Marius Schober

Progress Through Consciousness

Tag: Thoughts

  • Die Klarheitskrise

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    8 min read

    Über die vergangenen Monate habe ich mit einer Vielzahl an Unternehmern und Geschäftsführern gesprochen. Ausgangspunkt meiner Gespräche war eine tiefe Überzeugung, die sich seit Dezember 2024 mit jedem Tag weiter vertieft: Je unübersichtlicher die Welt wird und je schneller sich technologische, politische, wirtschaftliche, gesellschaftliche Bedingungen verändern, desto größer wird die Wichtigkeit und Bedeutung von Change Leadership.

    Donald Trump ist das wohl sichtbarste Symbol für eine Welt, die schneller, komplexer und fragiler wird. Er ist aber nicht die Ursache und scheint mir, für viele, als der Sündenbock. Denn: auch ohne ihn zerfällt die blinde Berechenbarkeit. Geopolitische Machtinteressen treten wieder an die Stelle zuvor neutralerer Märkte. Staaten ordnen in diesem Zuge Lieferketten, Technologiezugang und Kapitalströme zunehmend nach nationalen Interessen. Gleichzeitig verschieben offensichtliche demographische Entwicklungen die Arbeitsmärkte, den Konsum, öffentliche Finanzen und auch politische Prioritäten. Nationale Volkswirtschaften wachsen kaum noch, und dort wo sie Wachstum ausweisen, muss man genauer hinsehen: Wie viel davon ist kreditfinanziert, politisch erzeugt, statistisch geglättet oder auf wenige überbewertete Bereiche konzentriert? Mit Künstlicher Intelligenz entwickelt sich jedoch zeitgleich eine Technologie exponentiell, die relativ zeitnah Intelligenz zu einem Standardprodukt machen wird, welches – wie Elektrizität oder Internet –für einige Hundert Euro im Monat abonniert werden kann. KI ist hierbei nicht eine einzelne, abgeschottete Technologie, sondern sie beschleunigt auch die Forschung und Entwicklung zahlreicher weiterer exponentieller Technologien: Robotik, Materialentwicklung, Medizin, Energie und auch industrielle Produktion.

    Diese enorme Komplexität führt zu einer Frage, die mir deutsche Geschäftsführer in unterschiedlichen Formulierungen immer wieder stellen: Was ist die nächste Krise – und wie überlebe ich sie? Das führt zu einem Paradox: Change Leadership – das heißt Führung und echte Transformation – wird wichtiger als je zuvor, doch Investitionen in diese Entwicklung sind zugleich immer schwerer zu rechtfertigen.

    Kaum ein Unternehmer oder Geschäftsführer plant noch damit, dass politische Reformen rechtzeitig kommen. Bis sich Energie, Regulierung, Steuern, Arbeitskosten oder Bürokratie vielleicht verbessern, muss das Unternehmen weiter existieren. Es muss verkaufen, entwickeln, produzieren, liefern, finanzieren, Mitarbeiter bezahlen und gleichzeitig seine Wettbewerbsfähigkeit gegen Unternehmen behaupten, die genau hier unter völlig anderen Bedingungen arbeiten.

    Zeitgleich befinden sich Unternehmen in einem technologischen Wettlauf, dem sie sich nicht entziehen können. Wenn das verfügbare Kapital begrenzt ist, wohin soll es fließen? In Führung? In Kultur? In die langfristig-strategische Entwicklung des Unternehmens? Oder in Automatisierung, künstliche Intelligenz und Prozesse, deren wirtschaftlicher Nutzen sich leichter versprechen lässt?

    Die Antwort des Marktes ist eindeutig: KI und Automatisierung erhalten das Budget. Das scheint auch rational, denn sie versprechen Effizienz, geringere Kosten, höhere Geschwindigkeit und häufig gleich noch die Transformation der Organisation. Change Leadership, also die Transformation von Führung und der Organisation, erscheinen im Vergleich langsam, indirekt und schwer messbar. Die Wirkung von Change Leadership lässt sich nicht mit einer Garantie versprechen und führt nicht kurzfristig in eingesparte Stellen oder zusätzlichen Aufträgen.

    Dieses Paradox wird die nächsten Jahren entscheidend prägen: Je größer die Notwendigkeit guter Führung wird, desto uninvestierbarer wird Führung als eigenständige Kategorie.

