Utilizing the Corona low for personal and professional growth - The experience of a self-employed consultant

Ulrich Graute • 14 September 2021

Corona took and takes its toll

The Corona pandemic took and still takes its toll from all of us. In my case it particularly hit me: As an international advisor I work with international teams across the globe, travel to meet international friends, partners and clients and often there is demand for field work abroad. Of course, I used all possible means to overcome the limitations of the lockdown.

At the beginning of the pandemic there was a big hype for Zoom, Skype, MS Team and other means of internet communication. I myself spoke at online conferences and co-chaired workshops on Zoom and MS Teams. These tools are indeed helpful but, frankly speaking, it is like with many other technical innovations. It begins with scepticism, then comes a hype and soon after people acknowledge that tools are just tools. They help us but they neither solve all problems nor are they able to fully substitute direct human encounters. Humans still matter!

On my side: I was fortunate by staying healthy. Workwise, there were even new assignments. Nonetheless, one study could not be finished as expected without own survey work on the ground. And one other cooperation with multiple major stakeholders simply run dry during lockdown. Many activities (and with them income opportunities) were either cancelled, cut down or postponed till 2022. And then of course, I was thrown back on myself sitting in my home office and thought about how I could turn the lockdown into a chance for personal and professional growth. There was no moment of divine revelation but the gradual learning and growing inspired by lots of reading, exchange over the internet and long walks in the forests and fields surrounding Berlin.

The silence of the lockdown inspired also progress, innovation and even a breakthrough

Many say that it would be a huge advantage if you have a long track of experience. It's true but there are also challenges. For instance, how do you make a two minute pitch about 30+ years of work experience in administration, academia and consulting in many different countries? Recruiters usually are not too crazy about reading four or more pages of CV and while they are always impressed by the breadth and depth of my experiences they are often looking for very specialized candidates. So, a first thing I did during lockdown was summarizing key information of my CV, employments, skills, experiences, products and services on a single page. The table below is the September 2021 update of the original one-pager.

Thirty years of work experience on one page

A growing partner network thanks to LinkedIn

To not get stuck and frustrated in your home office is a challenge of its own. Reaching out and communication with others are key. During the pandemic communication through my professional network on LinkedIn helped me to sustain and even grow my existing network of friends, partners and clients in international organizations, governments, academia and civil society. In fall 2019, short before the pandemic kicked in my own network had about 1000 followers. This number has more than doubled to about 2230 followers today.

Of course, followers on LinkedIn are by far not all close partners or even clients. No, the growing number of followers is not more and less than an indication how my posts and messages helped me to stay in touch with my network while there are no or just a few opportunities for face-to-face meetings.

The following chart indicates the number of viewers per post on LinkedIn between January and August 2021. I included into the chart mostly those LinkedIn posts which promoted posts of my own blog.

Source: Own compilation of viewers per post

Profile development with support of a blog

I tested very different posts and learned from the different interest which they generated among different viewer groups. The above chart gives proof of a moderate but steady growth of viewer numbers. Of course, it needs to be acknowledged that my subjects as governance and management adviser are not comparable to the posts on food, fashion and love by famous musicians or actors on Instagram or Twitter.

What cannot be seen from the chart but what is also happening is an increasing interaction with my network through their likes, comments, re-shares and private mails (community engagement). A very important aspect is that with each post I expose myself to a public audience. Thus, posting and blogging is also an intellectual workout that tells me where I stand and it allows me to test new ideas and approaches. The main benefit is the development of my public profile and widening and intensifying cooperation. This may not be too much but in times of Corona this makes the difference between publish or perish. And it's a way to break out of the home office. Through posts and comments, I stay in touch and develop new ideas with colleagues and partners. In doing so, I not only experienced that it is indeed possible to substitute face-to-face dialogue by internet communication. It even allowed me to find new friends whom I haven’t met yet once in real life – something which needs to be changed at the soonest.

To anybody intending a similar approach to mine I recommend to develop a clear and long-term social media marketing strategy. I did that with help of literature including the book 'Social-Media-Marketing für Dummies' by Gero Pflüger (Wiley Verlag 2020, 375 pp).

A breakthrough by finding new clients in the private sector

I am aware that social media marketing is not like direct marketing. A blog post or LinkedIn post generates only in the exceptional case new clients and partners. Rather it is a tool to keep and develop partner and client relations. However, out of these contacts some may either become friends, partners and/or clients. And this happened to me during the lockdown. Looking back at more than 18 months of working under conditions of the Corona pandemic I even can report about a real breakthrough.

