Welcome to Strategy Reimagined. Our strategy event broadcasted directly here from our implement office in Zurich. We're super excited to host this event and talk with you about new attractive futures. My name is Meret Siegenthaler. And I'm Manuel Fischer. And together, we're going to host this event and walk you through the next two hours. Manuel, why are we here today? Meret, I think we have to rethink on how we do strategy. So we can't just act as if the last two years didn't happen. The last two years opened up some really great space to ask new questions on what's the role of strategy in organization? What's the role of the organization in the future? And what does that mean for strategy? So today, I'm actually very excited to find some of the answers there on how strategy could look like in the future. Me too. I'm also super excited and I'm quite positive that we're going to find some answers, but also discuss new questions. We have three amazing guests with us today. We have Gary Pisano here talking about his understanding on strategy and innovation. And then we have two leading CEOs from two Swiss brands talking with us about their understanding of strategy and how they live it in their company. We have Daniel Bossart, CEO and owner from Bossart Group with us. And then we also have Stefan Wartmann, CEO from Brug Group. So I'm super excited and looking forward to challenge with them these questions. Now, before we jump into this conversation, Manuel, could you please unfold the topic a little bit more? Yes, definitely. Let me tell a personal story about a client of mine in the construction industry. So this is a longstanding client. I have worked with him for many, many years, and he's by far the most ambitious real estate developer in Switzerland that I know from. And recently we had one of these discussions about the future of his organization, and I was pushing him on the growth of his organization. I asked him, looking back in five years to this moment, what would the size of your company be? Would it have doubled 50% more? Is it 5% CAGR? Where are you? Also in terms of profitability, are you happy? Where do we need to be? And surprisingly to me, he looked at me quite confused and said, well, Manuel, the recent years we have defined a mission for this company. We have defined a mission for us. And that mission is to bring love to a place. So whenever we develop a space, it is about adding value to the place and never take it away. And it is about not harming that space. So that may or may not require us to grow in the recent, in the coming years. So yes, we do not exclude the possibility to grow, but I don't know where we will end up. And that was something deeply inspiring to me. Because in a traditional or more conventional understanding of strategy, we talk a lot about strategy as a goal setting exercise. We try to give us goals in the future and ask how to get there. And typically, of course, financial KPIs like profitability and growth. But more and more, we see this discussion shifting into the area of a strong purpose where growth follows. So growth and financial KPIs become a result. They are not the beginning. And I think this is very interesting. This brings us to a little thought experiment about the role of your organization or of our organizations in society and in the future. So bear with me for this little thought experiment. Think about it. What would the world miss, actually miss, if your company were not to exist? Think about your customers. Do you truly think they cannot substitute your services and your products with some of your competitors? Be honest here. Think about your employees. Do you really think they can bring their full human potential and human condition to their workplace today? Or are they just a human resource that is here to fit and staff positions in an organization? Think about society. Do you really think the world would be worse off if your company were not to exist? And even the shareholder value. Do you think your company is producing long term sustainable economic value? Or is it more how far we can see for the coming months and years that we plan and know? So you might you might tell me that this is an old dialogue that it has been here with us for five years, maybe for 10 years. And that many things have also tried to be to get better at this question and this dialogue. You might even say it's hopeless. And I strongly disagree to that. I think the past two years, these crazy years have learned us the most crucial thing and skill that we now need exactly to get at a better place. Because in the past two years, we learned to let go from old mindsets and old routines and behavior. Old patterns that made us think that we cannot change. But if we look back two years ago, we made stuff and we had routines in our organization that we thought of as best practices. And now they turn out as to being bureaucratic routines. When push came to shove in the past two years and everything was very difficult, most of the organizations that we got to know from, they delivered every day the value. So when it got tough, they delivered services products to the clients. Think even about the hospitals. Most of them for two years now are close to collapse, yet they never collapsed. And I tend to think that this wasn't because we have five or six management layer on top, but rather even though they existed. So what does that mean? This makes me really promiseful that we can actually create and reimagine our organizations, innovate and create. Attractive futures on how they could look like. And it also is blatantly clear that if we're going to do this, we can't just extrapolate from our old strategic thinking. We can't use the tools that brought us to the old place before. So we need some new thinking here. We need to reimagine strategy. And this is exactly why we're here for and why we invited you here to be with us today. And I'm really, really looking forward for a thought leader that we have here for. C-level CEOs and owners of the company who lead the way in showing us how we can create new futures for our organizations. Thanks Manuel. That was inspiring. Is it okay for you if we now continue with the program? Of course, go ahead. So when we rethink the way we do strategy, we thought about three elements, three topics that we would like to elaborate today. First of all, strategies innovation, strategies democratic and strategies continuous. And around those three topics, we have invited guests. Gary Pisano, Harvard professor for strategic agility and innovation. He will take up the first topic and he will inspire us on how entrepreneurial attitude can be brought into a more systematic, more disciplined approach. Secondly, we'll have a