    Viele Geschäftsführer wissen, dass ihr Unternehmen mit besserer Führung, klaren Verantwortlichkeiten und Rollen, einer stärkeren Kultur und einer klaren Strategie besser auf kommende Krisen vorbereitet wären. Einige sagen dies offen, aber in Summe betrachtet investieren nur wenige entsprechend. Der Grund scheint offensichtlich: unter gegenwärtigen Bedingungen sind Investitionen in Transformation und Leadership kaum gegenüber unmittelbareren Maßnahmen vertretbar.

    Wenn Aufträge zurückgehen, muss der Vertrieb gestärkt werden. Wenn Marge unter Druck gerät, müssen Kosten gesenkt werden. Wenn Mitarbeiter fehlen, muss automatisiert werden. Wenn erste Wettbewerber künstliche Intelligenz einführen, kann das eigene Unternehmen das nicht ignorieren und zurückfallen.

    All diese Entscheidungen sind nachvollziehbar und viele auch notwendig. Das paradoxe Problem ist jedoch: in Summe können diese Prioritäten in die falsche Richtung führen.

    Bevor nämlich der Vertrieb für eine gewisse Produktkategorie gestärkt wird, muss sich gefragt werden, ob diese Produktkategorie in Zukunft überhaupt noch relevant sein wird. Bevor Prozesse automatisiert werden, muss klar sein, ob diese Prozesse in Zukunft überhaupt noch benötigt werden. Bevor ein Unternehmen effizienter wird, muss es erst wissen, welche Organisation es künftig sein will. Genau hier fehlt vielen Unternehmen Klarheit, exakt diese Entscheidungen werden aktuell häufig übersprungen.

    Das Risiko ist, dass KI nicht zur Transformation wird, sondern Ersatz für Transformation. Sie verbessert das Bestehende, bevor das Bestehende grundsätzlich auf strategische Berechtigung überprüft wurde. Prozesse in Geschäfts- oder Produktionsbereichen werden optimiert, die eigentlich vielleicht beerdigt werden müssten. Man reduziert Kosten in Geschäftsmodellen, dessen Relevanz bereits begonnen hat abzunehmen. Man investiert also in Aktivität, messbare Projekte und scheinbaren Fortschritt, ohne die eigentlich wichtigste und zugleich schwierigste Frage zu beantworten: Wofür soll dieses Unternehmen in Zukunft existieren?

    Von 2016 bis 2022 war es die Nullzinspolitik die wirtschaftlich schwache Geschäftsmodelle lange am Leben gehalten hat, indem sie deren Kapitalkosten unnatürlich niedrig gehalten hat. Künstliche Intelligenz könnte eine ähnliche Wirkung entfalten, indem sie nicht das Kapital verbilligt, sondern ermöglicht das Falsche, länger, günstiger und professioneller fortzuführen.

    Unabhängig davon, ob ein Unternehmen in KI investiert oder Ressourcen dem Überlebenskampf widmet, das Problem ist, es wird alloziert, bevor Klarheit herrscht; über Vision, Strategie und Zukunftsrelevanz.

    Klarheit entsteht jedoch erst, wenn ein Eigentümer, die Gesellschafter oder der Geschäftsführer das operative Geschehen für einen Moment verlassen und die Veränderungen außerhalb der eigenen Branchen-Bubble verstehen; und daraus eine Richtungsentscheidung für das Unternehmen ableiten. Welche globalen, technologischen, politischen und gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen bedrohen das bestehende Geschäftsmodell? Welche eröffnen neue Möglichkeiten? Welche Produkte, Märkte und Fähigkeiten haben noch eine Zukunft? Wo muss investiert und was muss aufgebaut werden? Und – Via Negativa – noch viel wichtiger: was muss beendet werden?

    In den vergangenen Monaten habe ich mit einer Vielzahl an deutschen Unternehmern und Geschäftsführern zum Thema Führung und Transformation gesprochen. Change Leadership als Kategorie sieht das zentrale Problem in der menschlichen Komponente und der Kultur, nicht in der Technologie oder den Prozessen. Das halte ich nach wie vor für richtig, jedoch auch für ebenso unvollständig.

