Author: Christian Velten

How to smartly manage being off for 2-3 weeks without caring for business email and phone.

Humorous realization about mistaken perceptions over time.

Last week I had the opportunity hearing a superb and inspiring talk by Mark Gallagher, a former Formula 1 manager. If you ever have the opportunity listening to Mark, I strongly recommend to not miss it! Mark is fantastic in showing the importance of integrated teams and their impact on motivation, quality, if not championship (in its best and true meaning) by telling real-life stories from F1. Not this general “team is important”-blablabla on how it should be in theory. But truly experienced reality in an environment where competition and need for safety & quality converge at high speed. One…

Recently, an esteemed colleague was thanking me for “courageous openness” with a previous email by me. I have been very happy about this feedback. But I was also asking myself: is it really courageous to address important issues by mail … if there also had been opportunities to speak? Honestly spoken, talking would have been courageous, face to face, eye in eye, vouching for my words. Writing email is less.

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” Elbert Hubbart

Well … honestly spoken … I appreciate myself. Not always. But again and again. And I admit to enjoying it. I appreciate myself for minor and major achievements. Every time something worked as planned. Every time I kept milestones and budget … or even overachieved. Then, I am as pleased as Punch, deeply proud of myself, and I inwardly tell myself: “Well done, Christian!” No, I do not miss appreciation by others. Most of the time I have been very fortunate having fellows and leaders, who acknowledged and esteemed my contribution … and myself. Hence, I always felt privileged. I never…

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees. Michel de Montaigne

I developed and provided a medical education program on MF-CTCL disease, supporting the launch of a new treatment product for the rare dermato-oncological disease. The program includes … CLIENT:Actelion Specialty Care Global Business Unit(as an Actelion employee and team member)PROJECT TIME FRAME: February 2017 – May 2017

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-44), French pilot and writer Of course yearning alone is not enough. You certainly need quality wood, good tools, clear allocation of tasks, a plan and much more. And yes, unfortunately I also know more than enough ‘hot-air guns’ in leadership positions, who contribute great visions (= yearnings) … but that has been it. I would like to talk about myself instead. In the past,…

SAMS (“Saccade Analysis Made Simple”) is an educational app for clinicians on the identification of specific impairments of eye movements (oculomotor test), and helps to earlier diagnose underlying neurological diseases. The tablet-based app guides through systematic qualitative measurements of various eye movements done locally by a physician or nurse. Simultaneously, the app records a video of the patient’s eye movements, and the physician subsequently has the opportunity to share selected recordings with a remote expert for his review. The expert’s feedback is supporting the local physician in developing his skills in the recognition of multiple potential neurological disorders known to…