In Krisenzeiten auf den "unfair advantage" fokussieren (Robert Gies, Igor Iraeta Munduate)

Perhaps as a starting point: in 2019, a new management board came to Leifheit AG, and I'm part of it. We found a very hierarchical culture where board members and board chairs strongly governed what ideas got approved. Work across different areas within the board was slow and heavily dependent on the opinions of superiors. With the new board team, we realized we needed a new strategy. But it was clear to us, as Peter Drucker said, that 'culture eats strategy for breakfast' — we wouldn't implement even the best strategy without changing our culture.

Our strategy is called 'Access' — taking what we're good at and multiplying it, making it bigger. Advertising is important for this, as are good products that are better than the competition. But the most important pillar for implementing this strategy is what we call the winning culture — our VIVE culture. That stands for Fun, which is crucial since we spend so much time at work, and if it's no fun at all, that's already not good. It also means Fast — adapting to changes in the environment. Friendly — treating each other with respect and meeting on equal footing, like at this congress. And Bold — being courageous, not afraid of superiors, but letting the best ideas win. We should also argue respectfully, always listening to what the other person means.

This desire to install such a culture led me to the topic of agility. Our advisory board member, Georg Hesse, who was CEO of HolidayCheck at the time — that's probably a term familiar to everyone here — introduced me to Robert.

Yes, I think it's great that I came to this congress. When Robert showed the slides and this journey, I realized where we actually stood. I only look at cycles 12 and 11, but this was really interesting. When I saw the photo, I thought: oh God, where were we actually back then? Perhaps you had to experience it. Not so long ago, the board members at Leifheit had their own chauffeur. There was a separate executive floor — that old-fashioned thing you see in films. We had all of that.

In that environment — good old industry, which probably doesn't exist for you all — oh yes, it does. In that environment, the topic of 'du' — I came from igus, which might be familiar to some here. There they already used 'du,' but I quickly had to switch to 'Sie' because it was shocking — a board member addressing me with 'du'? That doesn't happen. It was even advised not to offer the 'du.' And accordingly, that's how it was.

In 2019, we still addressed each other with 'Sie.' Then we did the workshop, and there was a pattern break because you went into the workshop as a board member with cross-functional people from completely different levels and departments, and you offered the 'du.' And it wasn't in Leifheit's rooms — it was in a restaurant, deliberately chosen outside the company.

Perhaps an interesting story: about a year or two later, I went to dinner with some employees. They recalled this workshop and said it was one of the biggest real changes in the organization — that we started using 'du' with each other. It's quite impressive what such a small thing can actually trigger in terms of change.

And then it happened — Corona arrived and the world was different. From one day to the next. And what did we do? We started working remotely, everyone at once. Robert was an enormous support — he brought great tools and ultimately enabled so many people to participate at once. It was unimaginable. Just two weeks before, we held the workshop like that.

When Corona came, there was also — let's call it — an extreme challenge and contradiction. Something I always noticed very clearly, and it's still the case today: the fight between innovation and cost savings in the OKR cycles. Driven by certain conditions: rising transport costs at Leifheit were a huge problem. But on the other hand, disruption — a more strongly changing market and changing business models.

Energy costs, supply shortages, lockdowns, raw material prices that skyrocketed. These were topics that triggered either savings or innovation. Many people from development said: we need innovation, we must remain viable for the future. But then the finance people said: we need to manage with rising prices. There was a real battle.

Absolutely. We saw in the keynotes how the mood of people fluctuated. At the beginning of Corona, the mood was briefly very good, then it went rapidly into the negative. And then came the big topics: savings and supply shortages. Where we had previously focused on innovation and where things were going, we were now in a very changed environment.

There were also big surprises. I remember specifically the joint for the clothes horse — we discovered that recycled material was actually cheaper and better to produce. Even the durability was actually better with recycled plastic. That's a topic of sustainability. Sustainability was one of big objectives — our goal is to be climate-neutral by 2030. We reduce our CO2 footprint, and where it can't be reduced further, we compensate. Durability, quality, and reusability of our products are our understanding of our contribution to sustainability.

In these products, we want to reduce resources and our CO2 footprint. Recycled material is a big topic. We've had many attempts, many setbacks, but also positive surprises — like the unexpected finding that recycled materials had better properties for certain products than original materials.

Another big OKR topic was consumer needs — quality understood as making our consumers happy. Not just 'very good quality,' but our customers are enthusiastic about our products and services.