conversation with Daniel Bossart, owner and CEO of Bossart Group about his approach to strategy. And they adjusted their approach and made it more democratized in the company. And I'm curious to hear his reflections and learnings from that change. And lastly, Stefan Wartmann will take up the last topic, strategies continuous. He will share some lights on how they transformed Brook Group and what kind of learnings they developed during that journey. So I'm super excited to have these conversations with us. What about you? Fantastic. I'm really looking forward to hear from them. But maybe just quickly before we jump into these conversations, can you share a little bit from our experience on these three topics? Yes, of course. Let me share a few thoughts about those three topics and I'll kick it off with strategies innovation. We strongly believe strategizing is a profoundly innovative act. First of all, strategizing is about questioning, challenging your current status, your current position and your beliefs. Many times we see strategy process with a quite strong status quo bias. It's about looking back, analyzing your past and present strength, extrapolating the past. But this is not what strategy is all about. We see strategy as a process where it's about imagining new attractive futures, where it's about transforming your organization holistically. And if necessary, even profoundly to arrive at an attractive place and to make sure your company is also relevant for the future. The starting point is to ideate new attractive futures. And to be able to do that, you need to innovate on all levels. We understand innovation not purely as innovating and making new products, better services, different services. But actually, it's also about exploring new opportunities for your business model. New ways of collaborating with your partners. And that requires new ways of thinking, new ways of believing. And in order to allow for this strategizing, therefore also implies challenging your management model. Let me come to the second topic, strategies democratic. Strategies not top down. We believe it's much more powerful if you actually involve broader parts of the organization. Oftentimes, strategy is defined in a exclusive circle of top management. But then, strategy is lifted and acted upon in the entire organization on all levels. And we see that often it's about getting the right signals from the market, from the customers. And to bring this information into the strategy process is really important. And that's why we believe it's crucial to actually involve everybody in the strategy making process. This change in approach in opening up, in involving more people into the process, also requires a change in conversation. If you're genuinely interested and curious to understand your employees perspective on your strategy, you need to ask different and new questions. You need to be able to listen and hear their inputs and their critical reflections. And you also need to make sure that you also take these inputs into consideration. And we often see in many companies that when you do that, you create a different level of energy. People feel appreciated. People feel valued if they're actually are asked for their inputs, for their reflections. And that also helps to enhance the understanding for the entire strategy process. And let me finish this with last thoughts on the third topic. Strategies continuous. Strategy is not about being right. It's also not about pretending to be able to predict the future. It's not about formulating the perfect plan and then also perfectly implementing this plan and act on it. Strategy the way we understand it is about defining your attractive future and then work towards this vision and make the right choices and do that constantly because we're living in a VUCA world where things are changing, where we are living in an uncertain, complex and dynamic environment. And if we see very successful companies, we usually observe that they have a long term vision that helps them as a guiding star. And all the choices along the way are made towards that vision. If it's to take the left or to take the right, it's always towards that vision. And when these successful companies manage their resources, they always have a look at this vision and decide in which initiative, in which project, in which company should we invest more, should we invest a little bit less and where do we have to make new choices. And it's basically like adventure capitalist works. So we understand strategy as a continuous process and that requires a constant dialogue towards that vision. Where do we take a new choice? Where do we make an adjustment to things that we have decided previously? So to sum it up, if we think, if we rethink the way we do strategy, we believe it's really crucial to do it more innovative, to do it strategic, to do it democratic and to do it continuous. Thank you, Merit, for sharing our experiences on working on these three topics. You're welcome. So let's then jump to the next section. Yes. I'm so curious to finally hear from Gary Pisano. Manuel, you had the chance to talk to him earlier this week, right? Yes. He actually joined me from the US and it was quite an interesting interview, at least, to say the least. So Gary Pisano is one of our favorite thought leaders because he's actually looking at strategy from an innovation angle. And he researches the topics of strategy, innovation and strategic agility at Harvard Business School. And so now, so we actually elaborated on the topics of how can we make that entrepreneurial spirit or innovation culture, as many of us like to say, in a more systematic, disciplined approach so we can also scale it within organizations. I'm so curious to hear now from him and from you how that went. So let's kick it off, right? All right. So let's switch. And now we have Gary joining us from Boston here with us. Gary, how do you do? Manuel, great. Fantastic to be with you this morning here in Boston. Afternoon for you in Zurich. Delighted to be with you today. Really cool. