Dr. Anja Hartmann
Executive Consulting & Coaching

"Coal all spent; the bucket empty; the shovel useless; the stove breathing out cold; the room freezing; the leaves outside the window rigid, covered with rime; the sky a silver shield against anyone who looks for help from it. I must have coal; I cannot freeze to death; behind me is the pitiless stove, before me the pitiless sky, so I must ride out between them and on my journey seek aid..."

"My mode of arrival must decide the matter; so I ride off on the bucket. Seated on the bucket, my hands on the handle, the simplest kind of bridle, I propel myself with difficulty down the stairs; but once down below my bucket ascends, superbly, superbly; camels humbly squatting on the ground do not rise with more dignity..."

"'Coal-dealer!' I cry in a voice burned hollow by the frost and muffled in the cloud made by my breath, 'please, coal-dealer, give me a little coal. My bucket is so light that I can ride on it. Be kind. When I can I'll pay you.'"

"Well, what does he want?" shouts the dealer. "Nothing," his wife shouts back, "there's nothing here; I see nothing, I hear nothing; only six striking, and now we must shut up the shop. The cold is terrible; tomorrow we'll likely have lots to do again."

"And with that I ascend into the regions of the ice mountains and lose myself to never return.”

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Background

When I talk to top executives in large companies today, it often feels as if they were modern manifestations of Kafka's bucketrider ("Kübelreiter"): They know that their traditional means of sourcing, producing, and selling are running out; they make plans to reinvent their business, tap into potential sources of replenishing their empty buckets, and think of creative approaches to explain their intentions.
However, despite doing everything right and with strong conviction, they still find themselves misunderstood and rejected by those they interact with – be that society, politics, colleagues, customers, business partners, suppliers, or any other of the myriad entities making up the universe of today’s energy industry.

Kafka’s bucketrider gets out of his misery by realizing that the empty bucket he was zealously trying to refill with coal can actually serve him much better as something very different: As a mount to not only get on the way to fulfill his mission (“… once down below my bucket ascends, superbly, superbly..."), but also, in the end, to escape the narrow world that was holding him back ("And with that I ascend into the regions of the ice mountains and lose myself to never return.").

The Italian writer Italo Calvino cites Kafka's story in his "Six Memos for the Next Millenium" as an illustration to the virtue of "Lightness": "... the idea of this empty bucket that carries you way above where you were looking for help, and above the egoisms of others [...]. And in addition, if the bucket was full, it would no longer allow us to fly".

The lightness of changing perspectives on what seem to be unsurmountable obstacles and turning them into a means for progress – this is the basic belief that informs my work with top executives in today’s challenging business environment.

Read more about how I work.

I offer personal executive consulting and coaching for top-level leaders in industrial, process, and otherwise “heavy” industries (and beyond), working with them and their teams to develop, strengthen, and expand mental strategies for

  • setting directions,
  • making decisions,
  • leading organizations and people

in an increasingly unpredictable, uncertain, volatile, ambiguous, and complex business environment.

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