Dr. Tobias Meyer is CEO of the DHL Group and is considered one of the most influential executives in the global logistics sector. DHL Group is a global leader in logistics and employs around 600,000 people that have generated revenues of € 82 billion in 2023. The company is represented in 220 countries and territories, making it one of the most international companies in the world.
Dr. Meyer has been a member of the management board of DHL since 2019, where he was initially responsible for Post & Parcel Germany and later for Global Business Service. Prior to this, he was Head of Operations & IT at Post & Parcel Germany and held the position of Chief Operating Officer at DHL Global Forwarding. Before joining DHL Group as Executive Vice President of Corporate Development, Dr. Tobias Meyer worked at McKinsey as a consultant and later as a partner, both in Frankfurt and Singapore.
Dr. Tobias Meyer studied industrial engineering at TU Darmstadt, where he later obtained a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering.
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The CEO Leadership Series is the flagship event series of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) at the Heilbronn campus. The goal of the event series is to connect top managers with young students in order to promote a fruitful dialogue. The guests first hold a panel discussion with the host about their careers and organizations, and then respond to questions from the students in a Q&A session. This gives students valuable insights into the fascinating and exciting life and work of successful and renowned managers at an early stage.
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00:00 Teaser
01:52 Intro
04:15 Childhood, youth
08:20 University
09:12 McKinsey
11:00 Work as a consultant
13:57 Doctoral degree
15:29 Singapore office
16:57 Joining DHL
18:35 Executive vice president corporate development
19:54 COO of Global forwarding
21:57 Business turnaround
23:49 Post & Parcel Germany
25:53 Head of Post & Parcel Germany
27:49 Not receiving letters
29:11 Head of Global Business Service
31:01 Becoming CEO of DHL
32:21 What does DHL do?
37:06 Sustainability
42:30 Digital technologies
44:59 DHL as an employer
48:12 Competitors
51:09 Typical day as CEO
54:05 Any surprises?
54:47 Music, cuisine, hobbies, books
57:39 Legacy
58:44 ***Start of Q&A***
59:00 Adapting strategies
1:04:24 Work challenges and private life
1:07:00 Digital advisor
1:08:50 Biggest mistakes
1:11:48 Customer satisfaction
1:16:14 Geopolitics
1:19:34 Startups
1:21:56 Changing the company
1:27:02 Aspirations & greatest struggles
1:34:45 Trends in logistics
1:37:23 Competition
1:41:26 Future customer needs
1:45:09 Speaking your mind
1:47:56 Most important CEO skills
1:51:50 Best and worst part as CEO
1:54:47 Time management
1:56:56 Life philosophy (standardized clothing)
1:59:16 End
Music: Good Morning by MaxKoMusic
and then I started gliding so flying sail planes um that was more by coincidence because next to the little village where I grew up there was a was a Airfield um and a local club and um I think I found this fascinating so I I did this quite intensively also during my times when I studied so I typically focused my studies on the winter to have maximum free time during summer across the group I would say um the main thing we try to do to be globally local and I think this is quite interesting if you go to China and you ask where’s DHL from most people will know I typically you know get up 6:15 um start somewhere around 7:30 or 7:40 um and then I need to be careful that I don’t get in trouble with my wife in terms of really telling the truth but I have a a fairly flexible end let’s call it that way I tried two days um a week to be home at least before 8 I think if you’re not able to comment compartmentalize and able to switch off and also ignore certain hard problems for some hours you should not take a job like mine I would highly discourage you from doing that I don’t I made it a point not to spend time on things that that are not important to me so my clothing for instance entirely standardized I only have one type of shirts I always buy the same shirts and I I needed to change shoes now because after 15 years and I think 19 pairs the producer stopped producing that type of [Music] shoe dear students welcome to the CEO leadership series my name is Chang Wang Lee and it is a tremendous pleasure for me to present to you the CEO of the DHL group The DHL group is the world’s leading logistics company it is also one of the most International companies in the world and operates in more than 220 countries and territories worldwide in addition DHL is also one of the largest corporations in the world and is actually the second largest German company measured by the number of employees with more with about 600,000 employees Years Around the World Dr Tobias Maya has been CEO of DHL since 2023 and is one of the most important and influential top Executives in the global logistics sector Dr Maya initially studied industrial engineering in dad he then joined McKenzie as a consultant and returned to dmad to obtain his doctoral degree on the topic of global production networks a model for cost optimized location Choice he then returned to Consulting and worked in the Frankfurt and sing Singapore offices and then became partner of the firm after around 3 years as partner he joined DHL as Executive Vice President for corporate development he then became Chief Operating Officer that is COO of global forwarding and then coo and head of it for post and parcel Germany before becoming the head of post and parcel Germany and also a member of the executive management board that is the forand of the entire DHL Group after a while he took on the role as head of uh Global Business Services before becoming in 2023 as mentioned head and CEO of the entire DL group it is a tremendous pleasure for me to welcome Dr Maya here to our campus uh for one because he’s very experienced and successful and I’m sure has many stories and pieces of advice to share with you and with us and also because I just ordered a new credit card actually an EC card uh that is to be delivered by DHL and I hope that thing arrives safe and sound so please treat Our Guest very nicely today and please help me and very warmly welcome Dr Tobias Maya thank you very much thank you usually I only get the Applause afterwards so I’m glad that we already get some thank you thanks for having me well very welcome to our campus it’s a great pleasure to have you here uh how about we start from from the beginning can you maybe tell us a little bit about your childhood and youth so I’ve actually a pretty ordinary German upbringing I would say um I grew up in the northern part of hes in the middle of the country but during a time where that was the border of the country as well U because it was pretty close to the German German border many of you will not have any recollection of that time but um it was quite depressing uh when I was about your age uh the Border was still closed and I had multiple occasions where I also visited the German German border which was heavily fortified at the time um had a a belt of Mines so that particularly people from Eastern Germany couldn’t flee to Western Germany I then had uh one choice that I never regretted in terms of choosing Hobbies so I tried all sorts of musical instruments as you know the parents tried to have a positive influence on your upbringing that didn’t go very well um in terms of soccer and similar Sports I was okayish but also not great and then I started gliding so flying sail planes um that was more by coincidence because next to