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm really, really, really, really happy and looking forward to talk with you about innovation. And I think there is really something special about this interview because Gary, you have become some sort of icon in the community of leaders that is really enthusiastic about bringing innovation together with strategy. And that would also be that kind of my first takeoff question. Why are you so passionate about innovation and what has it to do with strategy? Where's the link there? Well, you know, I've been passionate about innovation my entire career and I'm spanning now almost almost 40 years. I think for me, innovation, you know, it drives so much of our daily life, our well-being. If you think about, you know, companies that grow or economies that succeed, it's always for me seems to come back to their capacity and their ability to innovate. And if you think about us as a society, why as a species, as humans, do we do pretty well? It's because, you know, we've been innovating through our through our whole human history. And when we face big challenges like the kinds we're facing, you know, today, it seems to be that, you know, innovation at the end of the day, you know, carries us forward, gets us through it and makes life better. And so for me, it's just so fundamental to to our lives as as as humans and fundamental to the life of any business. Really, really, really cool, inspiring. And the question for me would be if you you have a three week virtual course at HBR, which is called Strategic Agility, and you do that together with Francesco Chino. How do you link innovation there to strategy? Like like what's what's the link there? How do we get agile in that equation? Yeah, I mean, you know, agility is all about your your ability to change and it's it's change with respect to things that happen in your environment, your competitive environment. And for me, innovation is just one very important form of agility. There are other forms of agility. But, you know, look at what's happened in the in the last, you know, two years with the pandemic. It created a shock to almost every business and required businesses to to innovate, to innovate on the fly, whether you're a grocer, a small restaurant that had a shift to takeout or a pharmaceutical company that had to shift its research. It's this capacity to change and adapt that is that is to me fundamental to innovation. But it's it's kind of the heart and soul of what it means to be to be agile. I can't think of a single innovative company that I know that is not agile. I think they go together in a very deep way. Yes, I agree there. So it really matches my experience as well. And maybe that brings us a little bit in the segue. Right. So so being agile, being innovative, doing that, I mean, let's let's take that tour, get a little bit deeper in there. Our audience is an audience of practitioners, so they work day by day on innovation, on strategy. Of course, they understand it that way. So you are talking to many, many C levels as well in your in your daily work and research. So what what what do these very successful practitioners as leaders? What do they do? What I mean, what what is the what is the secret sauce, so to speak, of success? I think they do three things really well and they do all three of them. And I always think of this as the kind of checklist for a leader, if you if you will, around innovation. The first is they're really clear about the innovation strategy. So how do they want innovation to help them compete? So it's not just innovation is a great thing. Let's go do it. But it's innovation is going to give us an advantage in these ways. And this is the type of innovation we have to pursue. And they're really clear and articulate about it. So that's the innovation strategy. The second thing they do well is to recognize that you have to build the right systems for innovation. You know, innovation doesn't happen automatically. Organizations which are good at it build systems. And I think good leaders are really they almost think of themselves as the architects of that of that system. And then third and very importantly, very, very importantly, maybe most importantly, is they spend a lot of time on on fostering the right kind of culture to support innovation. So it's strategy systems and culture. Those are the three things that they do well. Can you help me with with anecdote on the on the on this cultural element? I think so it's an anecdote of good behavior. Well, I think I mean, many of them, of course, but, you know, I think when leaders look at their organizations and they think about the kind of behaviors they want to see in the organization, they spend an awful lot of time trying to model those behaviors. And I think maybe one of my best anecdotes that I can tell because I mean, I've seen many that some of which are private. I probably can't describe them all. But but this is one that that I that I describe in my book, Creative Construction. It's Paul Stoffels, who's the at that time was the head of J&J's pharmaceutical unit, Janssen Pharmaceuticals. Now he's just retiring as the corporate chief scientific officer. Terrific guy. He he really played an important role in turning around that business unit 10, 10 to 15 years ago. They always had a problem with their culture. People were afraid to fail. They were afraid that if you failed, you get fired. So they were very conservative and they had a major drug development program fail relatively late in the clinical trial process. Very expensive. It was like a several hundred million dollar write off. And, you know, he's called before the board of directors and they want to know who's responsible. And he said that was code word for who are we going to fire? Like who was running this project? Who are we going to fire? And he basically said, look, I'm the at that time he was the president of R&D. He said, I'm the president of R&D. I'm responsible. If you want to fire someone, you fire me. And he said, you know, they didn't fire me. And he goes around. They didn't fire me. But my attitude hasn't changed, which is you take the risk. I take the blame. And that's for him what good leadership was about. That is he. And he said, but then I expect that of you as well. So he and he cascaded that through his organization. If you want to work for me, you have to be the kind of leader who says to their people, you take the risk. I take the blame. I've got your back. And that event and that story completely changed, I believe, the culture of that business unit and has made that now. You know, that's an that's a very, very successful pharmaceutical company. So, I mean, this is so enlightening. So once we get concrete, right, the behavior you need to see, it seems you gave the perfect recipe. You said these are the three things a leader should have. Don't model it. Show it. Yet in the book, in your book, creative destruction, creative, sorry, creative construction, you also were making the point that, but somehow that's not easy. I mean, it's all laid out there. So now we know it. But why isn't it easy? Why can't we just adapt that in the corporate world? Yeah. And as I point out in the beginning of the book, look, innovation is never going to be easy and it never should be easy. The thing that makes innovation valuable competitively is because it's hard. Okay. So my goal is to make it a