Stephanie Borgert, Chief Solutions Officer
Why organizational discourse is needed and what was the defining moment for our Chief Solutions Manager to join the qohubs team are just a few insights that Stephanie Borgert revealed in this interview.
1. First of all, Stephanie, you describe yourself as a complexity researcher. What does a complexity researcher research?
My focus is on finding answers to the following question: “How can we organize ourselves (as teams and organizations) in a “good” way when the world around us is highly interconnected, turbulent, full of surprises, and dynamic?” When you take complexity seriously and look through “complexity glasses,” you get additional ideas on how to think about leadership, building organizations, and creating value. And as complexity is the context you have to take into account that every organization is unique in a way and you can’t apply a recipe, and therefore the research will never be done.
2. You work intensively with the term "organizational discourse". What significance does it have for your work and the work with and for qohubs?
That’s what it is all about. The solutions that we provide for our customers promise change, company wide and fast. Change always means that you have to rethink your formal structures, the informal ones as well as the organizational patterns of communication and behavior. So, you have to reflect on all of that. If you really want to find out what is your organization thinking and how you best influence this system, you should open up a discourse with as many people as possible. Discourse is much more than “just talking”. It is a way of thinking together. Organizational Discourse is the way to establish what we call collective sense-making. And, of course, it is our own way of finding ideas and agreements. At qohubs, we practice what we preach.
3. We often hear statements like "What does organizational discourse have to do with value creation?" How would you answer this?
When you observe organizations, you find more chatter than discourse. Saying that I am not blaming people. Intelligent adults may do stupid things when they follow the patterns of their organization. So, you find teams, groups, and managers just talking about This and That, a lot of stuff that does not belong to their customer's needs. Stuff that does not create value for the customers. The organizational discourse is meant to focus the conversation on value creation because that should be the goal of a company and not brilliant PowerPoint slides, happy people, or other fun stuff.
4. Since 2007, you have worked as an author, consultant, and entrepreneur; what led you to be Chief Solutions Officer in our start-up qohubs?
When I became aware of the qohubs platform for the very first time, it was pure inspiration. I thought: ”Wow, this is exactly what I dreamed of.” The good thing was that I already knew Dijana and Viktor Vetturelli and, so I just called them. We started talking about opportunities and started working together. I met the different people at qohubs, and we all found out that we can work together in a very good way. That brought us here. I strongly believe in the platform, the philosophy underneath it, and the people that make up the qohubs team.
5. In your role as the CSO, you are also working on the growth of qohubs; when we think about the internal structures, how do you envision them?
My picture is that we create an eco-system around qohubs. A network of partners, customers, authors, suppliers, and ambassadors. The core of qohubs (as an organization) will be truly self-organized. We work internationally (what we already do) and deploy our solutions not only to companies but the G7 summit, nations, the EU, all places where a discourse is needed.
6. Fun fact about you?
I am a cabaret artist.😊