Michael Meichelbeck

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Agenda

How we met

He is (was) my product manager during my time at Luminovo.

History

Family

He has a girlfriend called Susanna.

Hobbies

Cycling
Fitness
Reading
Yoga
Audiobooks
Board Games

Bio in Notion

Hi! I'm the one who can't stop speaking about cycling. If I'm not cycling, I do like building products and bringing value to clients.

Did my Bachelor and Master studies together with IBM in Southern Germany before heading to Switzerland in 2015. Spend the last years building digital products for UBS. Most notably, I led the development of UBS Mobile Banking app for multiple years, before I took over the general product area of Digital Client Interactions.

Ask Me About

🚵‍♂️ Cycling (Seriously, please ask me about it)
🚲🚲🚲🚲🚲 The names of my bikes
💻 Latest technology trends (or rather tell me about them 😇)
🌭 The best Currywurst place in Berlin
🍩 Argue with me if a jelly (filled) donut is called "Pfannkuchen", "Berliner" or apparently “Krapfen” (hint: it's a Pfannkuchen)
⚡ Not ask me, but tell me about your vision for Luminovo products

Working with me

My idiosyncrasies

⏰ Wake-Up Time: I'm an early bird. Like so early that I had occurrences where colleagues were finishing off their day, and I was coming online again. Please don't feel ever pressured getting up early to get back quickly to me. Consequently, my mental capacity is starting to be drained around 8pm, so while I'll be always happy to be available for urgent requests, it's not my peak time.
🧠 Mental models: I like to form mental model of subjects to make sense of the world. Until I have formed such a model, I tend to be more in a listener mode and might ask (for you) simple / basic questions. Those are important for me to fully comprehend the topic at hand.
🙂 Smiling: Apparently I have a tendency to not smile / look slightly angry if I'm in my focused working mode. Don't worry, I'm not angry and always happy to talk with you! (And I will keep working on my facial expressions)
📱Notifications: In my conquest to break dopamine cycles, I have notifications switched off for the majority of my mobile phone apps. If there is something urgent, please give me a short call.
- Side note: I'm also reachable while I'm cycling. My bike computer is hooked up to show calls and SMS directly on the display. If you call me or send me an SMS (other text messages are not display), I'll make an effort to find the next place to stop and to get back to you.

Common failure modes

🤨 Self-Criticism: I tend to be a big critic of my work and my ideas. While it helps at time to push my deliverables to the next quality level, it can also lead to unnecessary iterations and time wasted which would be better spend on other topic. If you catch me in such a situation, please give me feedback.
🧙‍♂️ PowerPoint Magician: My past organizations communicated topics primarily via PowerPoint slides. This allowed to me to become quite crafty with PowerPoint, but can also be a huge time sink. Again, if you catch me painting slides which are not necessary, please give me feedback.
❗No time for exercising: Over the years, I came to realize that there is one indicator for my work/life balance: Exercising. If I don't find time to do, my mood and work quality will decline. So I try to prioritize a minimum exercising amount each week.

Expectations towards others

💬 Transparent communication: There is nothing more disheartening than figuring out the truth if you just hear parts of a storyline across various people. If there is something that concerns me or my work (or is just generally relevant for me), just let me know. Even if it is negative feedback, do not hesitate, we are here to learn and committed to improve.
🤝 Sharing ideas and open feedback: As a product person, there is nothing more exciting than bouncing ideas about what the product/feature could/should/can be. Whether your idea is big or small doesn't matter — I'm interested regardless and would be very happy to have a chat with you.

Life Story

„Ich bin ein Berliner!“ 🧸

Shortly before the wall was starting to crumble, I started my journey on this world. Like many Berliners back then, my parents quickly decided to raise their children in the so-called “Berliner Speckgürtel” (basically suburbs around Berlin). This allowed me to spend my early years in a small village called Grossberen. This name will certainly ring a bell for the history nerds of you, as it is known for the Battle of Grossbeeren which happened on the 23rd August 1813. It doesn't? They tried for years to make us believe that it has historical importance. Never mind, all I remember is non-existent public transportation and shitty internet.

For my Bachelor studies, I moved to Stuttgart just to witness the next major construction project failure (Stuttgart 21) after experiencing the drama of the Berlin airport. During my studies there, I worked for IBM 🇺🇸 which allowed me to get deeper into the world of Information Technology. Continued my IBM stint for my Master Studies (Leipzig) before I spend my final semester abroad in South Korea. Afterwards, my goal was clear: Working in one of the following countries: South Korea, Singapore, or South Africa. Somehow I ended up in Switzerland (ask me about it!) and spend the last 6 years working as Product Manager for digital products at UBS 🇨🇭. Creating products based on user needs, while incorporating the latest technology and considering strategic objectives, has become a passion for me and is the most entertaining puzzle I can imagine. Hence, I'm always on the lookout to understand more of these dimensions and hope to discuss them with you soon.

If I'm not working, I'm usually doing sports, more precisely: cycling. I could go on for ages how much fun cycling is, but why spoil the fun if we could also talk about it? Instead, I will leave some pictures of various cycling tours. Talk to you soon! 👋

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