Until 2019 my partners and clients were almost exclusively from the public sector: international organizations, national and local governments and academic institutions. In many countries the spheres of private and public sector are divided and it is difficult to switch back and forth. Some even say, that the employability in the private sector goes down if you worked more than five years in public administration. However, I even worked for 25 years in the public sector before I switched to the private sector setting up my own consultancy. I still work predominantly for public institutions and it took another five years before private companies (small, medium sizes but also major global consultancies) got interested in my experience and started contracting me. As the one-page table at the beginning of this blog demonstrates the main changes in 2020 and 2021 are related to the establishment of business-to-business client relationships.

It makes me proud that the breadth and depth of my experiences is finding new interest but of course challenges remain when bridging between public and private sector: Some companies, when they talk about governance mean exclusively corporate governance while my background is in public governance. Also, major companies who want to enter the field of strategy development for sustainable development hesitate for a while when they realize that dynamic cooperation processes with many public and private stakeholders across several policy fields and policy levels makes the short-term revenue calculation a big challenge. In spite of such challenges, I am glad about changes taking place.

The lockdown provided me with plenty of time for study and personal growth which I wouldn't like to miss. Taking a distance from daily routines helped me to sharpen my eyes for the smaller but important things in life, for needs and own strengths and opportunities. The Corona low definitely supported my personal and professional growth. If now governments of the world would re-fresh and intensify their commitments to multilateral cooperation and integrated policy agendas like the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, I don’t have to be concerned about my recovery from the Corona low.

Please read also my post of 1 January 2021 'Remote work: Overcoming the silo of the home office'

http://ugraute.de/overcoming-the-silo-of-the-home-office

The figure above serves only to visualize current and past clients, employers and partners of Ulrich Graute since 1989

< Older Post Newer Post >

Policies and Governance for Resilient and Sustainable Cities and Regions

Urban Sprawl as part of the solution for the affordable housing crisis in the USA?!

by Ulrich Graute • 14 April 2025

None of the following supports the idea that urban sprawl is required or even helpful to build sustainable cities. However, it is argued that it may be part of the solution for the crisis of affordable housing in many countries of the world. With this post, I would like to encourage a debate, eg, at the 61st ISOCARP World Planning Congress #WPC61 on 1-4 December 2025 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In 1976 and alarmed by rapid and uncontrolled urban growth, particularly in the developing world, the UN General Assembly called for the First United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I) addressing the challenges and future of human settlements. Housing remained at the focus of the United Nations Human Settlement Programme UN-Habitat ever since, and this was reconfirmed at Habitat III in Quito 2016. The New Urban Agenda recognizes and promotes a "right to the city," meaning the right of all inhabitants to have equal access to the benefits and opportunities that cities offer. It emphasizes a vision where urban spaces are designed and used collectively for the benefit of all, including those in informal settlements. Yes a vision, but overall, the Agenda is not very strategic and invites more to raising picking instead of integrated problem solving. Meanwhile, cities keep struggling to cope with fast urbanization, migration and growing demand for larger apartments. Urban sprawl is criticized since the 1950s and 60s because of its large demand for land. No densely populated urban areas have higher costs for the water, energy and transportation grid. In addition, developers often focus on profitable housing development while they don’t care for urban infrastructure, public spaces, schools etc. The New Urban Agenda promotes urban density as a key strategy for sustainable and efficient urban development but that doesn’t help those who a looking for housing now. Conor Dougherty is the author of the book Golden Gates: The Housing Crisis and a Reckoning for the American Dream published on 10 April 2025 in the New York Times the article “Why America Should Sprawl. The word has become an epithet for garish, reckless growth — but to fix the housing crisis, the country needs more of it.” He doesn’t make any effort to paint urban sprawl in rosy colors. Instead, he describes how eg in Princeton, Texas, the nation’s third-fastest-growing city, infrastructure has struggled to keep up with growth. He analyzes how difficult and slow-moving densification efforts in cities are and states, “Even if all the regulatory restraints were removed tomorrow, developers couldn’t find enough land to satisfy America’s housing needs inside established areas. Consequently, much of the nation’s housing growth has moved to states in the South and Southwest, where a surplus of open land and willingness to sprawl has turned the Sun Belt into a kind of national sponge that sops up housing demand from higher-cost cities. The largest metro areas there have about 20 percent of the nation’s population, but over the past five years they have built 42 percent of the nation’s new single-family homes, according to a recent report by Cullum Clark, an economist at the George W. Bush Institute, a research center in Dallas.” For instance, Celina, Texas (picture), has 54,000 residents, compared with 8,000 just a decade ago, and the population is projected to hit 110,000 by 2030. The lack of urbane infrastructure, employment, greenery, and community is striking, but people keep coming because of affordability. While planners and others prefer denser and walkable neighbourhoods like 15-minute-cities, the money to build related infrastructure in addition to houses is often missing or would reduce affordability. A dilemma. There are good reasons to criticize the trend described for the US by Conor Dougherty, but it provides a chance to attain affordable housing for people who cannot find it elsewhere. And the history of these satellite towns has demonstrated that the missing infrastructure, employment and community can be added lateron. It seems, urban sprawl is not the solution, but it might be part of the solution, isn’t it? Let's discuss this here or later on other occasions, like eg the 61st ISOCARP World Planning Congress 'Cities & Regions in Action: Planning Pathways to Resilience and Quality of Life 1-4 December 2025, in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia #WPC61. Reference: Why America Should Sprawl. The word has become an epithet for garish, reckless growth — but to fix the housing crisis, the country needs more of it. By Conor Dougherty. The New York Times, April 10, 2025 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/magazine/suburban-sprawl-texas.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