the little village where I grew up there was a was a Airfield um and a local club and um I think I found this fascinating so I I did this quite intensively also during my times when I studied so I typically focused my studies on the winter to have maximum free time during summer to go flying um but it’s also I think a good thing because the the element of flying instills quickly a sense of responsibility for yourself because if you’re up there um you you should somehow think how you get down again um and um you need to have a certain element of self- responsibility finished normal high school and then was first thinking about becoming um an architect or a civil engineer um in the early ’90s and civil construction wasn’t going so well in Germany so I then uh decided to do mechanical engineering and industrial engineering in dhad so there’s a mix of classic IAL mechanical engineering particularly uh for the first two years and then an increasing mix of Economics um of um management and also of legal uh subjects and I have to say in hindsight um I think that was a good choice um particularly a bit of legal things helps if lawyers um you know give you very persistent advice that you also have some understanding on how the legal system works and you are not AF afraid to also read the law directly um and particularly the engineering bit instills a bit of pragmatism the engineer doesn’t carry so much about whether things are right or wrong but whether they work or not right if you build a bridge if you build an aircraft what matters is that it works um and I think that’s a good attitude in management as well and having the ability to add up some numbers is also so typically quite beneficial I always say I made a career out of a rule of Thum uh and Google Maps um is not quite true but both elements I think are quite helpful to do be able to do triangulations um and also have a bit of a sense of the Practical world and where things are all right looking back at your studies in damad would you have done things differently or do you have any advice for our you know young students here so I think my stud I I did one full year in the US at the end of it um I found that very helpful um you know the US is a is a very specific experience um I did this in the middle of the cornfields south of Chicago uh which is a pretty lonely place in itself the surroundings auana champagne is the University of Illinois uh has a very good Engineering campus um so if I compare the library to what damad had to offer at the time I found it quite impressive also the labs um what you could do there U but also the living in the US and the US attitude was very helpful to absorb as a college student all right and then after you’ve uh you know finished your studies you decided to join McKenzie can you maybe tell us why you decided to apply there and what the process was like yeah that was actually more by accident um the so during my studies I did multiple stins of uh internships with Abus industry in tulus um I wanted actually to do the a3xx program which later became the design program for the A380 right the first double decker or the it’s not quite true but the first double decker jet engine let’s call it that way the more distant history there were double deer um planes as well but the um so I wanted to to get on that design program but Abus was extremely complicated in its HR processes so even though I had worked for the very same people when I was in the US they asked me to go to tulo again um to do interviews and at some point I lost my nerve and then there was this strange company and the strange subject of consulting which I honestly had never really occupied myself with as a as a student and um McKenzie did a interview weekend in um Arizona and if you sit um in Illinois in winter in November around Thanksgiving Arizona suddenly becomes a very attractive place um so I more went there to spend the weekend in the warmth but then got a job offer with an interesting number and then I said okay why don’t I do this for a year okay so you started in McKenzie’s us uh location basically actually so they were quite flexible so I could have started in Chicago but I ended up starting in Frankfurt okay all right so how is it working as a consultant I mean we hear you know it’s very hard work long work hours a lot of traveling can you maybe tell us about your first few months and week or years so I found it quite interesting um also that clients paid for what I was doing that was um found this in the beginning a bit interesting but I got into it quite quickly and I always made sure I can somehow leverage my strength and I made gradual steps into new subjects so the first um Consulting projects I I was on had a lot to do with engineering so my very first project was about the maintenance system that Deutsche B should apply I wish they would have taken some more of that outcome uh then we wouldn’t have one or the other debate that we have today regarding our Railway system but anyway um so was more about you know the the aging and wearing of Steel under high pressure of um the the railway traffic um so I found this quite helpful to basically make steps more into the management space um also having engineering uh at mind and then afterwards I basically only did uh Consulting in transportation and Logistics I never really did anything outside of it even what I did uh for banks during the financial crisis had a lot to do with ships um and not so much with the banking as such all right now you Rose through ranks uh quite quickly at McKenzie uh do you here again have some some advice for us you know what were some of the success factors that you found in yourself and perhaps also observed in in your colleagues there so first of all with McKenzie your progression happens more or less automatically or you leave right that was at least um the um the method at the time I don’t know exactly how they handled this today but um that was the case and it was actually not so quick um because um I also shifted at offices after some years I went to the Singapore office and that to then take some time to reestablish yourselves um but overall I would say you know hard work um so I didn’t mind working long hours which became a little bit of a problem when I became a team leader and at some point um this was Ring a project in India I recognized that actually not everybody was so excited to work until 1:00 a.m. and it took me a while to get this into my head um you know I had also during student times not minded working long hours um and if the topic is really interesting I found it quite natural um but I had to learn a little bit that was not everybody’s most favorite thing and that you also as a team leader have to adjust to the needs and expectations of your direct reports of your team members all right and then you decided to return to Dad to uh earn your doctoral degree can you maybe let us know about that I mean was it part of that you know leave program that the consulting firms nowadays have that’s right they had that so it was already clear when I signed up I would basically do two two and a half years maybe you could stretch this to three um and then you basically had a paid year off um in hindsight I regret that I really pushed it very hard so I I finished in in about 18 months but I also worked a lot of long hours and in hindsight I should have taken it a little bit easier during that time and maybe traveled a bit more um but I somehow felt a little bit under pressure even though I wasn’t um financially not in immediate need but somehow I found it very uncomfortable to move out of uh the paid time again um maybe that was wrong