Own the Decision | Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch

Absolutely an existential crisis. And I have to say, I mean, for months I could not sleep anymore.

I did it out of conviction, and then, obviously, what I didn't see coming is a train from the side. But because I did it out of conviction, and for a good reason, it's nothing where I would regret not having seen the train coming.

I get super nervous if I get in a comfort zone for whatever reason. But that is something which drives me to do different things.

Yeah, first of all, I always have to also just say I never aspired to be a CEO. Obviously, it eventually happened over the different decisions at different times. I come from, let's say, a very classical German background. Family grew up in Dusseldorf, which is a city in the industrial area, and with, let's say, family, normal, classical school life, but I always was a person who was very interested in competition. I did a lot of sports when I was young, athletics, and I love to compete, right?

No, I think, as I said, I was ambitious always, right? I liked school. I was a good school kid, in that regard. I always did two things. I did a couple of languages at school, because I love, really, these different cultures, different languages, and then mathematics. So it was really a kind of dual thing. I'm not the classical mathematics, physics and only natural science base. I love literature. I love poetry. I love languages. So I learned French, Spanish, English, some Danish at school, and that was obviously influencing me to a certain extent.

I went to Zurich to the ETH to do my PhD. And the reason I went there was because I was 100% convinced I want to be a professor. I want to be a professor for thermodynamics. And this is why I go to one of the most renowned universities to do my PhD. When I did the PhD, and I did a PhD which was very mathematical, right? Very, very theoretical. I recognized, after three years, heavens, no, no, for no money in the world was I going to be a professor for the next 30-40 years of my life. Because I recognized it's such a small island on which I am, and it's very deep, very knowledgeable, but it's too small. I miss the different cultures, I missed the different contacts to other parts of the world. So my intention was to become a professor, and I ended up being a CEO.

I don't know whether it was that or whether it was simply the point of saying, hey, academia, at the end, you have to be very good in a relatively limited field, in a relatively deep knowledge base. I think in business, you have to be relatively broad to bring the different things together, and the excellence you try to develop is more on the methods, in terms of how do you solve problems? So I think it's not the missing competitiveness. I think academia is actually in certain areas on a certain level, if I look on the ETH for example, it was very competitive. You had to publish journals, you had to publish articles, you had to really make sure that you get into better journals than the other one. And so it was competitive to a sense, but not what I wanted to do in terms of getting as many different inputs as possible.

I'm always struggling to cite this kind of one individual. So definitely, my parents have influenced me very strongly. And if I look back on what has made me the person I am, in terms of the values, in terms of what I find important also today in business life, that comes from my family background, and then along the way, in terms of development, there were always here and there obviously people where you were taking things up from. But probably the single most influential piece have been my parents.

No, I think I was completely, let's say that was completely open from my parents side. I mean, they obviously were keen on, I had, let's say ambitious parents in that regard. But they would never say, please get an engineering degree or don't do arts or these things. Not at all, right? I mean, I think what they tried to get into me is that you do the things, what you do with conviction, and that you stand behind that, and if you do this, then you're good at what you're doing. I mean, I think my love for music, poetry or whatever, also comes from a family environment which was appreciating art and music and so forth. So these are elements where it was more about to say, make sure you make a conscious choice of what you're doing. Don't waste your life, in the sense of being driven into something without really using your energy to do something real.

I mean, in terms of what affected me as an individual, the decision, what you take at that or took at that point in time as a young German male was, do you go to the military, or do you go to the what we call social service, right? And I went to a psychiatric hospital and became a male nurse in a psychiatric hospital and worked for two years in a psychiatric hospital, and that was something which gave you a completely different insight to the world, because you obviously were facing people in a much obviously in a tough situation. I think being a nurse is something which you have to learn in terms of really serving people, caring for people, and it was, because it was a psychiatric hospital, not always easy to digest what you have experienced. So, that is something which probably me coming from a relatively, how you say, intact family life, very cared about, influenced in the way on how I look on people, how I look on respect and these things, because it was a was not an easy thing to do for me, particularly in the first couple of months, when you already you're responsible for whatever 10-20 patients in a hospital who all have...

Yes, yes, it was, right? And then normally, at this point, at this time, you were thrown into that, somewhat, and all of a sudden you're responsible without a proper education, actually. You learn it while you walk, but it was something which influenced me to a certain extent.

I think it was always, let's say, attached to the fact that I want to be with people and that I would like to communicate. I like to mingle around with individuals, so I love that, but it was a recalibration on first of all, the privileged situation you were in as an individual, growing up in an intact family, without any bigger problems. And that made you more humble in terms of how you were looking on things. And this is still something which I believe I hopefully could preserve throughout the rest of my life in terms of recognizing the privileged situation you're in as an individual.

Absolutely yes, and I would never want to miss that time. For me, I, by the way, think the UK does a better job than, for example, Germany, and this, I mean, my two daughters went to school in the UK, and if I see what they had to do in terms of service, how they get, let's say, exposed to that, I think that's much better already in the UK. But honestly, also the fact that it is your job to give something back to the society, and it's not about military, it's about certain people would like to do military, and others would like to do more, like social service or community service. It's just the fact that the society is only going to thrive if we recognize that we have to do something for it, and it's personal effort, it's commitment, but it's required if you want to live in a safe, stable world, you need to invest.