little bit less hard. I never pretend that you're going to read my book and there's, you know, there's too many business books like this, which is, you know, read my book here. It's like a recipe and you check it off and boom. Boom. Next thing you know, you've got the perfect whatever, you know, the perfect cake or baking a souffle or something like that. It's never going to be easy. So what I hope to do through these guidelines is make it a little bit less hard. And and I think one of the things to keep in mind is every organization is different. So what I try to offer are examples, but examples as principles so that folks can adapt them to the nuances of their particular industry, their particular environment, their organization, their history, etc. So it's it's it's it's it's fairly bespoke. You have to sort of tailor what's right for your organization. And I think that's what ends up making it very hard. There's a lot of there's a lot of moving pieces. But and there's a complex dynamic, which is, you know, like trying to build a culture. It's it's a little like, you know, the analogy of pushing a rock up a hill. I mean, you got to keep pushing. And if you let go of the rock, it rolls back over you. And I think a lot of times innovation initiatives are viewed as exactly that an initiative. It's kind of a one and done. We're going to do it this year. You know, this year we're about innovation and next year we're not. Well, that's ridiculous. I mean, so you work on it for a year, which is not enough time and then you're done and you're not going to be innovative. It's the organizations which are innovative and sustain that it's every day, all the time, year after year after year building it. That's what's hard. It takes a huge amount of energy. It's never straightforward. It's not, you know, three steps forward. It's it's one step forward, one step back, two forward, one back. And it beats you up. It's a tough process. Gary, how does that work with I mean, what you describe is an environment that allows for for, let's say, different opinions at the given time, ambiguity in different times, different options, different possible futures. Yeah. And I I have the feeling we built traditionally we built our our organizations quite differently that they they demand for a decision. Right. They cannot work with ambiguity. So how does that work? How do we bring together organizations that call for decision making every point in time? And yet for innovation purposes, we have kind of to chuggle options. Yeah. And to me, this is the essence, by the way, getting back to the art of agility, which is knowing when you can wait and when you have to wait. And finally, when you can no longer wait. And when do you pull the trigger on a decision? Because you can't put off every decision forever, even in a highly ambiguous environment. But what we have to get leaders comfortable with is the idea that, look, you don't have perfect data and you're not going to have perfect information and the world is not predictable. And and and you're making bets strategies about making bets, making informed bets, hedging as best you can and then being able to recognize when those bets are not working, going awry, that you had it wrong. And again, that comes back to culture. So you need leaders. You could say we're doing this. You know what? I don't think that's working. That's we're making a mistake. I made a mistake. I'm changing my mind. I remember this wonderful interview with Steve Jobs about when the iPhone was first introduced. Many people forget that Apple, Steve Jobs in particular, was dead set against putting apps on the iPhone, third party apps, that there was going to be no app store. Apple wasn't the first to do that. They recognized, though, that that's what people wanted to use the iPhone for. They wanted to load it with apps and they wanted a convenient way to do it. So they he was asked about that. You know, a year later, they they went the other way. They opened the app store and it did very well. And he was asked about, you know, you changed your mind. And he said, well, of course, I changed my mind because, you know, we change our minds all the time here at Apple. If it's a better decision, we're going another way. And I find really good leaders are just very humble. They're actually it takes a degree of humble to say, I got it wrong. We're going another way. And that's good decision making. That's good to see. And it's it's key to agility. Agility. You have to be able to change your mind. All right. And it seems to me it's great fun. So also the way you say it, it's not just it's not just dire and hopeless, but it's quite funny if we apply it. Maybe let's shift gear a little bit because I have one question that burns with me. So many times when we have strategic dialogues about the future of a company, we have met many times we end up in a dialogue of we need to radically innovate our business. We need to have some far out innovation. So we are good at the core innovating. Maybe we even applied some of the of the lean principles there, lean innovation principles. But how do we get far out innovation? Right. Can you quickly elaborate on that? Yeah, it's a very different art. I mean, and I've I've quite recently been been studying that more than in the past. I've always looked at it, but it's become a real passion of mine. Some of the work I've done recently case study and our flagship pioneering here in Boston, an organization I've worked with, they're well known for having started Moderna. They started other many other companies and full disclosure, I've worked with them. I serve on some of their boards. So let me just disclose that off the top. But I recently wrote an article with their founder, New Baratheon, about the way they do radical innovation, breakthrough innovation. And, you know, it's interesting. I think it starts with a mindset of when you when you're going to do first of all, it's got to be a strategy. So you're not going to break through innovation if you don't allocate resources to it. I mean, a lot of times I see organizations saying we want to do breakthrough and it's very important that we transform, et cetera, et cetera. And then I just say, show me your list of projects in your budget. Just show me your aggregate project plan and label the projects by type. And there's no money going to any project that is not incremental. And then I say, well, you know, you said your strategy was you want to do breakthroughs and you're not spending money on breakthroughs. And then they'll use some vague term like it's our strategic intent. And I'm like, you know, strategy is not about intent. It's strategy is actually pretty simple. It's where you spend your money. If you're not