# 86: BOOK OF THE WEEK — “Der kleine Kaempfer”
By: Silke Schmidt
Tags: Organizational Culture, Diversity, Change Management, Young, Management

Story behind the Book Choice

This short book is a treasure. It touched me, it intrigued me, it comforted me. And there is no reason, why it would not do this for others. This book was a gift I gave myself for Christmas. As I often do, I order so many books that I do not even open the envelopes/packages immediately after their arrival. This is how it happened that before Christmas, I had a pile of unopened packages sitting in my living room. I carefully wrapped them in gift paper and unwrapped them under the Christmas tree. As usually, I had already forgotten which titles I had ordered in the course of the last two months. So, it was a huge surprise that I created for myself.

In one of the packages I found Doppler’s book. The story why I ordered it is easy and quite nice. In my latest book which I sent to the press for the final editing process in December, I included a picture from Doppler’s book Change Management. It is like the Bible of change management in the German-speaking world, I would say. In order to not violate any copyrights, I sent a message to Doppler asking whether he was o.k. with me using the image in my book. It did not take long till he sent me his reply and agreed. But there was another nice outcome of this exchange. When I had previously looked up his e-mail address on this website, I had also gone to the section that said “books” on his page. There I saw the title Der kleine Kämpfer (The Small Fighter) and ended up immediately ordering it.

You will learn more about the details of the book below. But for me and my purchase decision, it would not have taken any abstract or any reading sample. The title itself, Der kleine Kaempfer, immediately resonated with me. Yes, I know it is unfair for the non-German audience to use a German book in my book discussion. Still, I just had to. Just a year ago, a dear colleague and friend of mine from university shared something with me which really touched me. He said: “Silke, you are a fighting woman.” And he did not mean this in any negative way. He was describing how he observed my leadership behavior when running a seminar team. “You listen to everyone and you change things if somebody convinces you. But everybody at the table also knows that you have a plan and you pursue the goals in order to reach the best result possible.”

Do you understand why I just had to buy the book and immediately got into it the day after Christmas?

1. Entrepreneurship

Doppler 48

Doppler’s story is about the “small fighter” who grows up to become a big change leader. But the hero has to stand many tests in order to get there. At the beginning when he is a small boy from a working class family who grows up in a small village, the reader immediately gets a sense of the entrepreneurial personality of the boy. What I love so much about Doppler’s careful characterizations is the beaurifully clear language that mirrors immense depth. It really shows what business and entrepreneurship is all about. No, it is not just about making money or being successful, whatever that means. It is connected to social bonding, communication, and the dignity and pride that goes along with earning one’s own money with one’s own business.

The final sentence in this passage, “What I do not do does not get done” refers to this entrepreneurial truth. It is the central message of the book and of (change) management and leadership at large. Nobody will do anything for you if you do not start acting. Even getting an important answer from someone requires action in the first place: You need to ask if you want an answer. And what is so nice about the choice of words here are the adjectives “simply happy” and “totally self-evident.” The finding that you need to take action in order to get things done IS SIMPLE but obviously quite difficult to implement if you lack the positive and open-minded nature of the small fighter.

This nature is being challenged soon.

2. Identity Change

Doppler 73

This passage describes the period when the small fighter enters the work world. Already during his time in a boarding school, his natural naivety and his “just do it” spirit were put to a test. He learned that there are unwritten rules in organizations, including schools, andthere are hierarchies. And if you want to win the favor of superiors, e.g., teachers, you better stay quiet and do whatever is expected of you. Also, you do not mess with those around you. This was the first test that the small fighter had to stand and he was not able to fully resist the temptation and the pressure to conform and just follow the crowd.

When he then enters the work world, he experiences a similar situation. But this time, he is even more convinced to not risk his previous achievements. After all, he is the first one to have graduated from a boarding school, who could even have studied at university (which he decided not to do), he now found a great job at the first attempt. All these are achievements that he does not want to lose by being a troublemaker. After all, his discipline and his will and ability to fight the odds brought him to this place and now he is determined to use his talents to also adapt to whatever it takes to move forward as an employee in an organization.

As the passage also explains quite clearly, this decision makes him lose what he was known for from childhood onwards. His “energy, curiosity, the thurst for knowledge…” all this gets lost. The “small fighter” turns into a “small employee whose most important goal is conformity and not showing any edges. I was so touched when I read this passage because I went through exactly the same process more than once in different organizations. And the thing that touched me most in the passage was the decisiveness and the discipline that the small fighter displays. If people like us, “small fighters,” decide to suppress our nature, our very strengths, our identity, we do so: 100%. That is fatal if you do not know how to break out of the vicious cycle again.

3. Never Give Up

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The small fighter dreams a lot in the course of the story. His dreams always cause awareness. He wakes up and knows the next step. And this next step to him means that he speaks up, he breaks out of the bad habits he has taught himself to adhere to — the habit of remaining silent, of suppressing his curiosity and of entrepreneurial thinking, his adopted mediocracy. He realizes how much of his true being has been buried underneath. But his dreams also signal him that he can revive his true capacity to become a role model for those who also want to start playing their own game. Playing one’s own game means ending the lamentation and shifting one’s perspective to finding solutions.

The optimism and unlimited strength to keep on “fighting” is not unrealistic. It is the force that becomes alive again if you unleash it after experiencing a wake-up call of the kind that the small fighter encounters in his dreams. In my own life, this usually led me to flee the environment that made me change my identity up to a point where I did not recognize myself anymore. Maybe this was too early sometimes. In other cases, it was almost too late. In any case, I always managed to regain my small-fighter mentality to switch the lever from dreaming to acting. This is also the message that Doppler in his book conveys:

“Break free of your paralysis. Bring movement into the game! Fight and be a role model for others!”

Reflection Questions

1) Are you a “small fighter”?

2) Did you ever work in an environment that changed your personality to an extent that you did not recognize your old strengths anymore? How did you change this?

3) Where can small fighters best use their potential according to your perspective?