“Reflecting on yourself every week is a super skill” – Kristina Bonitz from Diffferent

Kristina Bonitz is CEO and Managing Director at Diffferent, a strategy consultancy for sustainable corporate growth. For 14 years she has been advising and supporting companies with her competence and expertise and helping them to achieve a real impact both entrepreneurially and socially. Whether with a new strategy, a new business model, new services and portfolios or the transformation to a customer-centric organization.

In the “5 things I can’t work without” series, Bonitz reveals what she personally needs in her everyday work to be successful.

Fresh air: A fresh air fanatic from an early age, I’m definitely Team #WindowUp. That’s why offices with air conditioning are also a nightmare for me. If it has to be like that, regular walks are part of my everyday work or I repurpose my colleagues’ smoking breaks for myself: exchange a bit – without smoking – and get some fresh air at the same time is a great deal.

Background noise with good coffee – or vice versa: Even if it means working in silence – I’m most productive when thinking with background and ambient noise, whether it’s clattering coffee cups, whispering colleagues or ambient music. That’s why the café around the corner is also one of my favorite places to work; there is also access to really good coffee. I learned how to roast coffee from a friend of mine – since then fully automatic machines have been a no-go.

note: The tool is a wiki, document storage, project planning and networked workspace all in one. And with it my “favourite software of all time”! No fuss, clean design and incredibly versatile. Finally a tool that supports the way my brain works and doesn’t hinder it.

Rich Conversations: Small talk isn’t really my thing, but I love profound, also philosophical conversations with colleagues, office visitors, people sitting next to the train or whoever. To open up to other perspectives or to talk to people who do completely different things than I do is super important for me to classify my own thoughts, to link them or simply to dismiss them as nonsense.

Sparring and coaching: Here I break the favorite taboo of managers – where I am, I didn’t get there alone, but benefited from external help and great sparring partners. I have many years of coaching experience and have worked hard on myself – reflecting on yourself every week is a super skill that, in my opinion, too many people still don’t use. I don’t always have to come up with everything on my own or do it on my own.