Working Out Loud Workshop

cooperation partner: Bosch-Co-Creation-Team

From company practice to the university – at the weekend the HfK+G campus in Stuttgart was lively, but by no means noisy. “Working Out Loud” (WOL) means change management, which is not just grey theory on patient paper. At the invitation of HfK+G* Stuttgart, Katharina Krentz from Robert Bosch GmbH and her colleagues from the WOL co-creation team, Monika Struzek and Corinna Leitner, led the participants through a workshop saturated with practical experience to “Working Out Loud”. The approximately 50 participants* from industry, academia and university were able to actively try out WOL for themselves after only a short time. The starting point for the method devised by John Stepper is the formation of networks that develop in relation to specific topics and hide internal hierarchies. I am impressed by the speed with which the topic has spread at Bosch and how positive the worldwide feedback has been,” says Christoph Kübel, Managing Director and Labor Director of Robert Bosch GmbH. The basic idea that John Stepper presented personally at the university in January was to make one’s own work visible and to set individual goals. The groups of five in a WOL Circle help each other within a manageable period of time by sharing their knowledge with each other and offering each other suitable network resources. The clou: The structure in which the mini teams work also works with Skype and Co. Global cooperation can thus be realised quickly and above all on a low-threshold basis. The list of companies that have integrated WOL into their change management is long and illustrious: In addition to Bosch, Audi, Daimler, Deutsche Telekom and Swisscom among others rely on WOL to stimulate innovative change processes. WOL’s structure is open and equally suitable for institutions of all kinds. For a university like HfK+G*, “Working Out Loud” is an instrument to offer students and practitioners from companies, communities and public institutions a scalable platform for structured networking.