Reinventing HR with Heiko Fischer

What would happen if you got rid of traditional HR in your company? Our guest, Heiko Fischer, didn’t just noodle over this question. He actually went ahead and did it during his tenure in Crytek, one of Europe’s largest video gaming companies. As a result, Heiko worked himself out of a job, shifting the gaming company from a traditional hierarchy to a network of self-managed teams fueled by 100% entrepreneurship and 0% bureaucracy. 

Today Heiko Fischer is the co-founder, and CEO of Resourceful Humans and in this episode, he shares the evolution of his identity as an HR professional – from someone who’s managing human resources to enabling resourceful humans.

Episode highlights

• HP’s influence on Heiko’s upbringing and his father’s legacy.
• Company culture as a competitive advantage in the war for talent. 
• Why network organizations are a better alternative to centralized ones when it comes to unleashing leadership within teams, and increasing people’s engagement, responsibility, and ownership.
• The role of C-suite executives in creating a thriving network organization.
• The growing pains in a transition from traditional HR to a decentralized one. 
• Integrating gaming concepts and gaming technology into shaping culture.
• Designing reward systems that give people a stake in an organization’s success.
• Organizational network analysis as a great tool to identify how a company really works and tap into the power of informal connections.
• Creating workplaces where actions match the rhetoric. 

Listen to the interview in the player below or on iTunes. If you like what you hear, please leave a review, and it may be featured on a future episode.

More about Heiko Fischer

Heiko Fischer is the co-founder and CEO of Resourceful Humans, a company that enables organizations to operate as entrepreneurial networks with 100% entrepreneurship and 0% bureaucracy. 

Heiko is a channel for classic maverick approaches to work, exemplified by pioneers such as Hewlett Packard and W.L. Gore. 

After killing the need for his Head of HR role at the video game company Crytek, he founded RH to enable other organizations to eliminate their artificial hierarchies and antiquated operating models, by unleashing leadership in the crews that run them.

Books mentioned

Turn The Ship Around by David Marquet 

Leadership Is Language by David Marquet 

The HP Way by Dave Packard

Additional resources

CultureBrained® Community – a one-of-a-kind virtual community for Heads of Culture, founders, and leaders who want to up their culture game.

The Culture Playbook Guide

Discover Your Personal Values