About MindOnDigital – Clarity, Structure, Results
MindOnDigital is my site about leadership and everyday work. Here's what you get:
- Four guides: Success Blockers, Dealing with Difficult Bosses, Corporate Actors & PowerPoint Rangers and New at Work: The Unwritten Rules – as e-book and PDF, with optional workbooks you can put straight to use.
- More than 40 free articles on leadership, difficult bosses and show over substance at work.
- A newsletter when something new comes out.
No consulting, no coaching, no seminars – just writing and tools you apply yourself.
Who's behind MindOnDigital
I'm Dieter Strak, an engineer and team lead. I lead a team of twelve engineers developing software for e-mobility at a large automotive supplier. Alongside that I'm a certified Scrum Master (SAFe 6) – by choice: I don't want to only lead and manage. I'm an engineer, and I want to stay one.
I got here by way of every stage the job has: testing, test management, software integration – where I really learned to develop software –, software coordination and project management. I've carried responsibility in industry since 2004 – technical at first, and today for people as well.
For a long time I led without line-management responsibility. As a test manager you tell people their build isn't ready to ship. As a software coordinator and project manager you have technical authority, but no line authority: you hold together what several teams build, and you have to convince rather than command. As a Scrum Master it's the same to this day. Line management only came with the team lead role. You learn quickly that a title helps little and clarity helps with everything. That's what my guides are about.
For me, leading also means making sure a team knows the tools of its time. I send my people to training and get them the licences – not as a favour, but because a team that misses this falls behind within two years.
I'm not a coach, and I don't sell emotions. I won't promise you that “everything will work out if you just want it badly enough”, and I don't run feel-good evenings that leave you back in the same chaos the next morning. I show you how to find the solution yourself – for the long run, realistically, without the theatre.
Both sides of the desk
I don't write about leadership from the outside. I've been on both sides.
As an employee, I worked for managers who delivered presentations instead of results – plenty of show, little substance, and in the end someone else did the work anyway. That became the guide Corporate Actors & PowerPoint Rangers.
As a team lead, I saw it from the other side: how a few behaviour patterns can slow down a whole team without anyone being able to put their finger on it. That became Success Blockers.
That's the difference from most books on the subject: I know these patterns from below and from above. Both hurt, and both can be named.
Why MindOnDigital exists
Because I kept seeing the same thing in companies, teams and projects: people who don't fail for lack of motivation, but for lack of clarity – unclear roles, unresolved conflicts, chaotic structures, too much theory and too little practice.
Anyone looking for help is often sold two hours of feeling good. The next day, the problems are the same.
Clarity instead of chaos. Structure instead of drama. Results instead of excuses.
No silver bullets, no coaching waffle – just experience and tools that have to prove themselves in real working life.