A-, Anti-, Anti-Capitalista! The battle-cry of the black block is filled with the song also on the Board of Directors of the German Bank, of course, is absurd. But it would perfectly fit to their managers – from Joe Ackermann about Jain & Fitschen, John Cryan to Christian Sewing, the hunt is in the billions by the fireplace in the Frankfurt twin towers. And usually, with the help of the Supervisory Board chief Paul Achleitner, in just the past five years, the price of the stock in the cellar shoots. In the stock market, the traditional house is only 15 billion euros of value – that is, only about as much as the sum of the penalties that have been imposed due to a variety of sinister operations against the Bank. Not were also tens of thousands of Jobs in danger, could you make this gigantic destruction of capital is smooth as a left-subversive action will apply. Corporate governance is not it, anyway.
monotonous uniformity
If, in these days of the season, the main begins meetings, the time of balance sheets, Kotaus and visions, it will show: The Deutsche Bank is not alone, not the only Bank, the only company in Germany, and especially by the Actions of the private Manager in dangerous imbalance.
Volkswagen’s Herbert Diess is struggling with the consequences of the diesel scandal that has brought his Predecessor, Martin Winterkorn. The Bayer group threatens to suffocate thanks to CEO Werner Baumann to the Adoption of the poison-producers Monsanto. The fashion entrepreneur Gerry Weber expands into insolvency. Deutsche Bahn developed under CEO Richard Lutz for the duration of intensive care patients. And ThyssenKrupp, once the Pride of the German economy, is only a shadow of its former self – also and especially because of blatant errors in the management of the company. Because of delusions of grandeur and consultation resistance, greed, or excessive demands – and, sometimes, criminal energy is in the game.
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Stefan Heidenreich, 56, Ex-Executive Board Beiersdorf
as much as he no one won yet: the head of The Nivea group received a 23.45 million euros, the highest compensation ever collected a Dax-Manager. For his work in the year 2018, Heidenreich was paid “only” 5.5 million euros, but he benefited from the withdrawal of a long-term bonus programme, which ran over his entire tenure of seven years and retroactively due: he still got 18 million Euro extra. Heidenreich took advantage of, the consequences of the financial crisis. At that time, the Public was outraged by one of the top executives, where performance and salary sky gaped wide apart. The government urged the companies to adopt the payment of their bosses, not the quick success but long-term goals, and forced her to the remuneration of the Directors to be disclosed. But neither public pressure nor forced transparency have resulted in the German economic elite to more modesty. On The Contrary. Alone in the past difficult year on the stock exchange the Board of management salaries rose by almost four percent. Heidenreich reached its record payment, by he drove during his tenure, although the profit margins are high – and this was finally coupled his Bonus. At the same time, but he renounced an important investment in the future for the company. You have declined between 2014 and 2016 of 4.8% of sales to the “low point” of 2.4 percent. The consequences must now suffer the consequences of his successor. Heidenreich has ceased to be in December 2018, a year before the end of the contract, in the case of Beiersdorf. His salary he gets, but of course, in 2019, to account.
©Lukas Schulze/DPA
“studs in pinstripes”, is the title of a nonfiction-bestseller – angry, polemical, but fair, was the beginning of the 90s were, at least in the readers. The handlebars have been drawn in such dark a psychograph of German companies that you can trust indeed would have to maneuver the entire economy into the abyss.
And now? It’s that time again?
Are you back?
The answer is: they were never gone. The majority are still the same characters, with the rise in the carpet days. “In addition to the first signs of more diversity and internationality of the old career patterns dominate in the business still,” the current “Dax-Board-Report”, the the to managers specialized Headhunting Agency Odgers Berndtson yearly. Easier said: It monotonous uniformity there is still on the management level of German enterprises.
you can See here in the Main Manager-Asset: stable smell
The typical Dax-Board member, according to the study male, 53 years old, and has studied with nearly 60 percent probability the economy. Lawyers and engineers have lost their meaning, and, significantly, to play under the total of 190 Dax-Executive Board members, computer scientists no role at all – because of industry 4.0. The proportion of women has risen slightly, but is still at the tender of 14 percent. Who wants to earn an average of 3.7 million annual salary, or at least get in a in the personal Portfolio: stable smell. 60 percent of all members of the management Board have spent their vocation, more than half of the career in the company, 80 percent will come at least in the same industry. Siemens boss Joe Kaeser for about is since 1980 in the group. Also Bayers Baumann joined over 30 years ago in the company.
herein Lies the key for the operation of blindness, which is characterized not a few of the German Manager? These Visions and discouragement? The far-reaching uniformity among the Business leaders, obviously, not limited to characteristics of the career. “The Manager, the landing at the top, tick all pretty similar. You recruited still preferably be the same,” says Marion Büttgen, Professor of business management at the University of Hohenheim.