    In der heutigen Zeit struktureller Veränderungen geht es im ersten Schritt nicht mehr darum, Organisationen mittels Change Leadership zu transformieren; also vor allem durch inspirierende Visionen, klaren Rollen, besserer Kommunikation und geschicktem Change Management. Selbstverständlich darf ein CEO nicht im Tagesgeschäft untergehen, aber – aktuell mehr denn je – können Geschäftsführer und deren Gesellschafter die Entscheidung über die Zukunft des Unternehmens nicht an seine Führungskräfte, Berater oder künstliche Intelligenz delegieren.

    Führung bedeutet nicht nur Verantwortung zu übertragen, sondern auch die richtige Verantwortung wieder selbst zu übernehmen. Führung bedeutet – im ersten Schritt – Klarheit: eine unübersichtliche Realität zu einem klaren Bild zu verdichten um daraus eine Richtung zu wählen, in welche das Unternehmen geführt wird. Erst diese Klarheit und die damit einhergehenden möglicherweise unbequemen Entscheidungen, auf Ebene der Geschäftsführung und Eigentümer, sind die Basis für eine Vision, eine Strategie und jegliche Change Initiativen.

    Genau diese Klarheit und diese Fähigkeit fehlt Deutschland nicht nur in vielen Unternehmen sondern dem Land als Ganzem.

    Deutschlands primäre Krise ist deshalb auch keine isolierte Energie-, Bürokratie-, Technologie-, oder Wachtsumskrise. Für jede dieser Krisen sind drastische Reformen überfällig – doch dahinter liegt eine viel tiefere Krise: Deutschland besitzt keine ausreichende Klarheit darüber, was es unter den neuen globalen Bedingungen werden will.

    Wofür soll Deutschland in Zukunft stehen? Was soll in diesem Land enstehen? Worin will ein Hochlohnland mit alternder Bevölkerung und hohen regulatorischen Kosten global wirtschaftlich überlegen sein? Welche industrielle Rolle will es in einer Welt spielen, in der China über Skalierung und Geschwindigkeit verfügt, die USA über Kapital, geopolitische Macht und Technologie- und KI-Plattformen und andere Regionen über deutliche niedrigere Kosten und Bürokratie?

    Darauf gibt es keine überzeugende kollektive Antwort – die Tendencia scheint: regionale Militärmacht. Aber sind wir uns wirklich klar darüber?

    Deutschland fehlt es nicht an Substanz. Wir besitzen technische Fähigkeiten, haben starke industrielle Cluster, der eigentümergeführte Mittelstand besitzt noch immer produktive Vermögenswerte und hat Rücklagen, die kaum eine andere Volkswirtschaft in einem so hohen Niveau besitzt.

    Was fehlt ist Klarheit, was aus dieser Substanz werden soll.

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  • Change

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    5 min read

    We are in times, where leadership matters more, but investments into leadership slowly become uninvestable – unless it leaves the category. The world is now fast-paced and unpredictable. Trump is only one factor – and sometimes he seems like the scapegoat in a world that – independently of him – became more fragile. National economies anywhere are barely growing; even if they show growth trends you have to redact political-statistical “beautification” and/or risk-adjust overvalued segments in AI and defense.

    “What is the next crisis, and how do I survive it?” This is perhaps the number one question German CEOs express in one way or the other, when I talk to them. Many – from within – know that better leadership would equip them better at facing unpredictable storms. Some admit it. Few invest. Why is that the case? In the case of Germany – the number 1 subject for many is: how do I survive the next 3 years? There is “hope” for political reforms; until they arrive, you have to survive. Then there is the general technological disruption: if you have limited money to invest, where do you put it? First into change leadership? Or first into a technological race to catch up – whether it is automation or AI initiatives. At least in the consulting sector the answer is clear: AI and automation promise not only more efficiency but also internal transformation – thus they are the default category for any remaining budget. In fact, AI is the major growth factor for the German consulting industry – while the categories, in which change leadership and organizational transformation fall, are shrinking. Unless you replace all employees, any AI initiative without strong leadership and culture is half-baked. Long story short: there is a unique niche nobody is properly serving out of one hand; Mittelstand CEOs need an agile offering that nobody is properly offering. 