For example, the vacuum cleaner issue: 99.99% bacteria-killing, I believe. Our development team, together with our brand management, engaged deeply with what bothers consumers. Vacuum cleaners exist in many varieties, but through the housing design, dirt always collects at the edges. How do you solve this small but important problem? Hygiene was a particularly big theme during Corona — the steam cleaner that reaches 100°C, which can kill viruses. But we had to prove this through testing and verification, so we wouldn't advertise with nonsense. And we drove that forward with OKR.

OKR was a help there. Similarly, other topics like having our own webshop — selling our products directly. There was a theme of reducing dependency on Amazon, standing on our own feet, and distributing products ourselves. That also emerged from OKR — the energy to move in that direction.

The wording of the objectives is very important because it allows different people to take different approaches. But the common understanding of what really helps and what the true value is — that's essential.

Then you mentioned it's about being able to react quickly. In the animal kingdom, as Darwin illustrated: not the strongest or most intelligent survives, but the one who adapts to the conditions. Applied to a company, that means we adapt our ideas to external conditions we can't influence and turn them into a strength — an unfair advantage.

And as you can see, you didn't do badly in the difficult times. But there were setbacks. I'll quickly go through them.

The perception that OKR takes too much time — that's a constant battle in the organization. The real value is questioned relative to the time invested. We quickly won many multipliers early on, but at some point we hit a saturation point where it unfortunately didn't continue. You often hear that initiatives and projects simply can't be broken down into three-month cycles. The perception that the ideas from OKR aren't really new, aren't mature enough, not well-developed enough.

And we still haven't managed to implement OKR across the entire Leifheit organization. It's mainly done in our area. These are the things we can learn from the most — from what didn't go well.

Strategic goals with a certain appeal to people somehow work better. That might have to do with meaning — understanding the meaning behind something. It can be helpful to define goals as simple, innovative, useful, and sustainable.

The two points are closely connected. In an old industry company, people partly understand key results as to-dos and as planning. Robert always challenges us: 'No, no, no — you need to have something where you can create value, a benefit.' That's still not fully resolved. We keep returning to it. And when it gets tight, when there are problems, we always fall back into old patterns.

It's the same with mistakes. Error culture as a chance — not error culture, but a learning culture. That's another aspect where we still have a way to go.

Very good question. Your name was Simon? Simon, great question. It starts with differing opinions within the board itself. Some board members say it's too much effort, too many people to bring together. 'I don't want it yet for myself.' The status quo is still there despite four years. There are always good reasons for that. You have to respect that.

How do you deal with it? Openly and transparently. You can't sugarcoat things. I'll say it quite openly: Industry 4.0 is a big topic, and things are always tangled there. The IT realm — we work with it and not everything always works well. We deal with it transparently. We say: we set these objectives, but these key results — for these and these reasons, primarily their own fault — we're not making progress.

It's like life — it's not simple. Like a relationship. You always stumble over the same stones, always make the same mistakes. You can only say: okay, now let's try to do it even better. I think it's important not to talk about OKR but about what's happening — what's harmful for the organization, because collaboration isn't working, because people aren't cooperating, because things don't run hand-in-hand, because there are too many unmet dependencies where you constantly get stuck.

It's important to talk about these things. OKR is just a means to an end. The goal is to help the organization function well and be value-creating.

Very good questions. To the first question: we have a division of responsibilities — yes, we do. There's a simple reason: it's legally required. As a publicly traded company, we have legal requirements — personal liability, etc. Clear responsibilities must be defined.

How do we approach it? By talking to each other. Sometimes multiple times. And appearing as a team in several meetings, addressing things openly and expressing different perspectives — because the board doesn't always agree. But it's very important to us to express ourselves with fun, with fairness. Always with respect, always on equal footing. And when we don't succeed — because I can also become emotional — then I say sorry, I crossed the line there, I'm trying to do better.

The second question was: where do we stand in our culture change? We asked our employees: how do you find the atmosphere? Where do you see us? How do you view Leifheit as an employer? And we received amazingly positive feedback: 96% of employees say yes, I enjoy working here. In other companies I've been at, where there were feedbacks saying the boss is dumb and so on — we didn't have that.

That doesn't mean it's peace, joy, and pancakes. But self-critically, on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is very good and 1 is very poor, we're somewhere around a 5. So there's still significant room for improvement.

Thank you.