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Ursula Gather, 65 Krupp-Foundation, Chairman
profits down, stock price down, debt up, the misfortune has a name: Ursula Gather. From your office in Essen’s Villa hügel, the mathematics Professor leads the Krupp Foundation, which holds 21 percent of the industry-Multi ThyssenKrupp. Thus, the Foundation is the largest shareholder – and the Gatherer is responsible for the future of a huge group. However, in this German company, it has been going on for months, around. First, unnerved by the management Board and the Supervisory Board cast – in-chief in the towel. Then hedge funds incited a tug of war to the breakup of the company. Finally, the succession was in search of top talent for Farce. And in the middle of the mess Gather was looking for guidance – so far unsuccessfully. Sure, it is not only your Ssin: The design, the Krupp-Patron Berthold Beitz, the heir of the family wanted to back up, failed. As long as Beitz lived, was cut by the Foundation on him. But since his death in 2013, the Board of Trustees of entrepreneurial spirit. Besides Gather, the guides in the main job as rector of the Technical University of Dortmund, sitting there, Beitz-companions, such as a 95-year-old Astro-physicist, or the Ex-WDR Director-General Fritz Pleitgen. The philanthropic mission of the Foundation may be in good hands with you – but the economic decisions for this lurching group? The Foundation is to secure the cohesion and stability of ThyssenKrupp. Around 160 000 employees trust. However, in an act of hubris, Ursula has pushed Gather competent Manager aside and 2018, even in the Supervisory Board. Now all eyes are on you.
©Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach-Foundation
Büttgen is the co-author of a study that seeks to establish on the Basis of 280 foreign estimates as well as Judgments of work colleagues, the character of the Dax-30 Manager. Ambitious, determined, conscientious, resilient and is particularly powerful – you are, therefore, all of them. In two points they differ, however, particularly from a also examined a control group of normal citizens: “you have a pronounced emotional stability and are, like all of the classic alpha animals, rarely a team player,” says Marion Büttgen.
So far, So not surprisingly, it appears to be exactly those properties it needs in order to leave the herd behind and to the top. Just how helpful you are, the Job at the top and then also particularly good to fill in? The leadership of people according to the study, neither strikingly communicative nor particularly adventurous – what is in clear contradiction to the new One-a-Topanforderungen for members of the management Board of the third Millennium.
The Boss know, and it can
“The personality Dimension ‘openness to New’ is increasingly relevant, the more dynamic and complex reality,” says Marion Büttgen. Manager like “follow Me, I know, and it is the best!” have a hard time with that, naturally. Exactly this set but unfortunately most of the time on the way to the top. “At the very top of the least liked something to say”, has identified Büttgen. Often, no one tells you but something. It needed a company culture of freedom from Fear, the dissenting opinions can stand up to pretty much the opposite of the climate so that prevailed, for example in the Volkswagen group under Ex-boss Winterkorn, and the “mirror” has described as “the North Korea minus labor camp”.
The new VW chief Herbert Diess have initiated climate change, is it now again and again from Wolfsburg. But he also says phrases like “Ebit Macht frei”, translated for normal people: “The earnings before interest and taxes makes you free.” A madman set. A terrible sentence. Diess has apologized for the spell, he is Austrian, but not a Nazi. But the message inside was clear, and long since arrived: Who delivers, better the flap. It’s a different Sound than the winter grain, but it is the same song.
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Werner Baumann, 56, Bayer-chief
He would have to listen to Neil Young. The hoofed 2015 with his protest song “the Monsanto Years” by America, and sang of “the toxic flood,” and from the Monsanto weed killer glyphosate, which makes the farmers “life to hell”. 2015 was the year in which the International cancer research Agency IARC classified the agent as “probably carcinogenic”. 2015 was also the year summed up the Bayer CEO Werner Baumann the Plan to buy the US group. Baumann is interested in the second line of products, or even morality. For him, it was a matter of Survival as CEO of Bayer AG. His industry had captured a raging eating fever. All of the chemical giant bought and merged. For Bayer, only Monsanto’s left. Baumann paid for it incredible 63 billion US dollars. It was the most expensive Takeover in the German group’s history. And Baumann’s fatal will, perhaps, soon. Today, more than 11 000 American cancer patients complain to damages – and there could be many more. The first two processes lost to Bayer in the first instance. A plaintiff was awarded $ 78 million. Experts estimate that Bayer will have to pay at the end of the process-Marathons between five and 30 billion dollars. Investors fled in droves, the price of the Bayer share price crashed, in Germany alone, 4500 jobs are to be deleted. The entire group is now on the stock will be worth less than Baumann for Monsanto has paid. Believes but still the Deal. Once American star lawyers to encourage lawsuits by all the instances. This will take years. And then, could some Bayer with the plaintiffs still out-of-court – if this is life then. The group would pay a couple of billion, but Baumann, and Bayer would have come of it. But it could also be that Bayer is the target for hedge funds that break up the group and selling them for parts to the highest bidder. That would be not only that of Baumann as CEO, but the end of the 155-year-old Bayer AG, and the most valuable German Dax-listed companies was 2014.