Judgment at the time but I tried to push it through as quick as possible it would I do it again I don’t know I think it is a certain level of overs specialization was also an interesting topic but um yeah I would probably these days say I could have also use this this these 18 months differently okay and just to manage expectations if you’re thinking of you know doing your doctoral degree or PhD at my chair 18 months that’s kind of very special right it’s very very quick so um now Dr Amaya you then returned to McKenzie can you maybe tell us a little bit what you did then did you return to the Frankfurt office or Singapore office and so I went my my fiance at the time now my wife um moved to to India at the time so I I moved to Delhi and then couple months later she told me she wants to move back because of family reasons U to Singapore she’s from Singapore um we originally met in the US so and I said okay then we moved to Singapore um I marged into the McKenzie Singapore office and said here I am um know a little bit about logistics and transportation I would like to work here um and then I did projects out of out of Singapore which was a radius that basically went from Sydney to Beijing to Dubai which I found very exciting for the first two years and very tiring for the next two years because it was just a lot of travel and that feels glorious in the beginning um and at some point you recognize that maybe it’s not so exciting after all but it was a time and this is maybe the good thing about Consulting that obviously you get a lot of different insights and Impressions so I did Consulting for a lot of Asian airlines also for DHL in Asia um you know for for shipping companies um in a quite wide footprint okay and then you joined DHL so can you maybe tell us how that came about I mean is it the typical you know client asks one of their Consultants whether they want to join or yeah so I consulted for for deuta post uh quite early um so one of my first projects was the aftermath of the DHL acquisition 2001 um so I I knew the company for for quite a long time and also knew obviously some of the people there and then Frank Apple asked me in 2013 whether I wouldn’t want to come over by that time I had been partner for 3 years and I thought a little bit you know what’s going to change now for the next 10 or 20 years as a partner and I was pretty clear that I didn’t want to do Consulting for the rest of my life so it was a welcome opportunity to change over maybe in terms of how did I pick the company I think this is maybe something relevant because I always found that I really do a good job when I can focus on the job and don’t have to kind of second guess my boss whether I support of my boss or the environment so the element of trust I think is very important um if you want to be productive and thereby successful so I selected um my employer mainly on two criteria do I trust the institution and do I trust the person who hires me and that has served me very well okay and your first job was as Executive Vice President uh for corporate development can you maybe elaborate what you did there so that’s basically the staff role to the CEO to handle strategy and special topics so to say so the classical strategy work you know which markets to focus on where to look for m&a opportunity but also the special topics that might come around when something doesn’t go so well okay and was the transition difficult or were there unexpected elements going from partner a you know prestigious consulting firm to a large corporation I think with DHL you have a strong operator mindset and I think that’s a good thing so we’re generally careful and have maybe increasingly become careful to have a good mix of of operators and new people and I obviously for or you know that time was somewhat new what helped is that I knew the company and some of its operation already at the time but I also made it a point and half throughout my career to spend a lot of time in operations and I think in a business like ours this is very important okay you then moved on to the role as CEO of global uh forwarding DH Global forwarding or Freight uh so how did that transition come about and what was your job then so that came through a mishap so to say um we tried to um change our it system in global forwarding at the time from a very old green screen system and had made the decision to move into a modified sap system and that turned out not to be a very good choice so this it migration produced a pretty horrific outcome so we had changed over some countries we couldn’t invoice um we lost transparency about a large part of the business um the cash flow went South um and that lent to a management turnover so the CEO of that division left at the time uh Frank Apple the group CEO took over himself as a divisional CEO and I had uted some strong views about this program earlier and that ended then um with a meeting in his office um where you said you you had some strong views on this so now you have the chance to also do something about it um and then I did actually the strategy role and the IT role for Global forwarding for I think eight months or so in Peril which was quite demanding in terms of time management and then I shifted over um and took over the full also operations role which means for Global forwarding we do air freight forwarding ocean Freight so containerized shipping couple of specialities we have there industrial projects for instance where we move Rigs and and wind turbines and bigger equipment of that sort so that’s that type of business and the main job for the first two years was then to find an alternative to that it transition which we ultimately managed to do okay uh can you perhaps tell us if some of our students they have an IT Focus actually most most tomb students here uh so can you maybe summarize some of the levers you use to turn around that business so I think I mean it architecture I think is very important to think through that very carefully what elements of your it system you change and um the business always has a drive for functionality but if you only have that and you don’t have a view on architecture then it becomes more and more sprawling and more and more complex and you obviously also need to invest the money at the right time to find the right cycles of replacement some companies are too quick on that um and they you know spend a lot of time exchanging systems that are not really end of life yet but obviously there comes a point and um I mean this is in 2015 when we still had a system which base origin was in 1979 yeah so that was truly old uh for an IT system um and we we had to change it that was very clear but in logistics the the problem is you can never stop yeah you you have a global business and you always have shipments uh at some point in time so the migration is actually how do you gradually face over from one system to the other is is as complex and important than the system selection and the building of interfaces and the like and um we I think carefully thought through this ultimately went for our core transportation management system to a provider that was established in that market was pretty small at the time is now a very successful company wise Tech uh is listed in in Australia um and that has been a good journey both for the provider as well as for us okay you did a good job you turned around the company or that part of the division and then how come you uh were you know called to be the become the CEO of post and parts of Germany so I didn’t call myself was a bit um you know Frank Apple group CEO called me to his office and I said I have a new idea and you have