Vision / Why?
Imagine a world where we treat each other with respect, help each other grow and people actually like their job. Where we leave it a better place for our children. This is what I am passionate about and strive for.
Mission / What?
To achieve this vision I support people, systems and organisations which foster learning and personal growth and want to create a positive impact.
Personally I orient myself on ecological sustainability, protection of private data (since it is a requirement for democracy) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Methods / How?
As an Agile Coach I work on team dynamics, OKRs and change facilitation. I am also passionate about event organisation on any scale. I strive for impact, pragmatism and compassion.
Best In
Driven / Enterpreneurship
I love to deliver results as a team and grow collectively. This means that the team needs motivation as well as a trustful and challenging environment and takes over responsibility. I am able and willing to provide both and also experiment with ideas outside of the normal scope of the project if I can see tangible long-term benefits for the cause.
Change Facilitation
As SCRUM Master I drove and accompanied the continuous improvement and team processes with up to 15 developers with POs in different companies and increased the teams' responsibility and autonomy.
As Agile Coach I streamlined the communication processes of a quickly growing company of 80 people.
In 2 companies I implemented and / or improved the use of GApps and JIRA.
In my voluntary association (12min.me) I drove the restructuring for more responsible teams and better results while it grew from 4 to 140 people in about 6 years.
In AIESEC I helped setting up national and local communication teams for about 40 entities over the course of 3 years and facilitated strategic planning meetings for local entities.
OKR
In several companies from 6-140 people I was responsible for the introduction, operationalization and iterative improvement of OKRs for over a year. I coached the management of several companies, 14 teams and a worldwide distributed startup and organized and hosted an alignment for 150 people (see video below for reference). I host a monthly community of practice around OKRs.
Interculturality
For several years I have been working with and managed mostly intercultural teams and had to ensure motivation and results, while cultural differences were adressed and dealt with. I like the multifaceted input this brings and deem it well worth the additional team integration and delivery efforts.
Conflict Resolution
As a SCRUM Master and Agile Coach and also in 12min.me I facilitated many retrospectives and moderated conflict resolution meetings.
Since about the year 2000 I am also a Scout Leader.
Host / Moderator & Event Management
Over several years I organized events for between 80 and 200 people on a regular basis (Scouts, AIESEC, 12min.me, Startup Weekend Women, Barcamp), occasionally also for 500 up to 1200 people (in AIESEC) as both the technical as well as organizational responsible for other areas. Most of these times I have also been on stage to guide through the event and in the background to keep the team motivated and aligned.
Skills
Results of life-long learning
Msc. Information Systems
English Master in Information Management with the focus on Interorganisational Systems and Process Management
Thesis: "A Social Media Framework for the internal Crowdsourcing of Company Strategy"
Bsc. Computer Science
Longer stays abroad
High School Exchange
A one year exchange to Orange, Texas, USA as member of the PPP Parlamentarian Exchange Program between the US and German government. Intense experience since I was there during 9/11.
1 year Civil Service in Togo, Africa
During the 11 months in Togo I lead the culture centre of an NGO as well as several projects, e.g. a soccer tournament over two weeks (with 6 months preparations) for the sensibilisation against AIDS and language courses for both German and English conducted in French.
1 year Internship in Brazil
Programming internship topped off with the organization of a student conference for 1200 participants from 110 different countries.
Languages
| German | native |
| English | excellent |
| Portuguese | very good |
| French | very good |
| Spanish | good |
Certifications
Product Owner
Systemic Organizational Developer
SCRUM Master
OKR Master
Passions & Appearances
Gradwandler Podcast
Since Mid-2020 I publish the podcast "Gradwandler" with 2 fellow co-podcasters. We take the climate crisis as a starting point to discuss what each of us / our listeners can do in their lives and reflect what we are doing ourselves around this. It is about scientific backgrounds, personal experiences and the power of small steps - hence the name "Gradwandler" (wordplay with changing something by a degree and being caught between a rock and a hard place (with climate change)). Give it a listen (in German) on Gradwandler.de, Apple Podcast, Spotify or your podcatcher of choice!
