Hi,
I'm Christian, working now for >15 years in various roles in the financial and tech industry. Started with a PhD in applied math, my first experiences were in implementing quantitative models (in C++ and Java) for pricing and risk management of derivatives and in portfolio risk management. Since then I'm in serious love with clean code, good architecture, and well-thought levels of abstraction :-)
When I moved into a leadership role (quite frightening at the beginning!) my focus and areas of interests broadened significantly. People centricity, supporting and empowering team members, organization of team work, mentoring, coaching and agile principles tools became important aspects of my work.
And, whilst working with people and organizations has so many aspects and there is approximately 1 trillion things I don't know (yet :-)), I very much enjoy helping others, sharing my experience, and watching them succeed.
My Mentoring Topics
- Career Development
- Management
- Team Organization
- People Development
- Leadership
- Self-Organization
- Organizational Development
- Change Management
- Agile Development
I.
14.October 2022I had a really great session with Christian in regarding to what it takes to be a successful director of engineering.
Christian shared some practical advices from his experience and help me to strengthen my self confidence.
O.
8.July 2022On my session with Christian, not only did we focus on the right questions but we got to the point!
I was able to get a lot of input in terms of:
- Dealing with conflict at work or difficult situations
- Having to attack the problem instead of walking around it(Eat the frog ;) )
- Asking the right questions
- Growth attitude
He not only mentored me on those topics but offered solutions and action items.
I am really grateful for our session together and looking forward for more!
J.
14.June 2022Dear Christian, thank you for your taking your time for mentoring me. Cristian is really a wonderful person and lovely mentor. He listened to my concerns without any interruptions and also gone through my CV and gave me some good points on CV writing and also shared the feedback with me. I would like to have more sessions with you, it is helping me to improve my job search, CV writing and cover letter writing skills. Thanks once again....
Z.
1.June 2022Very insightful. I took lots of notes on the topics we discussed. I liked the practical advice and good flow in our communication. I particularly enjoyed the different angles we tackled the questions I had.
S.
25.May 2022It was very helpful, with concrete ideas and steps I can take immediately. It allowed me to rethink what career may actually be more in line with my interest (complexity, people/exchange), I hadn’t though of Product Management and Product Ownership for myself before. Also we discussed how to approach these functions in my current company. I found the 30min frame perfect, allowing a very effective session. Many thanks!
Working Backwards - Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon
Colin Bryar, Bill Carr
'Essential for any leader in any industry' – Kim Scott, bestselling author of Radical Candor Working Backwards gives an insider's account of Amazon's approach to culture, leadership, and best practices from two long-time, top-level Amazon executives. In 2018 Amazon became the world’s second trillion dollar company after Apple: a remarkable success story for a company launched out of a garage in 1994. How did they achieve this? And how can others learn from this extraordinary success and replicate it? Colin Bryar started at Amazon in 1998; Bill Carr joined in 1999. Their time at Amazon covered a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Echo and Alexa, and Amazon Web Services to life. Through the story of these innovations they reveal and codify the principles and practices that have driven the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known, from the famous 14-leadership principles, the bar raiser hiring process, and Amazon’s founding characteristics: customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence. Through their wealth of experience they offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated, and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable. Working Backwards shows how success is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously-executed principles and practices that you can apply at your own company, no matter the size.
ViewStart With Why - How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action
Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek's recent video on 'The Millennial Question' went viral with over 150 million views. Start with Why is a global bestseller and the TED Talk based on it is the third most watched of all time. Why are some people and organisations more inventive, pioneering and successful than others? And why are they able to repeat their success again and again? In business, it doesn't matter what you do, it matters WHY you do it. Start with Why analyses leaders like Martin Luther King Jr and Steve Jobs and discovers that they all think in the same way - they all started with why. Simon Sinek explains the framework needed for businesses to move past knowing what they do to how they do it, and then to ask the more important question-WHY? Why do we do what we do? Why do we exist? Learning to ask these questions can unlock the secret to inspirational business. Sinek explains what it truly takes to lead and inspire and how anyone can learn how to do it.
ViewMade to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Chip Heath, Dan Heath
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The instant classic about why some ideas thrive, why others die, and how to make your ideas stick. “Anyone interested in influencing others—to buy, to vote, to learn, to diet, to give to charity or to start a revolution—can learn from this book.”—The Washington Post Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas—entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists—struggle to make them “stick.” In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds—from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony—draw their power from the same six traits. Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas—and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.
ViewManaging for Happiness - Games, Tools, and Practices to Motivate Any Team
Jurgen Appelo
A practical handbook for making management great again Managing for Happiness offers a complete set of practices for more effective management that makes work fun. Work and fun are not polar opposites; they're two sides of the same coin, and making the workplace a pleasant place to be keeps employees motivated and keeps customers coming back for more. It's not about gimmicks or 'perks' that disrupt productivity; it's about finding the passion that drives your business, and making it contagious. This book provides tools, games, and practices that put joy into work, with practical, real-world guidance for empowering workers and delighting customers. These aren't break time exploits or downtime amusements—they're real solutions for common management problems. Define roles and responsibilities, create meaningful team metrics, and replace performance appraisals with something more useful. An organization's culture rests on the back of management, and this book shows you how to create change for the better. Somewhere along the line, people collectively started thinking that work is work and fun is something you do on the weekends. This book shows you how to transform your organization into a place with enthusiastic Monday mornings. Redefine job titles and career paths Motivate workers and measure team performance Change your organization's culture Make management—and work—fun again Modern organizations expect everyone to be servant leaders and systems thinkers, but nobody explains how. To survive in the 21st century, companies need to dig past the obvious and find what works. What keeps top talent? What inspires customer loyalty? The answer is great management, which inspires great employees, who then provide a great customer experience. Managing for Happiness is a practical handbook for achieving organizational greatness.