We need the United Nations to be part of the solution, not of the problem

by Ulrich Graute • 8 March 2025

Picture: UN photo

Anatomy of an AI System

by Ulrich Graute • 25 February 2025

Click to see the map in the full scale or download map in pdf format here https://anatomyof.ai/img/ai-anatomy-map.pdf.

About the challenge of providing advice on governance and development in times of disruption and transition

by Ulrich Graute • 22 February 2025

About the challenge of providing advice on governance and development in times of disruption and transition (English with German captatio ns) Deutsch: Ulrich spricht darüber, wie es ist, in Zeiten von Umbruch, Wandel und vielfachen Krisen als erfahrener Berater zu arbeiten. Obwohl die Situation nicht einfach ist, kann man daraus auch Chancen für effizientere Institutionen und Unternehmen sehen. Erfahrung und Flexibilität sind dabei wichtig, um neue Wege zu finden. English: Ulrich talks about working as an experienced consultant in times of upheaval, change, and multiple crises. Although the situation is not easy, we can also see opportunities for more efficient institutions and companies. Experience and flexibility are important to find new pathways.

Urban politics, planning and economy in the Global South in times of fast developing AI

by Ulrich Graute • 12 February 2025

"The development of highly capable AI is likely to be the biggest event in human history. The world must act decisively to ensure it is not the last event in human history. This conference, and the cooperative spirit of the AI Summit series, give me hope; but we must turn hope into action, soon, if there is to be a future we would want our children to live in." Professor Stuart Russell, IASEAI President and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley Please join me on 13 February 2025 at ARCS 9.0 for my keynote on 'Urban politics, planning, and economy in the Global South in times of fast developing AI' The two weeks before my conference presentation were full of dynamics in the field of AI, its politics, and development. First came the launch of the 500 billion US$ Stargate Project in the USA, followed by the launch of the Chinese open-source large language model (LLM) DeepSeek. On 6 February the International Association for Safe & Ethical AI held its inaugural conference in Paris, France. Prominent AI scientists including Stuart Russel and the 2024 Physics Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton called for international cooperation to ensure safe and ethical artificial intelligence. On 10 and 11 February 2025, France co-chaired by India hosted the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit in Paris. The speeches by Heads of State and Government including the President of France, the Prime Minister of India, the President of the EU Commission, and the US Vice President gave the impression of how different countries of the world try to position themselves in a race for AI leadership. Urban politics, planning, and economy, not only in the Global South, need longer-term frameworks. How should digital transformation and urban planning be approached in cities facing multiple crises and the new wave of AI technological innovation? The latter is according to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others unprecedented in scale and speed but it is expected to affect all spheres of life. ARCS 9.0 schedule and Zoom link for Inaugural, plenaries and Valedictory. Date - 13th Feb to 15th Feb 2025 Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/95336599575?pwd=NExxgf8gBoubEfKRhhtbalM1ZYjQph.1 Meeting ID: 953 3659 9575

The 500 bn US$ Stargate Project - Places seem to matter more, Urban Planning and AI governance less or not at all

by Ulrich Graute • 22 January 2025

Source of the picture OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/announcing-the-stargate-project/

Learning to work hands-on for peace from former US-President Jimmy Carter

by Ulrich Graute • 1 January 2025

It was a tremendous privilege in my life to meet Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter for the first time in 1984 (picture) and then again in the summer of 1985 during my internship at Koinonia Farm near Americus, Georgia (USA). Jimmy Carter, who served as the 39th president of the U.S. from 1977 to 1981, died on December 29, 2024, at his home in Plains, Ga. Jimmy Carter was a lifelong farmer who worked with his hands building houses for the poor well into his 90s. I didn't agree with him on all issues (the early 1980s were the time of a new US missile deployment in Germany ordered by Jimmy Carter and a large peace movement against it) but he took the time to discuss it with me and others at Koinonia Farm. That alone was amazing. Even more mind-blowing was that he continued hands-on work on peacebuilding and house renovation for the poor around the world with Habitat for Humanity International well into his 90s. If in my career providing hands-on support became more important than climbing my own career path, this was also due to the example Jimmy Carter gave in the decades after his Presidency. I learned a lot from him about working for peace with humbleness, love, and perseverance. Read more in the New York Times about why Jimmy Carter was known as much for his charity and diplomatic work later in life as he was for his single presidential term, which ended in 1981. https://lnkd.in/d9qxSmTM *. *. *. *. * Note: This post was first published on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/graute_learning-to-work-hands-on-for-peace-from-activity-7279396908270309376-BBjV?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

