On January 20, we were very pleased to welcome Jan Köster once again as a guest lecturer at our institute. As in the previous year, Jan joined the course Intercultural Management and Communication at the Technische Universität Hamburg, and we were delighted that he took the time to return and share his expertise with our students.
Jan began the guest lecture in a very personal and transparent way by talking about his own stressful morning, using it as an entry point into the realities of modern working life. From there, he guided the students through key questions of organizational culture and transformation. In the first part of the session, he introduced a Cynefin framework inspired by Dave Snowden, which differentiates between simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic problems, as well as the often overlooked “unclear space” that emerges when the wrong tools are applied to the wrong type of problem. Building on this, Jan discussed agile methods and the important distinction between working in the system and working on the system, complemented by the Plan–Do–Check–Act cycle.
Using vivid, cross-generational examples—from his grandfather’s experiences with telephones and digital money, to his father’s constant availability and its health consequences, to today’s shifts toward new work methods, AI, and future technologies—Jan illustrated how ways of working and organizing have continuously evolved. Concepts such as VUCA (Volarity, Uncertainty, Conplexity, Ambiguity) and BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible) provided frameworks for understanding today’s uncertain environments. He emphasized that many organizations fail to see their real problem: the loss of knowledge workers and the urgent need to shift toward continuous learning, self-reflection, resilience, and developing organizations as learning systems.
Once again, he complemented the course perfectly, enriching it with clear insights, thought-provoking impulses, and practical perspectives on the challenges and processes of organizational culture transformation.
It was another inspiring morning, and we very much hope to welcome Jan back again in the future.