ViewLeadership Is Language - The Hidden Power of What You Say and What You Don't
L. David Marquet
'Full of compelling advice on how to lead more effectively by choosing your words more wisely' - ADAM GRANT, author of Originals and Give and Take Your words matter more than you think Most of us use the language we inherited from a time when workers worked with their hands and managers worked with their heads. Today, your people do much more than simply follow orders. They contribute to performance and solve problems, and it's time we updated our language to reflect that. In Leadership Is Language, former US Navy captain L. David Marquet offers a radical playbook to empower your people and put your team on a path to continuous improvement. The framework will help you achieve the right balance between deliberation and action, and take bold risks without endangering your mission. Among other things, you'll learn: · How to avoid the seven common sins of questioning, from binary questions (should we do A or B?) to self-affirming questions (B is the better option, right?) · Why you should vote first, then discuss, when deciding on a plan with your team, rather than voting after discussion · Why it's better to give your people information instead of instructions As a submarine captain, Marquet used his counterintuitive model of leadership to turn the worst-performing submarine crew into the best-performing one in the fleet, a story he recounted in his bestselling book Turn the Ship Around! Now, in Leadership Is Language, he draws on a wide range of examples, from the 2017 Oscars Best Picture mishap to the tragic sinking of the SS El Faro, to show you exactly how the words you use (and don't use) impact how your people contribute.
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The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Revised and Updated
Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim Huling, Scott Thele
4DX® is not theory. It is a proven set of practices that represents a new way of thinking essential to thriving in today’s competitive climate, making this 2nd Edition a book that no business leader can afford to miss. The 2nd Edition provides more than 30 percent new content, including insight on topics such as: -How 4DX impacts leaders of leaders. -The one metric that sustains execution for the long term. -Three leadership mindsets required for strategic commitment. -Utilizing technology for compelling executive scoreboards. The 4 Disciplines of Execution are used by more than 100,000 teams around the world in business, government, and education, and are changing how teams and organizations achieve their most important goals.
ViewGetting Things Done - The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
David Allen
The book Lifehack calls "The Bible of business and personal productivity." "A completely revised and updated edition of the blockbuster bestseller from 'the personal productivity guru'"—Fast Company Since it was first published almost fifteen years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era, and the ultimate book on personal organization. “GTD” is now shorthand for an entire way of approaching professional and personal tasks, and has spawned an entire culture of websites, organizational tools, seminars, and offshoots. Allen has rewritten the book from start to finish, tweaking his classic text with important perspectives on the new workplace, and adding material that will make the book fresh and relevant for years to come. This new edition of Getting Things Done will be welcomed not only by its hundreds of thousands of existing fans but also by a whole new generation eager to adopt its proven principles.
ViewThe Making of a Manager - What to Do When Everyone Looks to You
Julie Zhuo
No idea what you're doing? No problem. Good managers are made, not born. Top tech executive Julie Zhuo remembers the moment when she was asked to lead a team. She felt like she’d won the golden ticket, until reality came crashing in. She was just 25 and had barely any experience being managed, let alone managing others. Her co-workers became her employees overnight, and she faced a series of anxiety-inducing firsts, including agonising over whether to hire an interviewee; seeking the respect of reports who were cleverer than her; and having to fire someone she liked. Like most first-time managers, she wasn’t given any formal training, and had no resources to turn to for help. It took her years to find her way, but now she’s offering you the short-cut to success. This is the book she wishes she had on day one. Here, she offers practical, accessible advice like: · Don’t hide thorny problems from your own manager; you’re better off seeking help quickly and honestly · Before you fire someone for failure to collaborate, figure out if the problem is temperamental or just a lack of training or coaching · Don’t offer critical feedback in a ‘compliment sandwich’ – there’s a better way! Whether you're new to the job, a veteran leader, or looking to be promoted, this is the handbook you need to be the kind of manager you've always wanted.
ViewNo Rules Rules - Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer
*** Shortlisted for the 2020 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year *** It's time to do things differently. Trust your team. Be radically honest. And never, ever try to please your boss. These are some of the ground rules if you work at Netflix. They are part of a unique cultural experiment that explains how the company has transformed itself at lightning speed from a DVD mail order service into a streaming superpower - with 190 million fervent subscribers and a market capitalisation that rivals the likes of Disney. Finally Reed Hastings, Netflix Chairman and CEO, is sharing the secrets that have revolutionised the entertainment and tech industries. With INSEAD business school professor Erin Meyer, he will explore his leadership philosophy - which begins by rejecting the accepted beliefs under which most companies operate - and how it plays out in practice at Netflix. From unlimited holidays to abolishing approvals, Netflix offers a fundamentally different way to run any organisation, one far more in tune with an ever-changing fast-paced world. For anyone interested in creativity, productivity and innovation, the Netflix culture is something close to a holy grail. This book will make it, and its creator, fully accessible for the first time.
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Z.
29.March 2023Christian provided me with a comprehensive overview of a career in quantitative finance and valuable insights into technical aspects of the career. I had a positive and enlightening experience speaking with Christian Kuechler and I feel grateful for the opportunity to learn from Christian's expertise and experience.