Dusseldorf Insa Klasing previously managed the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) fast food chain. Now, with her own start-up TheNextWe, she is making good bosses out of others. Why can she do that? Twice in her career she had to involuntarily learn to delegate and radically adapt her leadership style.
The first time in 2016. At that time, Insa was the head of KFC in Germany and broke both arms in a riding accident. She could not go to the office for six weeks, spent the time in the hospital and in rehab. After that, she could only come back for two hours a day – for her as a workaholic the horror.
In the end, appreciation is a mindset with which you get up in the morning and encounter the world. For many, this simply falls behind under the pressure of day-to-day business. Then you quickly find yourself just with yourself instead of looking: What am I being offered? And to perceive that and really appreciate it. Insa Klasing
Four years later, in March 2020, Klasing contracted the dangerous corona virus at a choir rehearsal in Berlin in the early phase of the pandemic. This was followed by pneumonia, sinusitis, otitis media and then a hospital germ infection. “In the end, the effect was that I really had to pause.”
Today the entrepreneur says: “Anyone who leads more than two hours a day is overriding.” She has developed and now demands a radically different understanding of leadership. Instead of wanting to control everything, bosses should give their employees much more freedom. Otherwise, things are going downhill with Germany’s companies. According to Klasing, what is important here is a shared vision. “Otherwise, letting go will end in chaos, because everyone does what they believe, what is right.”
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People are really a matter for the boss! In the knowledge society, people are the only factors of production. Insa Klasing
The East Frisian, who studied economics, politics and philosophy at Oxford, speaks to us about the stumbling blocks of New Work, about the ego trap (“The Mississippi flows between delegating and letting go”), her greatest lessons from both strokes of fate (“Feedback is love, even if it doesn’t always feel that way ”) the question of how long a good boss has to work – have fun listening.
We also wanted to know from Insa Klasing:
- What makes a good boss and how do you become one?
- How do you get a control freak like Tesla boss Elon Musk to let go?
- Which boss would you be today if the accident had never happened?
- How do you criticize as a manager correctly?
Insa Klasing: The 2-hour boss. More time and success with the autonomy principle
Campus, 2019
224 pages
24.95 euros
ISBN 9783593509914
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