I mean, the first decision was really, I mean, when I was with RWE, the first decision was I volunteered to move to the US, right? Which was very unusual, right? Normally RWE didn't send people to the US. I said, I want to be with Siemens, which was a supplier at this point in time, and the factory was in the US, in Pittsburgh. I said, I'm gonna go there. I take my young wife and my young, super young daughter, just I was around 31 I think, or so, and this is where we moved over and obviously recognized, hey, how it is to work in a different business environment, in a different community. And the other thing was obviously, then to move away from RWE, because it was clear that their business will be less international than other companies business. And I came across an opportunity that time in Linde, which was an international business development, which actually was a very small team at that point in time, Linde was number five in the industrial gas world, not very big company, but they were trying to venture out into certain new geographies. They were a very German company at that point in time, and they looked for a couple of individuals who they can send abroad as pathfinders to explore new business opportunities. And that sounds awfully tempting, and it was.

I think I always looked for opportunities where, hey, there's something new, there's something new to learn. And at the end, it's also a question for me, is that fun? I think you can only be good in your job if you really have fun and if you really enjoy what you're doing. And obviously international exposure is an element to that. If I wouldn't do this job, what I'm doing, I would probably travel a lot. I traveled a lot anyway, right? But I would travel a lot privately. Now I'm traveling by doing business, and I'm really around the globe, and this is something which I find extremely rewarding. And at the same time, I'm looking for new challenges whenever I settle. I mean, one of the problems is, and this is also why I then moved on also to Siemens energy. Where is the next thing coming? Where is the new thing? Where is the challenge? Where is your, how do you get out of your comfort zone? How do you make sure that you do not get lazy sitting in a certain role or job, which you know very, very well.

And that is something I always found fascinating. I get super nervous if I get in a comfort zone, for whatever reason. But that is something which drives me to do different things.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And so it's always, you know, if you take these decisions, half of it is emotional, half of it is fact based, somewhat, right? So, and it always has been, is that challenging enough? Can I excel? Can I influence something? And that has been, for me, always a driver.

15 years is a long time. And I have to say, when I joined, it was interesting, because my job was really to build up businesses elsewhere. And at that point in time, Linde was not set up as a company for that. They didn't have the structure. They didn't have the department. So I was sent somewhere to a country I was, for example, involved in building up the business in the Middle East. There was hardly anybody. There was one person in the Middle East setting. There was no business at all on the gas side, really, and I went there and started to establish companies. I put up a joint venture together with ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi national oil company, a 50/50 joint venture with Linde. I was more or less literally on my own there, and it was hiring a lawyer, hiring a managing director for the next company, and you had complete freedom in terms of doing it without having the normal structure you would expect in a German corporate today, and which also Linde has today, but at that time, you had relatively high freedom of doing the things. And there was a big trust from the board members to say, okay, you do it, but you also have to deliver afterwards. And that was extremely rewarding in terms of doing it. This was what made it a big fun job, and then through that, and luckily, some of these ventures have been successful, and some of it...

Yeah, I think. I mean, don't put the German business people in the wrong spot, right? I think there's a lot of people who love to influence things and love to impact and yes, whether it's German or not, but in a big corporation, sometimes you get overly bureaucratic. Siemens Energy today is in certain areas overly bureaucratic. No, that's not German, I see that elsewhere, right? But at the end, what you want is, you want to see that you get things done. You want to, and when you see that somebody has built a plant and is operating there, and is producing whatever, right? Gas, chemicals, I mean, you really have built something. So you always have an entrepreneurial element in any business situation. The reason why I enjoyed Linde so much, it gave you an enormous, great playground at this point in time, because they were missing the structures. Out of scarcity they had to accept certain approaches which they would not accept today. And this was a privilege to have that situation, because what it did to me is I did learn simply a lot very, very fast. You had to do the financing, you had to do the contract, you had to do the technical concept, and you had to negotiate with customers who are from a culture which you didn't know. And that was an extreme privilege of doing that that changed over the years, and then 15 years later, we had lot more structures. You would probably not been able to do that the same way today. But the interesting piece was, I had the privilege to be at spots when a lot of things were happening without structures.

No, absolutely. And I would say, I make conscious decisions to volunteer for jobs where other ones, necessarily, maybe not immediately raise their hand. And I still do this. I still like to do this today in terms of, hey, there's something, there's a role open something to do. Yes, I do it, and then afterwards, I think maybe I should not have said it so quickly and thought first, but it intrigues me so much to start something new. And in that regard, I definitely was never shying away from it. I was rather jumping into it. But that was the person who I am.

Yes, probably I was from a business perspective, yes. I mean, there is obviously other elements before, but I have to say, it was a decision which I made without recognizing what it means, and...

It took me years to learn what it means, how people look on a CEO, different to, I have been six years a board member before I took this decision and I thought, look, I'm running a decent business in the Linde world. And I was sitting on the board. We were doing the merger with Praxair. So I'd seen a lot of things I thought, right? And then all of a sudden, you get this offer to say, do you want to be CEO of the company? And first of all, you know, I'm an energy engineer by heart. I love energy technologies in the sense that I want to make better energy world, more decarbonized, more sustainable. So it was the once in a lifetime opportunity of that company, because it's, for me, the best company in energy in the world. But what I did underestimate is what it means to be a CEO, in terms of people look on you as really in a role where they either follow you or don't follow you, whether they see you as the face of the company, whether what you say and what you do has a wider range of impact than you anticipated before, and that is something I probably was not ready for when I took this decision. And there have been a lot of learnings in terms of, where do I have to be careful, or how do people perceive me, and the sense of, they look on you as a CEO of a relatively big corporation. We are 100,000 people today, and at the end, obviously, the fate of the company and the fate of these families are standing behind it is part of your role. I'm obviously depending on the super big team and all, but still, I did underestimate how the role of the CEO at the end is.

I have to say where it did sit heavily on my shoulders was when we had to announce the losses in wind and the company was really going to a situation where you were not sure, does it survive in that setup or not?