12min.me
I co-initiated 12min.me, which as series of 12 minute long talks (not a second more!) followed by 12min Q&A. Further questions can afterwards be cleared out in the networking session with free beverages and snacks provided.
Starting in November 2013, the network grew to around 13000 members in the meetup group in Hamburg (as of 2020), and also has an event series in about 25 cities and keep growing. In Hamburg the organization organized more than a hundered events in about 4 years. The global community counts more than 57.000 members.
Check it out under 12min.me and find videos on Youtube.
Since 2019 I am no longer part of the organization.
Startup Weekend Women Hamburg
Startup Weekend Women Hamburg is an event of the Startup Weekend Series and aimed at encouraging more women to enter the Startup Sphere but at the same time not exclude any men. We had a 75% women ratio and increased the female ratio of the Hamburg Founders by 2% (from 12 to 14%). I was responsible for Coaches & Mentors, the Plenary and Team Management. Check out the facebook page and the aftervideo on Vimeo.
SCRUM Master Toolbox Podcast
I appeared on the SCRUM Master Toolbox Podcast in March 2018 talking about my experiences with managing change in growing organizations and agile adoption.
Cross-Company Barcamp
During the merger of several companies into the YOUR NOW family I organized a cross-vertical barcamp for about 150 people together with a great team.
Find a video for some impressions on https://felixhandler.de/barcamp.mp4
OKR Alignment Day
During the first year of OKRs at SHARE NOW we organized an alignment day for OKRs for about 180 people together with a great team.
Find a video for some impressions on https://felixhandler.de/PCD.mp4
Recommendations
David Aguirre Canar
Felix is a great coach, facilitator and listener. He helped our team tremendously in a critical growth phase and delivered increased focus through a deeper understanding of OKRs and agile methodologies. He was quick to mingle with us, adapt to our unique quirks and processes and hopefully will keep supporting us for a long time. I can wholeheartedly recommend working with him! Thanks for everything, Felix 🙏🏾
Martin Koo Rosenmejer
Felix has been critical in maturing our approach to outcome-driven product development at car2go/Share Now. He’s been one of the main drivers to introduce and implement OKRs within our +160 people product organisation - from quarterly planning and leadership communication to facilitating OKR definition workshops with our product leads. Felix is a change agent, he’s ambitious and not afraid of asking critical questions always with good intentions and with the purpose of improving the work we do. Furthermore, he’s a team player who I've really enjoyed partnering with on several projects conducting discovery and ideation workshops. I enjoy working with him very much, have learnt a lot from him, and I believe he’ll be a valuable addition to any product organisation.
Alexander Holtappels
I have worked with Felix at SABIO for more than a year. He helped us a great deal to organise while growing strongly. He has a talent to enable others to help themselves instead of continuously doing things for them. Felix has managed our internal processes in JIRA with immense interest for the details of getting things right. He has a good sense for potential conflicts and manages to address them early so that they do not actually gain momentum. Felix is very good to work with and I recommend him fully.
Torben Jensen
I had the pleasure to work with Felix, when he chaired one of our national conferences. Both in pre, during and post conference work, he impressed me with his energy, mood and professionalism. In the beginning, pre-conference, he provided a fix point for the conference, both helping to structure the conference and individual workshops, while also ensuring sufficient team-building, providing professional and personal feedback, and creating a positive atmosphere within the team. During the conference itself, Felix proved himself an unorthodox, but creative and engaging communicator and motivator, both on and off the stage. I feel that both facilitators and conference delegates were lucky and inspired by his positive energy, great stories and friendly demeanor. In post-conference mode, despite all members (incl Felix) of the team being exhausted, he managed to keep a positive setting, while debrief and post conference tasks were completed. After the conference, Felix has proved a valuable source of feedback when working on other projects and a good friend. I recommend him to any job, satisfied that he will perform beyond the expectations of management, while still keeping a smile on his face.
Social
Twitter: @snowborn
Linkedin: https://de.linkedin.com/in/felixhandler
Xing: https://www.xing.com/profile/Felix_Handler