On the topic: Andri Hinnen
On the topic: Andri Hinnen
One of our own alumni, Andri Hinnen, returns to his Alma Mater as Personality in Residence at SQUARE. His residency with us includes course visits, large and intimate public events and of course guest lectures in some of our courses. He will be focussing on entrepreneurship, creativity and communication. Take advantage of this inspiring personality's visit to get to know his visions and experience insights into the transformative potential of stories and storytelling in a completely new way.
The Transformative Potential of Stories and Storytelling
After graduating from HSG with a degree in Strategy and International Management (SIM), Andri Hinnen founded the consultancy and design agency "Zense - Reframing Complexity". Among other things, he supports organisations with the visual and narrative accompaniment of transformation processes. Andri Hinnen is also a filmmaker and author. His documentary film Unter Wasser Atmen won the Audience Award at the Zurich Film Festival and was nominated for the Prix de Soleure. Together with his brother, he wrote the non-fiction bestsellers ‘Reframe it’ and ‘Change it’ and his novel ‘Rolf’ was recently published by Elster Salis.
We look back on his three-day residency with us in the form of an interview that we conducted at the end (questions by Quirine Cobben).
Introduction and background
Q: How would you introduce yourself in your own words?
A: I am Andri and I studied international affairs and then strategy and international management here. I then founded an agency and consultancy called ZENSE - Reframing Complexity. We specialise in translating complex material into something that is more appealing and easier to digest for different target groups, but also appreciates complexity, i.e. maintains it where necessary. We always like to refer to an old principle of systems theory here: you need complexity to deal with complexity. This applies to strategies that need to be communicated to employees or investors, but also to scientific material that needs to be made accessible to the general public. My greatest passion is to transform the complexity of life into stories, whether fictional, factual or somewhere in between
Experience at SQUARE
Q: What were your expectations for the residency at SQUARE?
A: I was very excited to return to my alma mater, to meet old friends and acquaintances, and to be invited to interact with all these bright and academically diverse people. My main expectation was to listen, learn, get new inspiration, make new connections and maybe contribute a little to the diversity and creative thinking at the university. It was a very cool experience.
Influences from childhood
Q: Are there things from your childhood that still influence you today?
A: If I had to answer this question in one word, it would be stories. My grandmother was a great storyteller who was very interested in fairy tales. My father, a psychologist, always told us stories and encouraged us to spin our own tales. And my mother always took us to the cinema or the video store, read to us and encouraged us in our creative spinning. That taught me the power of stories to help us make sense of life and master it.
University life and storytelling
Q: When you went to university, how were you able to use storytelling to cope with university? How did you use this during your studies?
A: I learnt the importance of combining theory and practice. Whenever I learn something, I need to hear a story or anecdote to memorise and understand it. University taught me to use stories to connect everything I learn and make it more meaningful and significant.
Foundation of ZENSE
Q: What was the turning point when you said we should start this company?
A: It was very organic. We were lucky enough to be able to try out a lot of things after university. As freelancers, we did a lot of smaller jobs at the interface between media production and management consulting, for example a kind of film commentary on a corporate strategy that was pretty crazy. When Prof Martin Eppler saw it, he was the one who encouraged me to set up my own agency. It was a mixture of recognising our abilities and seizing opportunities that came our way.
Q: What part of yourself do you bring to work these days when you work at ZENSE? And what part of yourself do you leave at home?
A: I think I bring three things in particular: Structured, analytical thinking, a great desire to create and break out creatively, and - sometimes more, sometimes less - energy. I'm also an advocate of the "lean in" principle, i.e. the idea of bringing your whole personality, including your weaknesses, vulnerabilities and contradictions, into the office.
Writing "Monsters at Work"
Q: What was the trigger for you to write the book "Monsters at work" together with Martin Eppler?
A: It started over a beer haha. Martin and I had wanted to do something together for a while and then we just met up and exchanged ideas. I had written a novel about a man who is haunted by his own demon, and Martin came up with the idea of translating organisational phenomena into monsters. When Pearson showed interest, it all came together. My first book in English!
Favourite project at ZENSE
Q: What has been one of your favourite projects to work on at ZENSE?
A : One of the coolest clients is SWISS. We helped structure, communicate and visualise their new strategy. We worked closely with the strategists and communications team at SWISS to present the strategy in an inspiring way. This is a typical ZENSE project, which I think is a lot of fun for everyone involved.
Q: What are the most important qualities that potential ZENSE employees should have?
A: People who combine analytical thinking with a creative spark and have the ability to visualise and write very well. Writing well is a key skill, I think that applies to so many professions.
Future plans for ZENSE
Q : Finally, where do you want to take your company in the future?
A: We would like to focus even more on international projects and intercultural communication because we believe that visualisation, stories and metaphors are powerful tools to build bridges between different cultures. We have some projects in Asia and an office in Germany, which is surprisingly different culturally to Switzerland. Everything is a little more serious and hierarchical, and we're excited to see how visualisation and the joy of storytelling play into this. In addition to reframing complexity, we also want to invest more in storytelling as an art form. We are currently developing a film and working on books. And of course we also want to simply enjoy the wild ride and learn together with our customers and partners, and further explore the art of reframing - storytelling, metaphorical thinking, visualisation, etc. - together. - further explore.
“Stories give us the strength to recognise and create meaning in our chaotic lives, and simply to find our way around a little better.”