a new job um wasn’t particularly Democratic um but you know he said look we we have a change in that area it was a bit similar the previous CEO of that division has left um he as a group CEO took um the CEO ship of that division for an interim period And I came over um as Chief Operating Officer um and we you know had some issues in terms of infrastructure where we hadn’t done enough investment in Germany we in increasingly Now integrate the delivery of letters and Parcels for instance which is very important for us to to be efficient we have a specific challenge in Germany that we have a very different Workforce structure than all of our competitors due to to our Legacy here we’re the only provider that basically self employs um close to all delivery people we have some few exceptions to that but um 97 98% of parcels in Germany are delivered through our own staff this means we have definitely significantly higher Personnel cost um and we needed to find a way through um operational measures but also the upgrading of it um to get efficiency into the system and that was uh the main task okay and then was it another call that made you kind of the head of uh post andara Germany yeah so that was probably what uh Frank Apple had in mind at that time already um but he didn’t tell me so that um came a couple of months later that I then um became CEO if you look back at what you’ve accomplished as CEO of post impostor Germany uh what were some of the you’re perhaps most proud of some of the big steps that you took with the with the uh division you so I think we have done a couple of good things um if you look at our app today for instance the the tracking that you have as a consumer um the you know notification that you get you can get a 15minute alert when your parcel arrives that to do that in a co-determined company is much more difficult then if you do not have that structure right we have a strong Works Council um any type of it change is codetermined so you need to discuss it with your social partner you have um definitely a much longer process but you also have a chance to obviously take your people along through that and I think that is some elements of that I think went very well and helped us to enhance our service um both from a quality as well as from an efficiency perspective on the paral delivery side H and also transition with a mail business more into a combined delivery model which for us is strategically very important because obviously the mail volume through digitalization is going down quite consistently and will continue to go down so we in Germany will ultimately be the parel delivery company that also carries a couple of letters all right and that is a transition that is quite challenging with a work force of 200,000 people and we have many people who have worked their entire professional life for us um and have maybe for 20 or 30 years done the job in a certain way and changing that um is is quite a challenge for the organization and since you became head of post and parsel Germany have you ever not received a a letter or package that was sent to you so I think on packages I’m pretty fine I think I had uh twice that the letter uh was delayed and there also followed done up on why this was more out of interest um the it is a challenging business because we are also heavily regulated um and our current regulation which is under discussion now and under reform there a legisl process in Berlin to reform that because the law is from 19 um 98 um so 26 years old now and hasn’t really foreseen digitalization and that letter volume for instance would shrink so that is something that is truly challenging because we’ve kept investing into a business that has a significant regulatory Challenge and we ultimately need to trust that the regulator and the legislative um in Germany understands that and also changes the law so this has always been um quite a challenge to balance that to um you know have the confidence also in the country and the political leadership that they see what changes are needed to make our investments worthwhile all right you then took on the role as head of uh Global Business Services yeah that was a that was came more out of the transition process so Frank Apple had decided that he wanted to retire I would also by the way have been fine if we would have you know wanted to continue for a couple of years longer I really love doing being um the board um being the board member for post imp parel Germany um it’s a it’s a different business from our other business but it’s it’s very rewarding because we also have a very loyal and I think very good Workforce uh in Germany um but Frank Apple had decided to retire and at the same time he um became chairman of the supervisory Board of deuta Telecom and this is why we structured the transition process in a way that I for some time only took over global Business Services which is things like procurement it Fleet um so we have about 990,000 vehicles um that we somehow need to manage um and some other uh more supporting services and this time where I only had that part of the portfolio I spent for instance on cyber security related topic it in general um so and I think that was good that I had some months to focus on that before I now um also have the CEO role and thereby have to split my time a little bit differently all right so it was to some extent expected that you would at some point took over this year role it was no big surprise I suppose in your no we already announced this 18 months ahead of time um so it was a very long transition period which I think only works if the two people the one who leaves the job and the one who enters the job reasonably well aligned okay and how was it for you to kind of understand that or understood at that time all right I’m becoming a CEO of a company with more than half a million employees and you are one of the youngest you know duck CEOs also I think you’re still even today in your board are except for your head of AG are the youngest member so how was it as a person you know yeah Christian Klein entered the job much younger so there are also other examples but look I mean um I I know the company and I knew the company at the time very well um I also knew the job pretty well I had worked together with Frank Apple basically for 10 years and I I think understood at least from the visible structures what his day and and schedule kind of looked like in his tasks so that was reasonably familiar um what you just have to get used to is that you don’t really have peers anymore yeah so you’re the guy who is the ultimate decision Taker and um that also has an impact on how the organization perceives you what you’re told what you’re not told um and that is something that you have to get used to I think this is very difficult to prepare for okay all right um so let’s talk about DHL let’s talk about DHL so we know DHL from you know letters and then as private consumers I would say but you have many different businesses can maybe tell us a little bit what DHL does yeah so first of all how did DHL come about um Doge opposed this some of you might know was basically was a state part of the state Ministry um in the in the 80s basically since after World War II um and at some point it was decided that that Ministry would be resolved and split into three parts um what became Deutsche Telecom a post bank and Deutsche Post um CLA zumigo took over uh when that um was privatized end of the80s and his first big task that he probably also hadn’t a bargain for was that reunification of Germany happened and suddenly we you know the deut post system at the time in Germany had about 400,000 