Christian Kremer, General Manager of BMW Russia, believes that to be a successful leader you need to obtain a certain level of professionalizm and ability to motivate and challenge people of your organization to reach the targets. In his opinion, the leader is developing from the early childhood, when some children take over a lead and make the rest of their mates follow them.
1. What is your strongest leadership trait?
I think that for leadership you need some kind of professionalism. First of all you need to know what you're talking about, moreover being a leader requires a lot of philosophies, culture assessments, you need to know in what culture environments you're leading and in which style and type of people you're acting. I think having targets and setting them to the local situation and acting also in the flexible way is one of the most required things which you have to bring as a leader if you want to work successfully.
2. Is it about culture or about curiosity towards people?
No, of course it's not about culture, first of all you have to have a target, and upon different targets, as an entrepreneur usually wants to earn money, but earning money is not a target because everybody wants to earn money and you have to know how. And of course you have to have a certain kind of professional skills, and then it's up to you how you want to achieve this. Also it depends on the person because you have to be authentic in the things you're doing - if you have a certain style where you're trying to convince your people by the professional skills or by the team spirit to achieve the target, or you say that you're a very strong leader and you have very autocrative skills, then it's not authentic when you're acting in a way you learned it at a seminar. You should be yourself and you try to act in the way that you think is appropriate in order to achieve the targets you were setting to yourself.
3. Could you recall on any example?
You've just mentioned that in leadership you can't really learn in a management school. You can learn some skills there and adjust them to one or the other thing or you can improve it. Looking at my children, I think it starts already in the kindergarten where someone takes over the lead and tell the other children what you have to do and what they're going to play. Usually when you look at this behavior you observe that the children are also leading among each other, and these skills are developing through the years. I strongly believe that there're certain skills developing at quite an early stage of human beings' life, and it's up to surrounding and environment and school education to how this will end up. But you can't learn a certain kind of leadership at school. Convincing the people, being authentic, carrying them to the target - this is one of the most important thing to make them believe in what they're doing.
4. Why is it so important?
Overall the Russian car market is 1,5 million, and if I tell my people that BMW wants to sell one million out of this. Everybody will think that I'm drunk or I was smoking too much, as this is not authentic and nobody will believe in this. But if I say that last year we sold 19,000 cars and this year we're going for 20,000, not taking into consideration the market decrease, and under this decrease the market went down for 50% this year, we must try to keep our market share in the downturning market because we have fantastic products. Now we have our 6 new products and we're slightly trying to get above figure in comparison with the last year because we have some reasonable arguments, then they might believe in this. We also have a chance that the whole BMW team in Russia consisting of 8000 is identifying itself with it. We all believe in this, it's realistic and authentic, we're running for it and at the end that is the difference why we're better than others. There're lots of reasons but in the leadership style you have to convince and make people believe in what they're doing.
5. What is the process of dealing with other people in terms of planning for future?
Of course, the market has the potential, you have your product substance, we know where you're coming from, we're not talking any more about business activities which are existing for one or two years, we have our experience of the last ten years in Russia, we can already estimate what will be because of such situations like world economy crisis which happened last year are not predictable. You always have to be prepared for the unpredictable things, as we're slowly coming out of this bottom line, that we can have more stable planning for the next years. You draw a picture out of these parameters which I've just mentioned and you think of more detailed facilities and more detailed figures and actions and everybody has his place in the team and we're running for it.
6. How the decisions are made in your organization?
The process or a target is not made by one person, it needs a team to decide. And if you play in a team, everybody has his own responsibility. Of course, you have to challenge the people also, because in the nature of the human being there's a feeling that you're aiming not always for the most ambitious targets or you have to challenge each other also a little bit, and if you have a good team, everybody is challenging each other, but not one person is challenging the rest of the team.
7. What is a challenge for you?
Nowadays challenge is a very popular word. By challenging your partner you're challenging yourself. I think the whole life is a challenge. As I have already mentioned in your childhood you never know where you will end up. I think we're setting challenges every day to ourselves and it starts as I've mentioned before in the kindergarten. You're challenging yourself when you're start working. In the nature you're challenging yourself when you start walking, and as you walk you want to walk faster, if you walk faster you want to run and if your run you want to make new world records. You want to make new world records every day, and we're also trying to challenge ourselves in what we're doing in getting better. And this is why every day having set the objective for a new world record, it might seem that it's impossible to reach it. In the 80-s when we were producing 400-450,000 cars we couldn't believe that once BMW will be able to produce 1,2-1,3-1,5 million cars. It comes by the time and it's a process that you have to challenge yourselves and you have to challenge you team. And the better you're looking at each other the better you go into the details and more professional you're doing this without getting out of mind, without getting too much illusionary because all challenges that we have, have a realistic base, I think it helps to develop our generation and our society and the whole global world further.
8. What differentiates a leader in BMW from the one in the other organization?
Of course we have a BMW philosophy, even if we're working in different countries, we have to adjust to the culture and with people which we have to bring the BMW philosophy to. We're running for it and for us it is one of the easiest thing to do as it is a certain kind of joy in it. We have fascinating products and if I'm selling them is much easier than selling papers or glasses or water which is much more substitutable. I think this is a part of our work that we're developing fascinating products, we're selling them and we have our philosophy which is straight and coming up to the point: working in a team and bringing this spirit to our customers, and they identify themselves by buying these products also with a certain kind of joy and success.
9. What is ethics for you?
This is a very complicated issue, as we all know it has its sources in religions and different cultures, and we have quite a few of them around the globe. I think when you're discussing, it's very difficult to judge what is right and what is wrong because it also depends on the values how you're growing up, in which society, in which ethic evaluation. In running business the rules all over the world are very important: you need to have the certain kind of openness, reliability, honesty as you have to work with people and you have to value them. Because if you're looking at these four values and if you're not valuing them enough, them you might not succeed, as there're some basic rules that you have to look at, otherwise you cannot succeed.
10. Are building business and making money the same things?
I think we don't have to go to special examples because each of us has them. But what for honesty, I think business is based on honesty and you should know what you're expecting from your people and what you're telling your people. When I'm making business strategy, when I'm making my strategy based on wrong information which I get from my team in the whole business case it might not be valid any more. This is why I think that being honest with each other is one of the most important parts for business that you can rely on things which you're told and which you're telling your people.