©Henning Kaiser/DPA
Thomas Sattelberger knows this song only too well, he used to sing sometimes. Before he moved in two years ago for the FDP in the Bundestag, he was a three-decades-long self-Manager – area Executive at Lufthansa, human resources officer at Continental, and most recently at the Telekom, where he continued a 30 percent quota for women executives. He was the eternal circle of Men, and the rituals of suffering.
Until today, says Sattelberger, had the majority of the Board of management rounds “the mentality of the wagon castles” – inlet only with the right Habitus, which proves the right social background. He can well remember, as it was in 1994, when he came to Lufthansa. Prior to that, he had to pass the “knife&fork-Test”, as it was called the Dinner with the Board of Directors. He should eat and talk, and meanwhile, to show that he knows how to eat Scampi. Of course, without Cutlery, but distinguished and without smacking. “Because it wasn’t about competence,” says Sattelberger, “it was the only style.”
“Simple
The New in the boardroom overwhelmed” to fit in the best case, and in no case interfere or even notice. Different alpha animals remain in Germany, exceptions. It gives you, such as the Danes Kasper Rorsted, is not considered to be casual and cool, since he is more CEO of Henkel, but by Adidas. Or SAP-Chef Bill McDermott, the in simple New York circumstances grew up. But die is an overwhelming majority? The same ciphers, the Management maintains caste.
Sattelberger keeps this urge for conformity is wrong. “You need in today’s boards of otherness, even at the risk that there is a conflict,” he says. “Diversity does not mean women, I mean a diversity of thought.”
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Paul Achleitner, 62, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Deutsche Bank
Long he was regarded as the Midas of the financial industry. As one who turns everything into Gold. Achleitner moved the hungry U.S. investment Bank Goldman Sachs in Frankfurt, which today is deep in several German groups into the rules. He orchestrated instrumental in the IPO of Telekom (“people’s share”), and also with the “marriage in heaven” between Daimler and Chrysler it was part of the planning team. In 2000, he was chief financial officer of Allianz and arranged the Takeover of Dresdner Bank. But in the end proved to be little than Gold, which made Achleitner Shine. Of course, the “people’s share” is a broke, the marriage of Daimler and Chrysler failed, as well as the Allianz and Dresdner. His activities cost the company many billions of euros. However, the Austrians, the wegcharmiert problems like, was not challenged by the. Achleitner, decided on a second career as a professional Supervisory Board – until 2013, when RWE and up to today, Daimler, Bayer and Deutsche Bank. But continue to Shine: the middle of nowhere. RWE is on the ground, Bayer, and Daimler must dramatically save in order to reach the era of electric mobility. The thickest blocks but the 62-Year-old, of the meetings in 2017 to 70 Supervisory Board travelled shot, probably at Deutsche Bank. Since 2012, he is superintendent, with a record annual salary of 800,000 euros. The Bank with one tiger the world is in ruins. Many scandals, zero strategy. The share price continues to fall, and the rescue will now be merging with the bleak Commerzbank. Of all places. 30,000 employees fear for their Jobs. Under the old Achleitner, the investors, murren, the CEO Anshu Jain and John were allowed to dabble in far too long. The current CEO, Christian Sewing, Midas’ preferred candidate, number of seamlessly.
©Bernd Hartung/Agentur Focus
And then he goes through the biographies of the German Topchefs, and it shows: Many of those at the helm, since the study only one world: the efficiency of management. It went in to the big companies for decades, mainly the reduction of costs, optimization, scaling. One but it rarely went: to true Innovation or even Disruption, sudden and significant changes in how they capture today whole industries. “It’s completely normal,” says Sattelberger, “that most of the members of the management Board and the Board of management aspirants are simply overwhelmed.”
hedging
Many managers in this situation instinctively to the Law of the Instrument, which the American psychologist Abraham Maslow once described with the sentence: “It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a Hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” The burgeoning fears of recession (nail), you will meet with a rigorous austerity (Hammer). Only the 30 Dax companies plan, 100,000 jobs will be cut, we calculated the “Handelsblatt”. It would improve your score adds up to 20 billion euros.
Maybe this can be different to many men and a few ladies in the fine twine really not. Maybe you are missing, along with courage and also the time. Not because of the Marathon training, the need to complete as many managers in your spare time, because of a Marathon for some years now, the insignia of success. No, you the time, because, as it says in the character study of the Dax Board members, devoting more than 40 percent of their workload, the most Important is missing: your current Position secure.
