About

Hi, I’m Matthias.

I write about Productivity, Leadership and Digitalization from the perspective of someone who has to make systems work in real organizations.

This website is my place to think in public (calmly, practically, and without hype) about how work actually gets done when technology, people, and constraints collide.

Image created in cooperation with DALL·E 3

Where this perspective comes from

I started my career in engineering and applied research.

I studied Industrial & Mechanical Engineering at Vienna Institute of Technology and completed a PhD while working at the Fraunhofer Institute. During that time, I was involved in research projects closely tied to industrial practice, spanning topics such as lean manufacturing, production planning, maintenance management, and early forms of digitalization.

Back then, my focus was largely on understanding how systems should work.

Over time, my interests shifted toward a different question: how systems actually work once they meet reality. That shift gradually pulled me deeper into IT and digitalization. I began learning to program and worked hands‑on with automation, data‑driven methods, machine learning, and predictive maintenance: not as abstract concepts, but as part of concrete projects with real constraints and trade‑offs.

After finishing my PhD, I moved into the corporate world.

Since then, I’ve worked in different organizations where my role evolved from contributing individually to building and leading teams in digital and IT‑related contexts. Over the years, that meant taking responsibility not only for systems and technology, but also for the people working with them.

Today, I lead a department responsible for Information Technology in an international organization.

That experience has shaped how I think about work more than anything else. Once you’re accountable for outcomes (and for the conditions under which others are expected to deliver them) elegance gives way to clarity and individual solutions give way to systems that can actually be sustained.

What I write about

Most advice about productivity, leadership, or technology sounds good in isolation and falls apart once it meets reality. I learned that after reading dozens of books on this topics

My writing focuses on the in‑between space:

• between strategy and execution
• between tools and behavior
• between individual productivity and team outcomes

You’ll mostly find reflections on:

• Personal Operating Systems: How individuals stay effective when work becomes complex, ambiguous and constrained (without relying on hacks). Read more …
• Leadership as a System: How decisions, communication and responsibility scale through teams and why leadership is less about traits and more about structure. Read more …
• Tools in the Real World: How digital systems, IT, and AI actually behave once they meet organizations Read more …

Many posts are influenced by books, research, and conversations, but always filtered through practical experience.

Why I write

The reason I write is to clarify my own thinking.

Over the years, I’ve learned that writing is one of the most effective ways to understand what actually matters (and what doesn’t). So, this site is not about trends or quick wins. It’s about building a body of thought over time.

If you’re interested in how modern work really functions (especially in digitally complex environments) I think you might find something useful here.