Dr. Axel Kniehl, Whirlpool General Manager for Russia and CIS, tells us how he copes with managing a large corporation and what the peculiarities of working in Russia are.
1. What is your strongest leadership competence?
First of all I think there's not one specific competence. I truly believe it's a set of various competences or traits, as you name them. For me, there are three or four that are key or core. The first one is thought leadership, the second one is responsible - and this is important - risk-taking. The third one is that all of what you do is based on a very strong set of enduring values or beliefs that you never compromise on. And the last but not the least is the ability to attract and to retain very talented people in the organization. If you have a great idea but you have no people who can do it for you, you will eventually fail. The transformation will not take place. For me these four are more or less of equal importance. I would always say that nobody is equally skilled, so you will find strengths and weaknesses. If you ask about my personal past I would ask you to ask other people in the organization not myself. But if you force me I would say that thought leadership is the one that I challenge myself the most on and I have a lot of fun doing it.
2. Can you be more specific?
Thought leadership means that you basically never accept the status quo. So you constantly challenge the corporation, the status quo of the business even if you are currently at a moment when you have great results. That means never to be in a comfort zone and think "this is it, these are great results, so let's continue doing like we did in the past". So you basically have to challenge status quo and you have to pair it somehow with creative or out-of-the-box thinking. That brings you to the next level. Only there you can have sustainable extraordinary results. I would always say that thought leadership by itself is nothing. As I said before you need talent to help you get there and people to implement it. Only then you are able to make the transformation happen. It is actually a continuous transformation you are in. Once you are there you start thinking what is next. That's what I believe thought leadership is.
3. Can you say some words about the importance of motivation?
What happens is that if you think ahead, there's a big risk of losing people on the way, because they are not there yet. They don't have the same vision or understanding of what is going to happen. So a lot has to do with explaining and basically taking them on the journey. In our case, specifically for Russia, we had a very nice business model when I started then I took over an office for Russia and CIS in the beginning of 2008. This was a very profitable and a very low type of risk business. So it was great to just continue doing the same way. But looking at what was happening in other industries in Russia as a country from the governmental side, it was clear that it was not possible to continue running the business this way, it was an offshore business. We needed to change. There was a lot of pushback not only from people within the organization here but also from the headquarters. Why would you increase your risk, do something differently if it is so nice as it was at that moment of time. It basically needs a lot of discussion and persuasion to take people to understand that changes are needed. That's one thing. And the other thing is that you should never let go. It's tempting to say "okay, I'll do it 6 months from now". But you must constantly be on top of it and re-estate it and recall back to why it is necessary and needed.
4. What is your approach to business in Russia?
I truly believe the current booming generation of young upcoming managers in Russia is quite good. They might be different in their qualifications and what they know from people in Western Europe. But at the same time they bring other values and other virtues that you would not find so much in Western Europe. To me the most significant one is - and it goes a little bit against your laziness - the uncompromised willingness to go the extra mile. I've been around the world quite a lot and I ran other companies. I rarely see people on the forth or fifth level of the organization being without any question willing to stay till 11, 12 or one in the morning in order to ship the last truck and do some extra tasks. For me it's quite amazing and quite different from other countries. At the same time, allow me the judgment, even within young people there is an "old Soviet Union" mentality somehow built into everyday life or into the education. It is what we see in the streets, what we see when we go to a restaurant. And there is a big risk people still need to be told what to do every day, very specifically in order for them to do the right thing.
5. What about you?
I conform a different school of thoughts. I believe in individual capability to do the business and run the business for whatever they are responsible and to make them responsible for it. And if I look back now one of the biggest changes I did was that I went away from an organization where everyone was reporting to the general manager, getting direct feedback on every single step they wanted to do, passing responsibility to every individual. It took a while because people had difficulties accepting this different type of working. If I look back now I've not lost anybody that we didn't want to go away. All the good people that we had are here and are happy to be here. Our turnout is very low because people are willing to take this responsibility. It is changing the way of making people responsible for what they do.
6. What means do you use in terms of managing the company?
First of all I want to say that I'm not against micromanagement - it is not bad when executed at the right moment in time. I could never say that I have an absolutely perfect formula for understanding how to manage a corporation. I did make quite a number of mistakes in the last one and a half years in delegating too much to someone who can not cope with it, or delegating not enough to somebody and frustrating him. To me it's a trial and error. Whatever you do people should understand that at any given point in time you might do all the way down to the last digit or the last question and they should be ready to respond to that question. That's one thing - you delegate a way and then you ask a question, you probe the question all the way down. And you should do it once in a while. The other thing is that as you go along with every single person you will find that they have a different way of coping with it. Somebody might delegate but it leads to no activity. They don't know how to deal with delegation you will find it out rather quickly, because things don't get done. Others might take a wrong decision. What's important is that you will accept the wrong decision because everybody is there to make a mistake and to learn on it - the point is only once. So for me it is testing and checking.
7. Could you provide an example?
You know, I could give you tons of examples. As for practical ones it is for example how much and what type of activity you agree with our partners and who is taking the decision about the type of campaign and the amount of money that is involved. When I arrived every single one was going over my desk from the very beginning to the very end and asked "what do have a marketing manager for?" So there's a bunch of responsibilities. That's the first step. Then think about product managers and sales people who are actually the ones with whom I have discussions with the trade partner and they should be able to have a reasonable discussion. You basically start raising the limits. You start with a very low limit that you give to them that they can decide alone and then step by step you give them more and more accountability and responsibility. Then it remains a fine line.
8. Do you think to be successful it is important to deeper understand the business?
That's what I meant with you need to be able at any single point in time to drill a hole from a top to the bottom. If you just remain on the surface, you will lose control especially in markets that move so much like Russia, that are so volatile, where changes are happening so much. If you look at a market like Germany, it is fairly stable. That it point number one. Point number two is that you typically have structures in the organization that have grown for decades, people that had done their job for decades. Even if you change the leadership, nothing will happen even if you take the leader out for three months because the whole machine is used to work in a certain way. You come to Russia, you come to Ukraine, you come to any booming market, you have a very volatile structure, you need to change much faster. As a consequence you need to understand much better what is going on, to be much more focused on the details, in every business aspect, than you need a more stable economic environment..
