A world in which
people of different cultures work together professionally and empathetically. They develop "their" organisations with passion and flexibility, so that the companies can offer their customers outstanding benefits and achieve sustainable success
cosmopolitan organisations are loyal to "their" multicultural members. They support all of them to use their talents to the benefit of the organisation, its customers, employees and partners. Thus, working time is meaningful life time.
We live in a globalised world and strive to develop our organisations and ourselves in a sustainable way. Against this background, I inspire people and organisations of all kinds to become a preferred partner, supplier and employer through professional handling of multiple cultures and the agile use of systemic management approaches.
Passion is the prerequisite for continuing to engage with a person or a thing when it becomes difficult or unpleasant. It helps you not to give up. Only with passion I am able to inspire others for my topics. Passion rocks!
Communicating and collaborating with others is particularly challenging if their culture is very different from mine. Cosmopolitanism means getting involved with the foreign and consciously engaging with other people, cultures, approaches and values in an unbiased and curious way. Living systemic approaches such as multi-cultural management and agility implicitly requires me to be cosmopolitan.
Building intellectual edifices can be fascinating. Theories without practical applications, however, do not contribute to the improvement of the actual situation and to the realisation of my vision. Practical relevance means showing opportunities for action and giving recommendations, based on scientifically proven knowledge or ideas deduced therefrom. However, in contrast to pragmatism, practical relevance does not mean a mere orientation towards short-term usefulness, but instead the systematic development and evaluation of conceivable alternatives. The realistic benchmark is always Keynes' test: "It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong."
If I want to give recommendations for action, I must not be afraid of speaking inconvenient truths. Integrity means being able to make honest assessments without prejudice, based on comprehensible findings. It also means bravely expressing the results. At the same time, I am trying to combine my Northern German directness with a high esteem for the people involved. Yet, in case of doubt, a clear statement is more important to me than nebulous diplomacy.
Professionalism means that in my respective functions I act in accordance with the standards, rules and values that are expected of professionals. As a speaker, professor, scientist or auditor, this means for me acting based on state-of-the-art methods and meeting my customers and partners on equal terms with respect. This includes high quality standards concerning performance and business conduct.
I am a professor of International Management and an expert for the development of people and management systems.
For more than 30 years I have been holding lectures and seminars in German and English. After studying national economics, I worked in various positions at Dresdner Bank AG for ten years, starting in 1994. During that time, I gained practical experience in e.g. credit risk management, quality management, in-house consulting and internal audit. In 2001, I earned my extra-occupational doctorate. Out of the central integration office of Allianz AG in Munich, I accompanied one of the biggest mergers in the German financial industry. Today, I continue to work as an auditor and assessor around the world to assess organisations and their management systems. My latest publications are dealing with optimising management systems: 2024 my Gabler essential "Risiken und Chancen integriert managen" will be published in German. Based on my German reference book about agility, "Agile in ISO 9001" was published in 2023 as enhanced English version by Springer. The textbook "Managing Internationalisation", published in 2015, guides practitioners and students through the internationalisation process from a management perspective and specifically addresses how to deal with foreign cultures. The important thing to me as a keynote speaker is to inspire passion and energy for organisational and personal development.
Since 2004, Dr. Patricia Adam is Professor of "International Management" at the University of Applied Sciences Hannover. She teaches and researches management systems, intercultural competence and agile processes. In addition, she actively participates in the self-government of the university. If you want to know more, you will find it here:
Being fascinated by the interaction of creative people and excellent processes, Patricia Adam strives for creating development drive for people and management systems. As an auditor for QM systems at the DQS GmbH and an assessor for the EFQM Model, she manages worldwide assessment processes and facilitates strategy workshops. Patricia Adam is also Managing Director of a consultancy called Management Beratung Adam (MBA) GmbH. Further information can be found here:
In 2020 Springer Gabler published the focused "essential" on agility in ISO 9001 (German). 2023, an updated English version was released. It is aimed specifically at practitioners, especially in organisational development and quality and innovation management. Anyone interested in supplementing the information gained during the keynotes with further practical examples and tips will find what they are looking for here:
Business Guide on the Go: Agile in ISO 9001
Finishing her doctoral thesis on the topic of „Fostering the Service Quality of Banks - Self-Assessment as an Innovative Management Tool“ published by Bankakademie-Verlag in German, Patricia Adam had vowed to herself never to write a book again. In 2015, her textbook "Managing Internationalisation" was published in English by UTB. Since 2018, she edits and contributes papers to the publication series “Management”. Publications of the “Management” series deal with the strategic and operational development of management systems, their business processes and human resources. The focus is on agile management tools and an international orientation. These publications are free for download under create commons.
Publication Series "Management"