people and we got another 180 or so in in Eastern Germany to bring this together and um the male business and Poss at the time was tremendously laborous and labor intensive there wasn’t much mechanization so the board at decided at the time that they would basically rebuild the entire system which I still find Quite a feat so um in in in Germany we build 83 letter hops um so an entirely redundant system next to the existing one uh with you know letter sorting machines um sequence sort so that our delivery people get you know the the households in the exact sequence of how you walk by now we for instance even for bigger mailbox systems sought the letters in sequence of the mailboxes so this type of industrialization was done in the ’90s and then LED at the end of the ’90s that the business became reasonably profitable which it wasn’t in the beginning and out of that profitability as well as the sell of Real Estate in Germany um we then made a bit bet on globalization so we bought in the time frame of roughly 3 years nearly 150 180 companies depending on how you counted so basically a company a week um and that one one of these companies one of the bigger ones uh was DHL Express which was originally founded um in in the states um the the original business idea was to carry trade documents ahead of the arrival of the ships so that cargo could be cleared um you know before the cargo would actually arrive that was the original business idea so we we bought all these businesses and then integrated them um into different divisions uh first the structure was a bit different at the time we put more parcel and express together which we later separated but over time we then um develop the businesses that we now have which is Express um where we also operate a fleet of roughly 300 dedicated aircraft um that we largely own um we have our Global forwarding business which is an asset light business so we don’t own ships and we don’t own aircraft in that business but we use the existing capacity of ocean liners and and Airlines to ship stuff from from A to B and that is a pure B2B business um and we have contract Logistics DHL supply chain which is warehousing and Distribution Solutions across many sectors from Pharma to high-tech um to other things but we operate a large footprint of warehouses roughly 30 million square meters worldwide um and then we have post imp paral Germany which is kind of the business we do since 14 193 so it has been a while um since that business model was uh derived and um our youngest Division and smallest division is what we call DHL eCommerce which is basically the parel business outside of Germany all right which is still small um but parcel and e-commerce is obviously um a big and important trend for us so it’s also the fastest growing division all right and we discussed this before I mean DHL is basically at the Forefront of every single either development or crisis or Mega Trend so let’s talk about uh some of them for example sustainability I mean you’re moving a lot of freight around a lot of things uh so how do you address the topic of you know I suppose improved sustainability for the company so for us particular the E component of sustainability right nowadays people talk about ecological social and governance um but the E component and the CO2 component is obviously um a really big thing um we directly and indirectly through our subcontractors have about the emissions of Denmark as a company and that’s obviously a sizable footprint and it is something where we all know that we need to move the needle relatively quick now we have done I think also pioneering things um but we’ve also burned our fingers with that so we bought a company um about 10 12 years back to manufacture our own um battery electric vehicles because the challenge was we had discussions with many manufacturers and they all said you you’re welcome we we build you a vehicle but first of all we want to be paid up front for the development cost and second the vehicle basically has an overp specification of what we need uh our vehicles in Germany on average you always need to be careful with averages but on average drive around 35 km a day so you know this discussion around vehicles that can drive 500 or 700 kilomet with big batteries is irrelevant for us uh and we don’t want to pay for big batteries which have now become more affordable but 10 years ago this was a real issue so we did these type of things um and we now the biggest purchaser also of sustainable aviation fuel but particularly the issue of flying is something that um is something we spend a lot of time on because for InterContinental flying especially there is no technological alternative um in sight to the burning of hydrocarbons hydrocarbons have a relatively high energy density per kilo and if you want to fly long distances this is extremely important um and hydrogen has the the big disadvantage that even in liquid forms it needs a huge amount of volume which I find interesting if I did sometimes discuss with other people also politicians um you know everybody’s obsessed with hydrogen and I also like hydrogen as such but it’s good then also to understand the base properties of this thing right and how expensive the handling process is and you know um a ton of hydrogen is is roughly you know 13 cubic M you know it’s it’s 77 kilos per cubic meter of liquid hydrogen you know everybody thinks because it’s liquid it has to be somehow the similar density than water but it’s obviously not the case so these are the things that we intensively discuss first of all how do we decarbonize flying and how do we get to larger quantities of sustainable fuel for that area this is why I also think uh we shouldn’t use these type of fuels on ground for for vehicles because we need it for you know higher value applications where we don’t have an alternative the the other element for us um is Trucking where you know more is feasible but the regulation doesn’t necessarily make it easier so we have some areas where everybody wants the ideal State like a battery electric truck which for us is very difficult to operate um also because the charging infrastructure is I know we’re willing to invest and build that but we at least need to get grid connectivity yeah and this is a challenge in Germany this is a challenge in many other European countries um so we’re looking also for transitions uh for instance um Range extenders on battery electric trucks to make that Journey what is very clear for us um is the last mild delivery that’s going to be electric uh we roughly now have um 40% of our last Mile in Germany it’s a little bit more but worldwide 40% of Last Mile is electric and we by the mid 2030s are going to be done with that um so that is is pretty clear but this is not by far not the majority of our footprint 70% of our footprint is flying and the next biggest piece is heavy trucks all right right fascinating insights and initiatives uh let’s switch gears if you may and I’m sure our students here have have top uh questions on that and other other topics uh as I mentioned digital technology is what many of our students whether it’s tomb or hhn or dhbw here uh what they are studying as well um so how does that influence DHL I mean it must influence you in many many ways right from your Logistics from replacing letters from autonomous driving from generative AI Pro you know Innovations Etc right yeah and it’s not easy to manage that um you know one of the sayings that I like is um distraction is just um you know two letters away from destruction um and you need to be careful that what you do in digitalization is focused and really making the