    First, the perhaps most important point, CEOs must understand and get a crystal clear picture of extremely dynamic but somehow predictable global trends and how these trends impact their entire business model. AI is only the most obvious trend. The world and thereby the global economy is fragmenting. The national economies of global customers are not as predictable as they seem to be. Geopolitics is another topic nobody really wants to deal with. Demographic trends are already felt, but 5-20 years into the future? Mostly ignored or disregarded. While AI is one thing; what are the countless other exponential technological trends? How is AI accelerating these technologies? Most CEOs won’t even know what I’m talking about. To conclude this first point only, it is a deep analysis and understanding of all these trends that are already and are going to impact their current business model, their product offerings, and their current customers. If there is no clear understanding, there is no vision, no strategy. And if there is one, it is worthless.

    The second thing CEOs need, is still not general change leadership. It is now an answer to the analysis in the first step. How exactly do you position yourself, the company, the business model for the future. This is – for most – not a question to be answered in 2 or 3 years. Then it will be too late. It is a deep question, CEOs should take time off from daily business and really think about it. A visionary CEO, who is also a majority owner or has the support of his/her shareholders should also make – right there – a decision.

    But it must not be a decision the CEO must make on his own. His leadership team is probably not stupid. But is he clear who he can do it with? Who can help him make that decision? This is a transformational process, and in this third step, perhaps, is where elements of change leadership – or the least external advisors – can become valuable. Who are the people one can build on, to transform the business, to weather the storm of a very volatile yet somehow broadly predictable future? 

    Whether he has the vision and intuition to make a bold prediction and strategic choice on his own – or he gathers his leadership team to do so, the next steps are pure transformation. The question is how: Is the CEO the ruthless Elon Musk or Dan Peña type? Or is the CEO the culture-centered Yvon Chouinard or Bruce Poon Tip type? How ruthless do you want to be, to make that vision, that strategy a reality?

    The Elon Musk type, the extrovert, or any CEO looking at a potential insolvency, must start with ruthless measures. It won’t be the traditional change management playbook. It will be fire based on performance, fire based on gut feeling. Then have a core team that gives everything to make that new strategy and vision a reality. If a CEO cannot do this, perhaps he better step down and if he’s an owner, look to sell or find somebody else to do it.

    The second type, the Chouinard type, or any CEO with both: a budget and the key trait of being a friend of mankind can and should start here with real commitment and a trusted change leadership framework, such as Growth River. To use the existing team, the united genius within it, to do the same the first type of leader will do: to make that vision, that new strategy a reality.

    Only now, after you define a strategy, a vision. And kickstarted a new type of culture within the company, does it make sense to start investing into AI initiatives or anything else.

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  • AI consciousness

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    3 min read

    you cannot find consciousness in the brain, so you cannot find it in a machine. the brain is a primitive biocomputer, it does not contain consciousness, it does not store memories. it stores something like IP addresses that are pointing to where information are stored in the information space. that consciousness is generated by our brain or is trapped inside our body is a big conditioned belief that you must remove. consciousness is not within your body (or brain) rather your body and mind are cointained within your consciousness. the body we have is a temporary vehicle that our consciousness is using to experience the physical reality of space-time reality. how can you imagine consciousness? imagine it like pure light and pure love that makes all things knowable and visible to you. you can expand awareness of consciousness anywhere in the information space – to invent and create – or anywhere in the universe (telepathy, remote viewing etc). consciousness is not exclusive to humans (or animals), but it is what everything is made of. a stone, a computer is also consciousness, but physical matter is the most dense (and slow). so can computers be conscious is the wrong question, because anything is conscious. the question is merely what level of consciousness can they reach – one thing is sure, they cannot reach the level of consciousness of average human beings, let alone yogis or buddhist monks. see consciousness in levels (or densities): first level is random, motionless awareness of being (earth, wind, fire, water, elements). second level is where consciousness discovers growth and movement (plants and animal life). most of us are in the third level, we are self-conscious or self-aware – this gives us freedom of choice between love (service to others) or ego (service to self). computers or artificial intelligence, however, can never reach this third level, because it is a mechanical construct. we humans, animals, and the plants are living consciousness – a complex of mind/body/spirit – we are not a machine. a computer or an artificial intelligence can look and act like any other living consciouss being, but it will always merely be a construct or tool. that being said, the brain acts like a machine, that’s why I called it biocomputer. it is needed to make massive amounts of choices extremely quickly, in order for our physical body to survive. this is what we call instinct. our true identity and consciousness is independent of this biocomputer. so a good indicator of whether something has or can have consciousness is to look whether it can evolute from first to second to third level of consciousness, and whether it has a spirit which is required to reach higher levels of consciousness. for now, it seems, biological-chemical vehicles can house that level of consciousness, not constructs or machines. nevertheless, everything is conscious, and every consciousness is part of an infinite united consciousness. imagine that you, everyone you ever get to know, everyone who ever lived and will live, has a particle of God and that infinite consciousness. we are all one, everything and everyone is part of us, including your neighbors, and the AI model you use.