spending money on breakthrough innovation, you're not going to get breakthrough innovation. It's not going to happen magically. So, again, starts with strategy. But then systems, you need a different approach to doing breakthrough than you do for incremental. It's a much more iterative process. And it ties back to the third part of culture as well, a mindset. So that when you do breakthrough, you're never right the first time what you do. In fact, it's even more so than that. I challenge anyone to think of a breakthrough innovation they know of today that that was a successful breakthrough at any point in history that wasn't originally viewed as a totally crazy, ridiculous idea. OK, when the Wright brothers decided they want to try to fly airplanes, people thought they were out of their minds. OK, this is true throughout history. You know, people thought Steve Jobs was out of his mind. You know, this isn't going to work. But when you know that there's just by the way, the same with the vaccines, which are effective messenger RNA vaccines. It go back and look at the press just a year and a half ago before those were introduced. You had some of the world's leading experts saying they're not going to work. You can't develop a vaccine that way. They can't develop them that fast. So you fight a lot of dogma. So the first thing you have to realize when you're in the breakthrough business, you are you have to have a thick skin because people are going to say you're crazy. They may say you're irresponsible. You know, you're dangerous, whatever it is. You're fighting dogma. So that's the first thing you have to get really comfortable with. The organization itself has to be comfortable with that whatever they're first proposing as they come to. Kind of conjecture, get the thing started. Those are not likely to be right. So you have to have a willingness to say we're starting somewhere. And it's not necessarily. In fact, it's it's very unlikely that our initial thought is the is what we're going to wind up with. But we've got to get the ball started. And then there's a rigorous process of of experimentation, learning iterations, very evolutionary. And and you want you wind up with something. It may not be what you thought it was, but it it you do wind up with something big and powerful. And I think that's the essence of of a breakthrough approach. It's it's a mentality. It's it's a strategy, but it's it's also a process. It seems to me it's more about taking the right turns on the way, not not being right in first. So take the right turns. Exactly. Exactly. It's not you're never going to be right the first time. And again, that's very uncomfortable for some organizations and for some people. All right. Maybe maybe a last question to you shifting here. Here's again. So a little bit more maybe in the research area that you're working at at Harvard. So if you look at innovation strategy space, what is in your opinion like the upcoming topic? What are you what are you researching on? What do you see also here establishing itself as interesting study objects or thoughts and paradigms that come up? Yeah, I mean, I can only I think I can only speak a little bit for my own work because that's what sort of occupies my time. And I think of as important, but that's probably a biased view. And there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on. You know, I'm I still very passionate about this question about breakthrough innovation and how you do breakthrough innovation in a lot of contexts, not just life sciences, but others. I think, you know, every business has to figure out how to do how to do breakthroughs. And I think our societies need to learn how to do breakthroughs. So if we think about some of the challenges like climate change or, you know, we really got to figure out how to get really good at bigger leaps. And and so that's an area of I'm still very interested in the other part of my research now. And what I'm starting my next book on is is looking at which ties to innovation, but it's broader than that is a corporate growth strategy. So how do corporations do it? Why do companies stop growing? What causes companies to stop growing? I think part of that is innovation, by the way. But it's also when the scaling as organizations get larger, what happens to them? What causes them to lose that vitality that they had when they were younger and smaller? And how can you reinvigorate companies for growth? So that's work that's being done. I've been working on that last several years, writing, you know, many case studies thinking about the issues of company growth and particularly as it relates to culture. You know, how do you scale really effective cultures and organizations and how do you sustain those cultures? It seems to be quite, quite elusive. So those are the kind of areas that at least I'm thinking about that I'm I'm super excited about. Right. Me as well. I'm a huge fan of of the writings of yours, of course. And I always interested to find out kind of what why does this why does a startup at some point not is not called anymore startup. Right. At some point it becomes a corporate. And I think in 20 years from now, that shouldn't be the case anymore. Shouldn't talk about. That's right. There shouldn't be. I mean, corporations grow and they want to grow. And that's a good thing. But it shouldn't involve the fact that they lose their vitality. It's it's that's that's a theme that's in the creative construction book, but it's one I really want to pick up on in the future work. Really cool. So let's conclude it with this. Thank you very much again for joining us from the US. It was a pleasure to have you here talking with us. Many thanks, Gary. My pleasure. Thank you all. And I'm looking forward to the event. Wow. What a show from Gary Pisano. So inspiring. I was particularly happy that you raised the question about how radical innovation can actually get done and get found. Yes, that was quite thought provocative, I guess. He's also that type of character, of course. And on the topic of radical innovation, he actually just recently published a new HBO article, which is called What Evolution Can Teach Us About Innovation? And there Gary Pisano dives into the example of Moderna vaccine research and how they actually radically innovated that space. So if you like to learn more, check his article out. I definitely will. And once again, it was just inspiring to have him here. Now I think it's time for a break. Let's just close this for 10 minutes. But please be back because we have two amazing guests coming to the studio. We have Daniel Bossart from Bossart and Stefan Wartmann from Bruck Group here with us and we're going to talk with them about their understanding of strategy. So stay tuned and be back in 10 minutes. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And you or situation where you tend to just say, okay, let's do this. Then you want to rely on experts and say, let's live up to our cultural ambition and actually ask the people who know best how to do this. So holding the space is definitely something we need to, or I need to do. Thank you so much, Daniel, for this inspiring conversation. I'm sure it has not only inspired me, but the entire audience. Thank you for coming. Thank you very much for inviting me. Thanks. That fish left some impression on me. I guess I can forget that. So that was quite a session. Really cool to hear from Daniel Bossart, how he moves ahead with his Bossart 200 strategy. So that also brings me to the next speaker, because equally, just like Daniel Bossart, our upcoming speaker has changed his understanding of leadership in the past two years. And our next speaker is going to be the co-owner and CEO of the Brook Group, which is Stefan Wartmann. And he has been very engaged in defining a strong purpose for his company and then not executing a plan towards it, but continuously working towards this attractive future for his organization. And now I'm pleased to have Stefan Wartmann with me. Stefan, I'm so happy you joined us. Many thanks to have made the way here and joining us. It's nice to be here with you. Maybe I should start with a small correction. I don't perceive myself as co-owner. I just act as the CEO of Brook Group. All right. Thank you for that correction in the beginning. And I guess now, with that out of the way, let's move a little bit to the Brook Group, the company you're heading. Brook is the leading supplier when it comes to help building the world's infrastructure. And maybe before we join Meret and have a discussion more deeply about strategy, can you introduce the company a little bit to us? Yes, of course. That's a pleasure. All right. So the stage is yours. Yes. The Brook Group is doing roughly 500 million Swiss franc turnover. We are a global company with a worldwide presence with around 1,700 employees. At our widely diversified business units, we're providing solutions and products directly or indirectly to the public infrastructure. At Brook Pipes, we produce rigid and flexible pipes for gas and liquid transportation. It starts for fluid liquids like LNG with minus 180 degrees or even less, goes up to hot gases and steam pipes. At our Brook lifting unit, we're producing ropes for the elevator business and lifting purposes. Some of our applications and ropes are used in Burj Khalifa, the highest tower worldwide, or for instance, at the World Trade Center in New York City, or the Pearl Tower in Shanghai. Then at our business unit, Brook E-Connect, we are producing high-charging, high-speed cables for the electromobility. We have cables for the wind industry or special cables for the industry. We have a small real estate business that's mostly corporate real estate focusing at the headquarters site. At Rittmeier Group, we produce process control solutions for water supply, wastewater treatment, power and gas supply, but we also have instruments. At Rittmeier Group, we produce specialized netting solutions against natural hazards, rockfall, snow avalanche, debris flow, slope stabilizations, etc. These elements and these safety solutions are also used in motorsports or in mining, both underground and open-pit mining. Last but not least is our FATSER heavy-duty rope business unit. You may know this from ski business, chairlifts and other lifting equipment. We are also in the mining business active with heavy -duty ropes and for the rope structural business. For instance, for stadium roofs, maybe you know one of our famous applications at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. For the future and because we are focusing on the public infrastructure for us, yes, we all know Corona is a very deep problem for human society, but even the bigger problem in the long run, I consider the climate problem we have. And we should keep in mind that still today, two-thirds of the energy supply is based on fossil energy supply. And if we want to have really a chance to reach the climate goals by 2030 and 2050, to reduce to the max, that's a mammoth task that human mankind can only reach with deep, profound innovation. And that's for us the beginning of our growth and innovation journey at Brook Group. Brook Group has kind of cut off some of its main DNA by selling the high-voltage power business a little bit more than two years ago. But this was an important start for us for innovation. It was a kick for growth, growth that we want to do on a profitable way. Our target is far beyond 10% EBIT. We have started different growth and innovation initiatives, but we are also focusing on stabilizing and deepening our core business. That is very important to us. I'm looking forward now to the discussion and we move over. Welcome back on stage. Thank you, Stefan, so much for joining. I'm really looking forward to this conversation now. And you introduced Brook a little bit to us and you also shared some insights on what were the biggest challenges or what are the biggest challenges for Brook at the moment. You called it this mammoth task. And you also shared the ambitions that Brook has now in the next couple of years. And let's stay right into it. I'm super curious to hear a little bit more about this ambitious Brook 2025 plan. I mean, it was such a courageous move, right, to sell off part of the essence of Brook. Now, I'm curious to understand, like, where did you find this courage to actually sell off part of the DNA? Well, this was a long-term strategic move. And, of course, we had several problems with the area that we sold. But this was also the birth of something new and the focus into the future. In the past, we were more figure-oriented, past-oriented. And now we have a very clear goal. Where is the mountain we want together to climb on? And this mountain has also figures on the top. It's a growth of 45% in five years. And we want to do this in a profitable way. We want to reach at least 10% EBIT. Now, you told me, Stefan, that, of course, to reach that mountain, right, we could basically execute the plan five years, go there. But you told me previously that you have some sort of different philosophy on how to arrive at that mountain. So, how does the way up there look like? How do you take that continuously? I think, first of all, it was important to have the ambitious, where do we want to go? So, to put the pole on the top of the mountain and to be honest, when I first told our people, hey, we want to grow almost 50% in five years and we want more than double our EBIT, then there were a lot of question marks. People were more past-oriented, figure-oriented. We had more than 100 KPIs. Now we have less than 10 KPIs. But now we focus into the future. And there is also a principle in our meetings. 