An Interview with the Berlin Innovation Agency and Dr. Martina Weifenbach:
BIA: So tell me something more about you …, what do you do and what’s your superpower?
Martina: I connect (new) mindfulness with innovation methods to support companies in becoming more resilient, empathetic and innovative. My superpower is bringing mindfulness and innovation together in an accessible and light way because I truly believe that mindfulness is about finding purpose, flow, and fun in what you do.
BIA: What does New Work mean to you?
Martina: New work is about creating a movement towards a sustainable and future-oriented way of doing business. By bringing the people in the organization on board and by giving them the feeling that they are important on this path, people take on responsibility and leadership from within. This is what New Work means to me: Empowerment, integration and shared growth.
BIA: What is a common misconception about New Work?
Martina: That you can just pour it over an existing organization like orange juice without considering what structures, processes and ways of thinking the organization and its people have to let go before. Not seldom, mixing it all together simply leads to a cocktail of confusion and frustration without a clarity of goals, methods, and directions.
BIA: As you know, at BIA we want to create better organizations, so how does a future-proof organization look to you?
Martina: A future-proof organization has understood how to mindfully empower its employees on a continuous basis and this understanding impacts how the organization hires, which is human and competence-based, how it collaborates, which is empathetically and on eye-level, and how it distributes leadership, which is based on agile projects. Such an organization fosters continuous learning through embracing failure, it drives network-oriented interaction, and it has a clear agreement on shared goals and a shared purpose that interlinks with the individual goals, values, and purposes of the people who form part of that organization.
BIA: What’s a New Work buzzword you love and what’s a buzzword you really hate?
Martina: I don`t like to hate 😉 But I love that mindfulness has become a buzzword while it makes me sad that it is so often misused as a short-cut intervention. Similarly, I feel that a lot of consultancies and companies – especially their CEOs – have recently started to misuse purpose as a buzz and branding tool without fully understanding the deeper magic of that concept which can be truly empowering!
BIA: Which tool, technique, or framework has had the biggest impact on you?
Martina: The business model canvas because it was the starting point of my journey to innovation management. It helped me realize that there is more to innovation and New Work than frameworks. New Work is a mindset and it requires a shift in thinking and acting, which only becomes possible through developing important superpowers for the digital age. And this is where mindfulness comes into play – mindfulness as a way of thinking, acting, and living becomes a crucial pillar to enabling New Work as a mindset.
BIA: What is your daily work routine – or which workflow apps do you use?
Martina: Starting the day with meditation and a mindful team check in. For more, see myndway.com or get in touch.
BIA: Which key topics did you lecture in our masterclass and why does it matter for leaders?
Martina: The foundation of mindfulness and how simple mindful practices can support the development of important leadership skills. As a leader, you need to be present with yourself and others in order to jointly drive your goals and strategies. This requires resilience, empathy, creativity and understanding complexity. All of these aspects can be trained through regular mindfulness practice. It`s magic! Really – and it starts with you! For more, please tune in! 😉
Find out more about the BIA and their latest program here.
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