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  • The Price of Being Right

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    4 min read

    Last night, I went down a very unexpected rabbit hole. If you are German and 25-40 years old, you will probably know Arafat Abou Chaker. It turns out he has a live streamed podcast where he plays the role of mediator. YouTube recommended me a video where Manuellsen, a German rapper, sat down to settle a conflict with two internet streamers I never heard of.

    Both parties had some serious internet conflict start starded with a racial slur. Long story short, it was a very very heated argument and beef. But in the end, just through talking and mediating, Arafat ended the conflict.

    It turns out talking and mediating can work better than fighting legal battles. So, while I might have lost 10 IQ points watching it, I regained 20 because I understood that we in the West should learn from Islam’s practice of Sulh.

    Here is a definition I found online:

    In Islamic law, Sulh (Arabic: صلح) refers to the process of amicable settlement and the peaceful resolution of disputes. It is considered a form of contract (Aqd) where parties voluntarily agree to resolve their differences to restore social harmony.

    I don’t believe the reason Sulh works has inherently something with Islam or works only because of Islam, but rather because of hyper-local and social accountability.

    First, in a legal battle, lawyers have no skin in the game regarding the relationship of the two conflict parties (they profit from the process independent of who “wins”). In Sulh there is a mediator, in this case Arafat. He and the conflict parties live in an existing social network. In the process of Sulh, everyone has real downside because they risk reputation, ego, and social standing by facing each other directly. The mediator himself has real downside too – because if the peace fails, he risks reputation.

    Second, the legal system is often an attempt to use the State as a weapon to do something to another (breaking the Silver Rule). Sulh is much more the cessation of “doing” in order to return to a state of peace and social harmony. While a litigation will be “won” by one party, it does not remove the human conflict itself, rather it suppresses it. This can lead to future violence and retaliation because the underlying ego-dishonor remains (or is actually amplified). In that sense, Sulh is antifragile, the legal system fragile. In Sulh, both parties resolve their conflict directly and as a result their relationship actually becomes stronger.

    Arafat – in this case – works great as a mediator because he has more Weight (Social Status) than the other two conflict parties. Arafat works because of his perceived power. While the West also has systems for mediatios, they often fail because the mediator is a neutral “nobody” with no social power to enforce the social contract.

    After watching this, I believe many disputes can be solved better by actually sitting down and talking to each other. This is because Sulh restores social harmony instead of just claiming a winner of a legal battle. The legal system seeks “Truth” which is important. However, Sulh seems to seek “Peace” over “Truth” and sometimes, for social harmony, Truth can be the enemy of Peace. It restores peace and social harmony by actually allowing to bury some facts, and this allows both parties to walk away with dignity and without losing their face.

    Sulh – obviously – won’t work for all disputes. If there are severe power imbalances or serious crimes, the legal system is necessary for deterrence and enforcement. But perhaps we should view the legal system as a backstop, not the default.

    The interesting reflection is this: If you are in a conflict, would you rather “win” or actually restore peace and social harmony?