80% future and maximum 20% talk about the past. And, of course, the way the path up this mountain, where we have a pole on top, the flag, we want to have 650 million turnover, starting from 450. That is a very important milestone on the top of the mountain. But the path where we go, that's not always clear and was not always clear. We had to take the people and to push the people together, to do it together. Wow, what an ambitious plan. I'm really impressed. And I can also understand that that's not like a very straightforward mission. Sometimes you go right and left, right? I mean, it's a very successful journey so far. And it obviously has a lot to do with taking the right decisions along the way. And that probably also changed a lot your role as a leader and the way it is perceived. Can you share some insights on how it has changed for you being a leader at Brook in this time? Yes, I believe in the beginning, as you said, it needed a lot of courage to plant this pole on the mountain. But very soon I was surprised when we started to create the ideas about innovation, about growth initiatives. And to me, it was a very big surprise that actually from more than 200 ideas, we had to select the 30, 40 initiatives that we want to focus on. And it was also nice to see how the people, our management teams and the employees that were involved in these growth initiatives, how they also grew together and started to be open-minded. And I think there was also a lot about purpose. As I said in the introduction, the big problem of human mankind at the moment seems to be COVID. But actually it's not. The big problem is global warming. And really, we have to do something. Otherwise, it's going to cost us an enormous amount of money in the future. And we just leave it to the next generation, which is unfair. And this purpose, starting with helping the energy transition, doing something for the sustainability and helping with safety and security solution for the public infrastructure, that was very, let's say, an easy thing to motivate our people and also to do it in partnership together with clients and partners, because we are not alone in the public infrastructure. Yes. So maybe if we zoom in a little bit on management role and like your role as a leader, as you're discussing, I mean, essentially, I think as leaders, what we can do is just talk to people in our organization. So going, being two or three years into that journey, did you notice how conversations have changed, conversations you have with peers in the company? Did they somehow change over that time? And how did they? Yes, of course, as I mentioned before, in the past, we were more past-oriented. Sometimes I really felt like we are running on a highway, just watching the back mirror, 140 kilometers per hour on the highway, instead of watching the main screen and what's behind the next curve, because that's decisive. And today we have really this principle rule, maximum 20% past, maximum 20% talking about the past financial figures and 80% about the future, because that's where we can have an impact on the past. That's the past. And this took us a while really to change our mindset. Even myself, I had to change. But I must say, today it's really a free spirit in the meetings. And I'm very happy when the people tell me, hey, Stefan, now you talk too much about the past, we want to talk about the future. And this is a mindset that is not just a bottom that you press. It's a process that the whole organization goes through. And that's also a little bit my job. When you talk about the future, you cannot take decisions on hard facts often. You have to coach, be together with your people. And I see myself not as a chief executive officer, I see myself as a chief enabling officer, helping making the surrounding conditions that our people can grow together with partners, together with our clients, because often we are in brownfield projects in infrastructure and we have to enrich this into a better future together with partners and clients. Well, what a great name, chief enabling officer. I really like that. What did that mean for you in like day-to-day work? It can be stressful and sometimes I have also to watch, not time-wise, to overload myself. But I like to be with the people. I don't have an office anymore. I have a small suitcase and I am with the people and where are the projects. How did you work with resistance? Maybe on that, like was there a lot and how did you work with it? Yeah, there was. Sometimes there were question marks. Hmm, the CEO again here. Yeah. And tomorrow, he wants to be again here. Is there something wrong with us? No, I want to be there to help. And often I see myself also as a learning part of the organization because a lot of things our managers, our employees know much better than I. I might be a little bit the conductor or the coach on the sideline that can help, give advice. Maybe you have a different flying heights where you don't see the details, but you have the better view on the long-term vision. And together as a team, you can then move ahead by profiting together. Yeah. Stefan, I have to ask you one question, maybe which you mentioned earlier about the project. So maybe going a little bit more into the content of the strategy. You said you selected more than 40 initiatives, basically, and running them as a portfolio. Where did you get the ideas? Where did the ideas coming from for these business ideas? That was a difficult process, really, to coming from a past which was past-oriented, going into a future which is completely future-oriented, focusing on energy transition, sustainability, and safety security. We had to do several workshops just to lift up our mindset, future-oriented, and also to create these ideas. But, of course, we had some outside help from an interesting company you might know. Not to mention words. But it was also a lot of fun, this journey. And it was not something that is happening on one day or one weekend or on a two-day workshop. It's something that was evolving in different steps. And when I say Brook 2025, it's not a five-year program that starts at year number one and ends five years later. It's a journey. And even after one year, we had to reload. We had to say Brook 2025, next generation. Because in the beginning, we fully focused on the future, on growth, on innovation. But in the second and third step, in the second and third year, we had also additional initiatives that were focusing more on the core business, on securing our USPs, because