything that is right or wrong with a society." And that's what money and power do, too.
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We stuffed the boxes with our espresso cups with some stuff from our merchandising shop. In the shop you'll find what's left, and that's plenty and enough for everyone. For example, a lot of books fit in here, and this piece even makes a slim foot in the queue in front of the Berliner, and that's saying something for a hoodie ...
The things are beautiful above all because from them shines the flaming hand of divided history and that sentence to the world that my grandmother, old Story Dudette, wrote not only on my favourite T-shirt but also behind my ears: No Story. No Glory.
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