business better and not leading to Too Much complexity and um thereby ultimately destruction digitalization is fascinating and obviously many consumers um expect also digitalization um and it has helped us greatly also with our German business right if if you guys want to write a letter probably most of you wouldn’t go buy a stamp but uh we have the service where you pay online and then you get this code that you can write on a letter and then you’re done um so I frequently get feedback that that for instance is a good digitalization step it’s a tiny part of our business but it’s one of those examples where um you know you can fulfill or maybe even exceed customer expectations in using digitalization to make things easier on the B2B side um this is more complicated because we also need to find interfaces to our customer systems and somehow be in sync with what they do which you know businesses move slower than consumers because we need to move entire ecosystems of systems that are highly interl whereas as a consumer you can be very selective and you typically use a lot of Standalone uh apps the Apple ecosystem is a little bit more integrated but uh generally um we are fine with with relatively Standalone applications so this is um the opportunity and the challenge um obviously cyber security is also something that keeps you um bit alert um you know this is not easy to manage and is is also something that you need to balance how much resources do you invest to upgrade and provide new functionality and how much resources do you invest to keep the existing estate safe mhm all right uh let’s switch gears again uh so let’s talk about uh DHL as an employer uh it’s a very big company with many employees uh has very high uh employer engagement index so seems to have a good culture but maybe can you tell us why people here should apply at DHL as an employer so first of all our Workforce is extremely diverse and we have obviously a lot of roles which is simple hard physical work and I think that’s important um to recognize that because it needs to shape the culture of our organization and for me this is always the case when I get the question of home office I’m very reluctant to talk about that in in town halls because the great majority of our people never has the choice of home office you know you can’t deliver mail from home you can’t do fulfillment of shipments in a warehouse from home and this is important also for the support functions to understand that and have the mindset it doesn’t mean that we’re not a modern supplier or provider employer when it comes to um back offer services when it comes to our several thousand people that we have in it for instance we have a big own footprint in terms of um you know centers uh where we also do own hosting activity which increasingly goes to Cloud but we also do development um you know work in cyber Gia south of KOA lumur in Chennai in in Prague for instance are are centers that each have um significantly more than a thousand people so this is for me always the balance but we have um obviously also for for people with academic background I think very interesting roles and we also think how we make this attractive for new entrance so for instance in the area of data analytics we decided consciously to have a central team um you know it’s easier for nerds to attract nerds um than for somebody like me who’s more General business guy to try to hire somebody who wants you know to do Python and data analytics for his whole life or who is obsessed with artificial intelligence what for us is important in this in this space particularly when it comes to digitalization and it we don’t want to spend our time in what others can do better anyway so General functionality that you know a Microsoft or similarly large it Focus companies would provide we will be a user of and trying to outrun them is is probably senseless but we have many areas that are unique to us uh as a logistics player give you the example of Customs clearance right we do Customs clearance obviously on a massive scale um and applying artificial intelligence to do Customs clearance and support Customs clearance U processes is something that is very relevant to us and in these areas we then also invest um own resources and talent okay in the field of strategy competitor analysis is always quite interesting so if we’re taking a look at you know your your major competitors UPS FedEx and so on and so forth I mean what characterizes DHL and how are you trying to quote unquote defend yourself in the market and and become even better I mean there across our businesses um we obviously have different strategic approaches How We Do that so um but across the group I would say um the main thing we try to do to be globally local and I think this is quite interesting if you go to China and you ask where’s DHL from most people will know we we’re kind of everywhere but we we’re not seen generally as a German company um and that I think is truly a competitive Advantage um that somehow DHL is always seen a little bit local as well um and that cuts across all of our business particularly true for DHL Express which truly is everywhere with some of the other businesses we’re not in all countries um but that is I think something that cuts across and that we also try to to further and to instill which for instance means that we hardly have experts left okay so we typically have in the countries and we try AC L to breed local talent to to run a country okay all right what does the future hold for DHL I mean you have a strategy 2025 which is which should end next year I suppose so what comes next 2030 so we always do this in fiveyear Cycles so that’s at least the procedural answer um which is something you know people also ask me why do you keep this 5year interval right isn’t that a bit strange I I don’t think it is because what we do what we say also in these 5year Cycles is is basically a framework more about how we run the company what matters to us as management what culture we want um rather than concrete business decisions do we acquire company A or B how does the footprint exactly shift even though we have certain priorities and e-commerce is obviously going to stay a priority e-commerce is going to outgrow G P for at least another 10 years if not 20 e-commerce is today what global trade was in 2000 2005 so that is clearly an important theme but there are also other sectors farm and Healthcare is much talked about in logistics some of our competitors heavily focus on that um so there are some other sectors where we have intensive discussion on how we enhance our global Service in that space all right all right uh let’s take it to a quote unquote personal level so what does a day for a CEO look like I mean and then those question sometimes can be quite private so when do you get up when do you get to work how long are your work hours per day do you work on the weekends and so on so I guess everybody has to find his own pace there first of all in terms of travel um so a travel depends on what you exactly count travel right is today travel or not I don’t know but um the I have some InterContinental travel um that I also want to do to visit our um sites overseas and I try to do some longer trips during the year once a quarter and then um several shorter trips two or 3 days um I have to spend more time in bond than I sometimes like because running a big company indeed comes with a lot of stuff that you just get on your table some of that maybe you can manage and delegate over time but it is just a lot of things that pile up um so there is just um also a certain need to spend some time in the headquarter