that's the bread and butter, which is also important. But it's very closely interconnected, of course, with the growth and innovation initiatives. But it's a program that works step by step. And to be honest, we had also one or two initiatives where we had to say, sorry, it doesn't work. We had to exit. Maybe you want to buy a company, but they don't want to sell. So there is an end. Stop signal. And we also had COVID on the way. Just after our start, everything was completely different. But we said, no, 2025 is there. It's here to stay. It's the flag on the top of the hill. Maybe the path might be a little bit different, but that's what we stick to. Let's maybe use the last question to look a little bit into the future. Like, what is the next big thing coming up for Brook? I believe we have started the last two or three years a lot of initiatives, a lot of programs. And besides only doing innovation, we also take our people along. We have educational programs. We take care about carbon footprint in our own organization, in all three scopes. We take care about the client platform with design thinking initiatives, etc. And education and continuous education with LinkedIn learning, with Moodle and other tools is very important because we want to grow our employees, our organization, and even with our clients in a sustainable way. And being on top of the hill and being dead, that's not the goal. We want to be there, enjoy the view, enjoy the party, and look at the next... Even further. Yes, even further. Maybe there might be a summit 2030, but that's not to be discussed at the moment. But we should not overload the organization. That's very important because you can also fall into the acceleration trap. So now we want to consolidate the next two, three years what we have started and really do the things right. We are doing the right things, but we have to continue now what we have started. That's now our main focus. Although I must say, I almost weakly fall in this trap and people remind me, but Stefan, you told us no more group projects at the moment. All right. Thank you so much, Stefan, for being here and sharing your experience. It was really interesting for the two of us and I'm sure it was also really inspiring for our audience. Thank you. Thank you. Nice being with you. Thank you. Wow, what an interesting conversation with Stefan Wartmann. I'm really impressed. And what I really liked is the way he reflected about his role as a leader and not as a manager and how that has changed during the journey. Super cool. I mean, we've heard so much interesting input today. It's just amazing. And Manuel, now bring the fish on the table. Like, what are your key takeaways? Of course, we won't forget the fish. No, we can't. Bring the fish to the table. So that's a given. And I just totally agree with you. I think it's always impressive how much you get out if you're actually talking to people who are owning the change, who are actually leading the change. And don't understand strategy as something you delegate as a transformation. That is something that you can delegate. So we saw real leaders and I loved that very much. And of course, also thought leader people who actually research the topic. So just fantastic for me. I got quite some of the answers I hoped for. Great to hear. I think two things that stuck with me. One is the cultural element of innovation. So it seems to me it's not about having structures and processes to control something. It's more like having them to allow for a culture. And then the culture is actually what's giving you the innovation impact and in the end strategic impact. So that is one thing that sticked with me. And I guess the other thing is something that is more close to my work also that I have a lot. So many, many times we find ourselves in organizations. I'm not sure if it's the same for you, but I guess so. Where we have clients that look for ideas and that ask for ideas. But basically, they're already there. They're in the organization. And I think it's today we learned how we can tap into this energy in the organization to get good ideas and get them going. So what was it with you? I totally agree with what you took away. I think what stuck with me was what Daniel Bossart said about the way he involved this organization. I think it's just amazing how much he opened up this strategy process. We often see this very classical strategy process where it's about doing it in an exclusive circle. And he literally opened up and changed so much and gave energy and also enhanced the understanding. So that really impressed me. And I think the second thing is the way he but also Stefan Wartmann understand their role as a leader. It's not about just being a manager and making decisions in a crisis and tell everyone what to do. It's literally about reflecting where it goes, where the organization goes and help the employees guide themselves through this situation. It's really becoming more of a leader, of a coach in your organization. And I thought they showcased really well how they did that and how they still go through that change. Because it's not something you do from one day to the other. It's literally like a journey, right? All right. I think that's quite concluded for the learnings today. But if our audience is interested to get to know a little bit more and, of course, leapfrog some of these learnings and apply them, what would you recommend to them? We basically recommend three things. Together with Thought Leaders, we have written two books that we can definitely recommend. The one is on strategic agility, like a handbook for modern strategists on how to stay relevant in the future. And the other book is more about humanocracy, about attractive organizations. That really are also topics Daniel Bossard and Stefan Wartmann took upon. So we can definitely recommend these books. And then we recommend to just go out there and talk to C-levels, to strategists, to decision-making. Because I think it's so important to also reflect together on your challenges. So we would definitely also recommend that. And last but not least, we can recommend to apply for Gary Pisano and Francesca Cino, another Harvard professor's innovation masterclass, where you have like an intense three-week program on innovation, on strategic agility. All right. That is fantastic. I can just recommend to do all of the three, actually. Definitely. So really cool. So thank you very much, Mere, to host this for us together here. Really, really cool to have you on. Thanks to you. And thanks to our guests that were here with us. And thanks to you. It was really interesting. It was super cool to have you here. And now we wish you a wonderful afternoon. And thanks for joining. See you soon.