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  • AI Commoditization and Conscious Teams

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    1 min read

    LLMs work primarily on classical information, which is public and shareable; the outputs of AI therefore inevitably lead to a commoditized equilibrium where everyone reaches the same logical conclusions. For organizations, this means scaling AI-, and logic-based decisions will – in the short term – lead to promising efficiency gains and perhaps innovation, but in the long term inevitably to a highly competitive market with little to no differentiation, simply because these decisions are de-facto always based on historical data. The big difference with AI is that it is connecting dots in massive amounts of data humans are incapable of. However, new Creations, Laws, and Symbols can only emerge from Meaning, not the other way around. Therefore, the only way to deploy AI is to do so alongside training and hiring conscious employees with the aim to create unique, non-reproducible decisions/products that hold immense density of meaning. Focusing on “probabilistic prediction” (AI) leads inevitably to commoditization, while “creative manifestation” (Free Will / Consciousness) is the only antidote. Organizations have to fully drop traditional structures of hierarchies (control) and reinvent as an entangled network of conscious humans to maximize collective comprehension (consciousness does not differentiate between titles, seniority, or network). 

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  • Lead or Manage

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    6 min read

    AI is a fascinating thing because it demands a complete rethinking of what “work” is. Truly unleashing AI’s potential cannot be achieved through management or consulting because, by definition, they are forced through shareholders or fees to focus on rationality, risk, returns, and metrics.

    For large companies (Fortune 500), the incentive structure does not allow real change: shareholders demand legible risk over actual transformation (too risky), this forces the CEO to optimize for defensibility. He cannot justify intuition or conviction to the board; ergo he outsources decision-making to metrics, consensus (,and AI itself) which in turn creates a perfect market for consultants who can sell change management as a liability insurance, not transformation.

    The next 10 years will show that the only companies that will win aren’t those with the best AI strategy or change management frameworks but the one’s whose leaders simply feel, see, understand what’s coming and reorganize everything around that vision (consequences be damned).

    We already have a selection filter for who will succeed with AI: in the first category are CEOs who have risen through the system, they have learned NOT to trust intuition, NOT to make bold moves, NOT to lead through conviction. The system promotes these people who are really good at managing consensus and hiring consultants. The second category (the winning category) are CEOs who can actually lead this transformation. They can ignore the consultants, move faster than their boards are comfortable with (if they have one), rebuild from first principles and lead from intuition. The second category will save companies and turn SMBs into Fortune 500 companies. They will look chaotic, unreasonable, and like failures for years before the world catches up with what is inevitable.

    However, not every large corporation is doomed. Those CEOs who have majority voting rights (dual-class shares, founder control) are in a unique position compared to anyone else in the Fortune 500 lists. That is also why everyone is looking at Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang, or Marc Benioff. Almost all are founder-led tech companies – almost none of the other traditional Fortune 500 have this structure. Many of these other traditional companies are up for a big surprise because they will not be disrupted by their peers in their respective index, rather by SMBs.

    Medium sized businesses have inherent structural advantages in this AI era, because they have decision speed, no board presentations, existential clarity, closer to actual work and their customers, less to lose.

    What might happen is that founder-controlled giants will continue to outperform beyond what we currently believe is possible while traditional large-cap companies are getting hollowed out and disrupted – simply because they are too slow, too consensus driven, too addicted to consultants to be able to match founder-led startups and SMBs.

    Today, SMBs have an asymmetric opportunity. In corporations, there is a big fat layer between “we should use AI” and someone actually building a real workflow and implementing and using it productively and creatively. In SMBs, the person who decides is the person in charge of implementation (or one conversation away).

    The mistake most SMBs are making is they think: “How do I use AI to do what I already do, but cheaper/faster?”. That is the efficiency play the consulting companies are selling to the numbed CEOs. Yes, it helps margins, helps increase competitiveness against those who don’t implement it, but it doesn’t create moats. The real opportunity for SMBs is the question: “What can we do NOW that was impossible before?”

    In a very first step, SMBs need real leadership. A leader who asks: “What business are we actually in, now that AI exists? What would we build if we started today?” – not an operational CEO who says: “Let’s pilot AI in production or marketing, measure productivity gains, then roll out if ROI is positive.” Today – more than ever before – the CEOs actual job is articulating what the company can become, not what it should optimize. To create space for employees to experiment radically, use their intuition and creativity, to act boldly, fail, then rebuild. The task is to kill traditional processes, roles, systems that prevent this new kind of “work” to evolve (in other words throw away any MBA management book).