when I’m in Bor I typically you know get up 6:15 um start somewhere around 7:30 or 7:40 um and then I need to be careful that I don’t get in trouble with my wife in terms of really telling the truth but I have a a fairly flexible end let’s call it that way I Tred two days um a week to be home at least before 8 before 8 all right all right and what does your work consist of is it mainly meetings is it a lot of analytical Thinking by yourself is it um you know bilateral discussions with your your team so it’s it’s by and large during the day it’s um it’s meetings and bilaterals so I don’t have during the day time for myself that’s I mean I have a bit of time for lunch maybe but okay um the day is is largely meetings that can be bigger rounds or bilaterals um and then you know you have the evening to catch up on email okay so so your analytical Thinking by yourself and we hear that quite often from different CEOs because their schedule is so full uh is basically kind of quite limited right I mean well you do that also with your direct reports so the job that I started with my head of uh corporate development so head of strategy I do obviously thinking uh with him um you have time to yourself during travel typically um where I never watch films or Never Say Never but generally don’t watch any movies on planes and I use that type time then to think a little bit through um but you you do more work with people because it’s just more time efficient okay all right and was there any part of the job that surprised you given that you were prepared quite well and observe your predecessor and work with him quite closely was there anything that still surprised you after you took on the role not so much I mean the maybe the only thing to get you have to get used to that things that are stuck with you don’t go away if you don’t solve them all right so they either go away sometimes by circumstances changing but you don’t have any body who says I help you with this or um you know so that’s something that you need to get used to that some some things just are you need to take care and it’s not delegatable and it also doesn’t really go away you just need to find a way to deal with it all right let’s move on to some quickfire questions you mentioned movies you don’t watch movies that often what about music what type of music do you listen to ACDC for instance Guns and Roses okay all right uh what about food what type of Cuisine do you like oh very broad range um shouldn’t be too spicy so my wife is always disappointed that with you know a spicy Indian curry I have my challenges or Su of Blan for those who know the Southeast Asian Cuisine is something that um I struggle with but elsewise um very broad range um highly appreciative of The Culinary SK skills that the world developed okay what about Hobbies I mean when you do have some time do you still uh Glide so I I re um initiated gliding about 5 six years ago okay so I did it for 15 I stopped for 15 and then I took the conscious choice to to restart that also because I had the feeling that um I sometimes need a bit of time to switch off okay and gliding is unique in the ability to switch off because you somehow need a certain level of attention to stay afloat right you don’t have an engine so you need to find thermals or Ridge lift so you need to um it’s different than sitting on the Terrace where I would typically think about work anyway um so I made the conscious choice to to do that it’s not happening that often you so maybe 10 times a year um half of that during the week of vacation but um I still find it very enriching and something to look forward to and your board is okay with that cuz we had the CEO of Bosch here and he was he liked to ride motorbikes and his board told him you know ideally you should stop that hobby so well it’s a rule in life there’s certain questions that you don’t ask all right all right uh so last question perhaps on books I mean what kind of books do you read and may do you maybe have some recommendations for us here as well to be honest I um currently I read very few books and this is just because I get so much other stuff to read okay you know I have several hundred pages on average a day okay and I really struggle you know to then push myself to read an entire book I think this will change I’ve read a lot during my life so as a student for instance I read massive amounts of books um including the whole of G and so forth not that I would remember much of it but um somehow found it interesting at the time um but currently I get so much to read um that I also need to read that I’m very selective in what I put on top okay all right uh please allow me one last question before we hand it over to our students now as I mentioned you are a very very young Blue Chip Company CEO duck CEO so you probably have a very long Runway but if you envision looking back someday after retirement at all the things you’ve accomplished what kind of Legacy what kind of accomplishments do you want to leave behind I think in abstract terms this is very simple you want to leave the company in a better State than you took it over now what that practically means obviously needs to be defined yeah higher market share um you know embarking on the right Trends making the right choices on these Trends making the right choices on people which is amongst the most difficult things to make the right choices on people um but in abstract terms I would say leave the company in a better State than you took it over all right well we wish you the best of luck and thank you very much for this discussion thank you all right so let’s start with the Q&A um hello my name is Angi I’m a student from um master in management in T I have a question about the overall strategy of DHL today’s uh business environment is um has a very fast pace of changing uh how fast how uh often do you revisit and adapt DHL overall strategy to face this challenge thank you so our strategic framework we basically look at every 5 years um but again this is about you know what’s part of that framework we we have a a purpose um connecting people and improving lives uh we have a mission you excellent simply delivered excellent simply delivered in logistics that’s uh what we try to achieve we have our values respect and results um we have something that we call the three bottom lines we want to be the employer of choice the provider of choice and the investment of choice and these are things that we also discuss in management trainings and instill in our country leaders and that has served us very well and we continue to evolve that framework also you know leadership attributes what we want people to have demonstrate as behaviors um so that is part of our strategic framework including um a prioritization of certain sectors um and global trends like digitalization is our an important theme in our our current strategy but that does not answer exactly the moves that we do on a divisional level in which markets we are present um what specific skills we need to develop um in in logistics for instance in automotive right the shift from internal combustion engines to better electric vehicles this implies a big change in Supply chains it also implies a certain change in who’s growing um in the industry and and who’s not growing um so these are more ongoing things that we discuss very frequently on an ongoing basis um in the board you know every quarter um in our divisional boards um every month um you know currently to give you a more concrete example we saw you know about 18 24 months ago that with the geopolitical tensions and and first sanctions that the US put on on China and Chinese