Away in Middle Management
The reality of work and life is not only changing for people in their mid-twenties and job starters. Even well-established executives and entrepreneurs start to feel uneasy about the ever-growing pace of the change. On a sunny morning, 15 successful, middle-aged businessmen are sitting in the meeting room of a design hotel in Hamburg, worried about their future, their careers, and the meaning of life. They work in different sectors: Some are bankers, some are marketing managers, and some are controllers. There is a scientist, a freelance architect, and a director of commercials among them. What all of them share is that vague feeling of discontent, that gnawing anxiety about the future. They are not afraid of failure or unemployment, but of leading an average life full of mediocrity and boredom – the idea of “that was basically it, there’s not much more to come.” What they fear is that all the exciting stuff out there is happening without them.
What I am describing here is not a motivation seminar but a self-organized meeting of friends and acquaintances. Some of them have known each other since their childhood, others have recently joined them because they found the idea appealing. But what idea? One of the participants brings it to the point: “All of us are good at what we’re doing. We make good money and we’ve achieved something, but if we don’t watch out, we will be stuck on this level for the rest of our lives. We’re wasting away in middle management.” And this is not the way it is supposed to be – not in the Meconomy with its promise of self-fulfillment and jobs that we are burning to do. That’s why the 15 businessmen developed a schedule that mixes self-discovery with professional training and business start-up coaching. Today is their first meeting.
In a quick round of introductions, the participants tell each others what they do and what motivates them. It soon becomes obvious that all of them attach importance to their jobs – still, the soft factors are all the more important. One of them tells the group about his last world trip that he took a sabbatical for. Another one shows pictures of him skiing and sailing. The message is clear: There is more to my existence than my job. The participants tell each other about their plans and dreams, about things that they still want to experience or achieve. The 15 men indeed form a representative cross-section of the German working population in their mid-thirties. All of them are ready – if not even dying – to reinvent themselves.
That’s why they want to find out now how others made it. They picked a city – Hamburg – and simply called some of the most interesting and intelligent achievers, asking them: “What about this: We come over and you can give us the inside story behind closed doors. Is that a deal?”
You wouldn’t believe this kind of strategy would be successful, but it actually worked. Within the next three days, they will talk to 20 CEOs, chief editors, company founders, and start-up businesses. During long, intensive, and confidential interviews, they will hear about what went wrong in their interview partners’ careers and businesses, what they would do the same way again and what not, what impact their jobs have on their private lives, and what goals they have.
The list of interview partners is impressive: start-up businesses, entrepreneurs, and exciting personalities. From Gabriele Fischer, Editor-in-chief of the German business magazine brand eins, to Mark Korzillies, founder of the restaurant chain Vapiano. From Thorsten Becker, managing director of the Hamburg-based HR consulting company Management Angels, to Arndt Roller, CEO of Parship. The list also includes potential sponsors, such as Jens Müffelmann, who coordinates the investments of Germany’s Axel Springer publishing house in technology ventures, and Christian Nagel, co-founder and managing partner of the venture capital company Earlybird.
I had the opportunity to attend the interviews – as a participant and contributor – and I was indeed impressed with the list of prominent interview partners that had been compiled by a group of no-name individuals. However, what I found even more impressive was the likeable enthusiasm with which they questioned the experienced entrepreneurs. Here, a group of young managers really wanted to know how to start your own business, how to present ideas, how to create a financing plan, and, ultimately, what might go wrong in all of this. I took extensive notes and would summarize the most important insights as follows:
1. Usually, much more goes wrong than you would expect as an outsider. I can’t give you any details in this respect as I agreed to treat all the information confidentially. However, you wouldn’t believe how dramatic the mistakes, mishaps, and errors were that many business founders made and got through. Just because they are successful today, this doesn’t mean they have always known everything and done everything right. Sometimes they were simply unlucky. Of course, when talking to journalists, they always tell the success stories.
2. Sometimes you have to let go of your own idea to make it work. Today, Mark Korzillius owns but a small share in Vapiano – although he is the one who came up with the idea for this globally successful restaurant chain. He says that he is satisfied to see his concept grow.
3. Sometimes you have to stick to your idea against all odds to make it work. When you listen to Gabriele Fischer talking about the difficult beginnings of brand eins, you ask yourself: Why on earth did she do that to herself and her team? Because she knew that they would triumph in the end? This is easy to say in retrospect…
4. You might have to challenge your business model to keep it alive. The MediaLab, a subsidiary of the German Madsack publishing group, recently invented the first newspapers that exclusively contain user-generated content – which means that all articles are written by laypersons and not by professional journalists. Please note: We are talking about a major German publishing house here that actually makes money by selling classic newspapers. Is this insane? Or a bold strategy that counters industry trends? Probably, it’s a little bit of both…
5. After all, no one knows in advance what will work. Earlybird doesn’t know which of the start-up businesses they finance will make it. Madsack doesn’t know if their investments in the Internet radio platform www.radio.de will be profitable. Parship doesn’t know if people will spend 30 Euros a month on dating during the financial crisis. The planners of Hamburg’s large-scale architectural project HafenCity don’t know if they will create a vibrant district or a soulless concrete jungle. The trick is to stop calculating, deliberating, and forecasting at some point and to start doing things. No one knows what the future holds, but all of us can take a chance.
This might seem more difficult during times of crisis. To many people, however, these are perfect times to get started: When the economy is down, resources and rents are cheap, manpower is available, and you have time to prepare for the take-off of your business after the crisis.
The Time to Do What You Love Is Now
“There is no more reason today to do stuff that you hate,” says the young American entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, who gave up managing a wine wholesale company with a revenue of millions in order to realize his dream: He recently became the world’s most successful wine blogger. He broadcasts his daily show via the Internet and rejects offers of TV stations. In this way, Vaynerchuk became one of the pioneers of the Meconomy: “Ask yourself: What do I want to do every day for the rest of my life? Do that! I promise you can monetize that shit.”
This message catches on with the target group of young, well-trained employees who have been disappointed one time too many – by their bosses, by their investment advisors, or by politicians. We lost money in the bank crash of 2008, and some of us even lost their jobs in the economic crisis. We are flexible, motivated, and well-trained – but that doesn’t really help us during the downturn. Many of us who still have our jobs do them in a rather disenchanted way and without too much loyalty. We know that we might get the sack once management decides to change its business strategy. As we don’t trust our bosses, more and more of us prefer to become our own bosses and start our own businesses.
On average, the number of independent professionals