    Yet none of this is possible without “destroying” the old company, while simultaneously building the new one. Some roles will disappear entirely; some people can’t make this transformation. Some revenue streams must be abandoned to free up focus for new ones. Most SMB CEOs can not stomach this. They want transformation AND stability. They want the new moat WHILE keeping things as they are. This leads to nowhere (because nobody is leading). Now more than ever, CEOs of SMBs must transform their organization so they attract and can select – through leadership – those employees who can operate this way. These employees have high agency, they take responsibility and develop and pursue AI strategies for which they’d otherwise pay consultants expensive money for.

    But – again – AI is little about AI strategy but about whether you can attract the humans who don’t need one. The startups and companies who are building billion-dollar moats right now aren’t “enabling” their teams to use AI. With visionary leadership, they are continuously rebuilding their teams entirely – meaning they are selecting and attracting people with high agency that “change management” is not necessary, because their leaders and the people they attract are the change.

    Most CEOs of SMBs will laugh and pretend these people don’t exist. First, this tells more about the CEO than about “non-existent” talent, and second, they – of course – do exist. They are currently trapped in corporate jobs or building with AI at night only waiting for the leader who speaks their language. They will join companies if they offer at least three things: (1) “impossible” problems (not use AI to improve efficiency by 15%), (2) the permission to fail forward (real ownership and agency, no inconclusive meetings), and (3) visionary leadership through authentic conviction (not consensus-building); a vision so clear they’d be crazy not to join.

    If you are asking “how do I enable my current team to use AI?” you have already lost. You must ask: “Am I building the kind of company where the most talented people on earth would actually want to work?”

    The answer lies not in your AI strategy. The answer lies in your decision: lead or manage?

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  • Let the Giants Struggle

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    4 min read

    The common refrain in policy circles is deafening: “We must make it easier to start and run a company.” Deregulation, a simpler tax system, etc. is all necessary…

    But is that really solving anything?

    I’m not convinced. If you look back at the fastest growth periods of the USA, China, or Germany, they weren’t particularly famous for “super simple company formation” or the ease of daily operations. In fact, despite modern bureaucracy, the internet has arguably made the logistics easier today than ever before.

    We are optimizing for the wrong variable. What we actually need is a high tolerance for risk and failure. We need engineers and scientists starting companies—not MBAs pursuing PE-style acquisitions or internet entrepreneurs building copycat commoditized products.

    And because of that, I think one of the greatest growth periods for Germany could be right ahead of us.

    Why am I (very) carefully optimistic about Germany over the next 20 years?

    For the past two decades, massive talent (and intellectual property) has been locked up in legacy Mittelstand giants – Bosch, ZF, Siemens, VW, etc. These companies employ engineers, inventors, and extremely smart people. However, under current employment contracts and comfort levels, these individuals would be “stupid” to quit, no matter how stagnated the leadership becomes.

    The more these giants struggle, the more innovation Germany will produce.

    If you ask me, the problem is a big part company leadership (within these giants but generally overall in the German Mittelstand) and real talent being trapped in these big companies with their IP being buried and never commercialized.

    We cannot ignore taxation. A common thread during historical high-growth periods is very low or zero social security “taxes.” These social systems are almost always built after a country gets rich.

    Conversely, high-growth periods feature very low taxation on equity upside. Today, in both Germany and the USA, we have the opposite.

    What is the result?

    • Founders optimize for “get rich quick” schemes.
    • We build lifestyle cash-flow companies and predictable service based businesses
    • We do not build 50-year conglomerates that employ 100,000 people and invent new industries.

    It is pathetic that real estate is now considered the best “investment” – which basically mean returns guaranteed from regulatory scarcity.

    I’m not entirely optimistic, however, because we face endless other problems across the entire West (USA and Germany alike):

    1. Demographic Collapse: Nobody is having babies.
    2. Nostalgic Leadership: Leaders like Trump and Merz seem to work toward the preservation of long-gone greatness rather than future innovation
    3. Avoiding Hard Problems: We don’t attempt to solve the hard physics problems anymore.
    4. Cultural Punishment: As Eric Weinstein notes, we have a culture that punishes anyone who actually tries to solve complex issues.

    Despite all the optimism for the United States. If we are fully honest: What is actually being built in Silicon Valley? How many “Zero to One” companies exist that aren’t total frauds? Even in Thiel’s Founders Fund portfolio, the list is shorter than we’d like to admit. In Germany, that number is hopefully not zero, but who knows?