The United Nations risks drowning in its mandates, conferences and external expectations. Could Artificial Intelligence help the UN?

by Ulrich Graute • 2 December 2024

In 2024, for the first time since 2000, the Parties to the United Nations Rio Conventions on biodiversity, climate change, and desertification faced a very busy 3 months, moving from large Conferences of Parties (COP) in Cali (Colombia) for biodiversity in October to Baku (Azerbaijan) for climate in November to Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) for desertification in December. On top of this Triple-COP, there was the UN High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development and the UN Summit of the Future in September in New York (USA) while UN-Habitat held its World Urban Forum in Cairo (Egypt), and let’s not forget the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment (INC-5) which ended last weekend in Busan, South Korea. No real breakthroughs were reported but I noticed many promises to double future efforts. There is a lot that can be critically reviewed about the events, eg what’s the purpose of moving approximately 100.000+ delegates, UN staffers, and other participants worldwide if the necessary political will to agree and resources available are insufficient and the outcomes are limited accordingly? But such a critique would be a bit unfair since I don’t know how many new ideas and initiatives were born during those official meetings, side events, and informal chats that might bloom up in upcoming years despite of the multicrises we’re living in. What needs to be criticized is that the UN System is not progressing on its task to implement its many mandates more “synergistically” by targeting policies, programs, and initiatives to jointly address the goals of the Rio Conventions, SDGs, etc. Instead, the conferences referred to each other but worked mainly within their silos. This is not appropriate in a world full of interrelations and interdepensies. Well, no individual or group can follow up on every aspect, and swarm intelligence of conferences with thousands of participants each seems to be no functioning alternative. But what else could be done? To give an example: How about building an AI-based Large Language Model (LLM) trained with the UN Charter, all UN declarations, national and subnational resolutions, regulations, and programmes? AI Agents for the different conventions and agendas should then be asked to coordinate and propose “synergistic” proposals across policy levels. Of course, the use of artificial intelligence should be wisely supervised by a team of AI experts and professionals from all affected fields. I wouldn’t expect AI applications to solve all problems but to better inform decision-makers and UN agencies on integrated scenarios. This could help to increase efficiency, avoid duplicating efforts, and increase the overall problem-solving capacity of the UN. I would be happy to support such work with my governance and development experience across all policy levels. Picture source: https://www.iisd.org/articles/policy-analysis/cop-nature-climate-adaptation-mitigation

THE GLOBAL STAGE FOR CITIES AND REGIONS AT THE UN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE BAKU (COP29), NOVEMBER 2024

by Ulrich Graute • 14 November 2024

Since the first climate COP in 1995, the Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) Constituency has been representing local and regional governments at the processes under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The LGMA also represents ISOCARP - International Society of City and Regional Planners and Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments. ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability acts as the Focal Point of LGMA. The 2015 Paris Agreement marked a turning point, recognizing the essential role of these governments in enhancing Nationally Determined Contributions NDSs and driving transformative climate action. The LGMA is atively present in Baku with a robust agenda, numerous partners, and an esteemed delegation of political leaders representing local and subnational governments. At the center of the presence is the Multilevel Action & Urbanization Pavilion as the global stage for the city and region climate agenda during COP29. The Pavilion brings into focus not only the challenges and needs, but also the accomplishments and commitments of local and subnational actors on climate action. The Pavilion is open from 12 to 22 November in the Blue Zone, Area E, Pavilion I15. We are looking forward to welcoming you at the High-Level Opening on 12 November at 10:00 AM. Please find the agenda of LGMA attached. Please visit also the Youtube channel of ICLEI Global for daily updates https://lnkd.in/dddDCKtA Ulrich Graute - ISOCARP Online Delegate at COP29 and Chair of the ISOCARP Scientific Committee

Planning New Inclusive Cities using Smart Tech and Artificial Intelligence

by Ulrich Graute • 19 October 2024

Report on the Urban Conversation on Ethical Use of AI in Urban Planning at the 60th World Planning Congress in Siena, Italy on 11 OCTOBER 2024