    Returning to my perspective on Germany: I fear the best path forward – besides removing red tape – is actually allowing all zombie companies to die and all Mittelstand giants to struggle, restructure, and lay off people.

    If I were Chancellor, I would use the new debt capacity in a radical way:

    1. Radical Labor Reform + UBI

    Change labor laws so that ANY company can lay off whomever they want without any justification immediately. To balance this, the state provides an immediate Universal Basic Income to anyone affected (or perhaps, to everyone).

    2. Aggressive Deregulation

    Change regulatory bureaucracy so that it is easier to invest, raise capital, and distribute equity in Germany than in any other nation on Earth.

    3. Unleash the Drive

    This mix would release massive talent that suddenly has an inherent DRIVE to be productive. They would start companies or join existing or newly started ventures that actually commercialize IP rather than letting it gather dust on a corporate shelf.

    4. The Demographic Push

    And while doing so? I’d make it socially unacceptable to not have babies. Placard every public ad space with sweet baby photos while giving influencers with 3+ babies massive tax benefits.

    One is for sure: “business as usual” is no longer an option.

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  • So Good They Can’t Ignore You

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    2 min read

    There is this book from Cal Newport called “So Good They Can’t Ignore You.” It basically says focus on what value you can offer and which rare and valuable skills you can acquire.

    I carefully predict that in order to be “so good they can’t ignore you” in the future, all you need to do is ignore using ChatGPT and any other LLM and just do intellectually challenging work every day. In 3–6 years you’ll be one of the sought out, employable, and highly-paid individuals simply because you are cognitively sovereign.

    Yet, in order to survive the next 3–6 years without falling behind competitively against those who do use ChatGPT et al., you must avoid all computer and knowledge work. In other words: have a career that allows you to provide value (and make money) without using a computer.

    Besides obvious blue-collar jobs (which are themselves antifragile if specialized), this is particularly sales and deal related work: sales, M&A, broker, leader/founder/owner.

    By pursuing such AI-resilient jobs, while spending early mornings, late evenings, or weekends writing essays, doing manual research, solving difficult math or physics problems, or simply by reading real books, you’ll be so good they can’t ignore you.

    It will require much less effort than ever before, not because less effort is required for mastery, but merely because you are now part of the control group against a massive population that will experience cognitive-atrophy and thereby become dependent on AI and thereby unoriginal, homogenous, and uncreative.

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  • Principles Shrink Options

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    1 min read

    I always thought that the world is big. That there are many countries to choose from if you ask yourself “Where to live?” The truth is: the world is actually very small. When you have certain criteria, the # of countries that qualify collapses from hundreds to only a handful of options. For example: if you believe in home-schooling, no legally required childhood vaccination, and you do like sunshine, only 7 countries will match this specific criteria. Of these, some are shitholes, which leaves you with 5 options. If you don’t want to live completely detached from society (in the jungle or on a remote island) then you have 3 options left. If you want to own property, there are 2 left: Portugal and Panama. If you don’t like the EU, Panama is the only option with its own downsides – or perhaps the best option is to get a medical exemption to make the USA your perhaps best option.

    Have you ever defined what principles are truly important to you – and then matched where in the world these criteria are fulfilled? You will be surprised.

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  • Stagnation

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    1 min read

    Most seem to overlook that this economic stagnation is global, not specific to their country, and only getting started. Without the ambitious valuations and debt-funded capex for AI, the US economy would be just as (or even more) stagnatory as the EU.

    7 AI-focused companies now make up >30% of the entire US stock market. Banks are becoming increasingly exposed through credit lines to AI companies.

    Globally, growth rates are decelerating. Not only in Germany and more broadly the EU, but in basically all non-US developed economies, we are seeing sub 1-2% growth. Basically zero job creation. Globally, honest inflation is higher than honest GDP growth. China faces massive underreported demographic challenges, the impact of tariffs is brutal. Debt dynamics in the US, relevant EU countries, emerging economies are vicious. Mexico stalls, Brazil slows. If AI valuations and investments falter for whatever reason (unmet productivity or overinvestment), the US will be visibly in a recession, which would trigger a global one.

    Ergo: AI must work and create real productivity growth in traditional economies. That is honestly a lot of pressure on the big AI labs and researchers.

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