companies there is a diversification away from a single U manufacturing location in China to diversify the supply chain footprint more to include countries like Vietnam Malaysia uh Mexico turkey and so forth so then we put a um a specific effort to help our customers facilitate those moves um and take decisions for instance to do land banking in certain parts of Mexico to be quicker to build warehouses there if that demand really materializes so that would be a concrete example um but that’s not part of our five-year strategic cycle but it’s more uh what we then do at technically um and and discuss and execute um within months all right quite interesting because strategy is supposed to offer kind of a North star for company some stability but what about big changes I mean have you adapted it dras for example the outbreak of the pandemic which was I must say probably good for your business financially so to speak to some extent um so did you then adapt the strategy or was it still quite stable all right no this for us was it I mean as drastic as it sounds was a tactical element and the value of the Strategic framework really became uh very apparent and it is very good to sit in the headquarter and say I’m actually pretty sure that our guys out there know what to do which was you know first employer of choice first take care of your people make sure that everybody gets the best possible safety standards whatever we can do in terms of masks and so forth and we were obviously a bit privileged because we could fly stuff where we needed it so Transportation was obviously for others in short demand but for us pretty easy to do um so we had you know people on the ground in China to buy protective equipment for for our our people and we’re much quicker than one or the other state was um and you the second thing keep operations up for our customers and then the third thing uh make sure somehow we collect the cash uh that we are due to balance the books so and this also shows I mean there a common phrase now that culture has strategy for breakfast but for us in the pandemic that was really the case um our people knew what to do um and particularly this Focus first take care of your Frontline employees or of your employee base at large um really paid off all right hi uh my name is elen Hendrickson and I wonder um how does work related challenges affect your personal life so when you’re with your family do you find it easy to put the work stress behind and relax and have you ever had challenges that had kept you up at night yeah very good question thank you for that I think if you’re not able to comment compartmentalize and able to switch off and also ignore certain hard problems for some hours you should not take a job like mine I would highly discourage you from doing that um this is one of the intrinsics that you need to have elsewise this is not going to go well for you or for the company um my rule is if I don’t sleep well for more than three nights a year I will resign and there are been last year two nights so was getting close one had to do with a regulatory framework in Germany and was so upset um about certain political developments that I didn’t sleep for one night uh one had more to do with an operational threat um due to some um you know War activities um which is also something to get used to um because we operate in a lot of places that are intrinsically difficult and dangerous but you need to be able to put this aside and this is as a lot to do and how you structure your your work day and I don’t do certain activities at home this is also why I’m not a great fan of the home office I I worked one day in the home office and that was the day I had Co so um this this just helps the mind at least for me to compartmentalize and I I generally do calls and videos and meetings only in the office they’re very very few exceptions what about weekends if I may ask so do you work on the weekends as well so as a usually I tried not to um in my current state um this is unrealistic um so I typically work let’s say um half a day or 34s of a day across Saturday and Sunday okay hi my name is Daniel um thank you for so much for the insights um so imagine you have uh access to a digital advisor that um can help you make better decision when it comes to digital transformation at DHL um what kind of questions would you ask and would you what would be the Essential Elements to trust it over like the normal consultancy uh strategy that they they are up there so the digital advisor is a human or a digital it’s a think about it as a chatbot so a digital advisor yes so the first thing I would ask the digital advisor is what’s the fact base that you have been trained on I think that is very important because the the issue of AI the fascinating as the technology is is um the differentiation of truth right what is true and what is a hallucination and the training base um for such models is extremely important in that regard um and if I’m reasonably confident that the model has been uh trained in a way I would probably ask um what this digital advisor thinks about our it architecture and how it compares to what the model things are leading companies I think in it this architecture question is an undervalued question um it’s the basis for efficiency in the long run and also Effectiveness um so that’s an area where I spent next to cyber security most of my time I hope that addresses your question uh hi I’m Peter Woodland and um I just wanted to ask as a leader um what would you say if any were your biggest sort of leadership decision mistakes that you have made that have stuck out to you so one I already mentioned um in my early career um that it took me quite some time to um understand that you know what motivates people is very diverse and that um you you also need to develop a value proposition as a leader um and I think that is indeed very important that you’re also clear about what your value proposition is so my value proposition I’m not so easy to deal with um need to be realistic I think I have some level of humor but I’m not so much fun to work with um so I always tried fairness for instance is extremely important so that’s I try to make that part of my value proposition um so I spend a lot of time making sure that I treat people fairly and that obviously they also have the feeling that I treat them fairly um so that is was a transition where I TR in the beginning definitely made some mistakes the other area that I learned is where you have weaknesses try to leverage your strength which goes a little bit in the same direction and that helps you to mitigate mistakes um because if I would try to do a lot in marketing for instance I would probably not be very successful with that and my my failure rate would be relatively high so I try to use areas of strength um in know rational thinking process structuring getting the right people um onto the right topics um and I focus my own judgment and decisions my direct judgment and decisions more in areas where I have true expertise and I think that helps you to to do less mistakes because that is also a problem that you have the more you Rise um the less is the error rate that you’re allowed to do if you if you lead a smaller business if you get seven out of 10 things right you’re probably pretty successful you know if you lead a larger business it’s better if you get nine out of 10 things right and in my job if you get one out of 10 things wrong that might be the end of it so that is also something that you have to balance you need to constrain yourself um in taking less decisions to have enough time to get it right on the few decisions that you have to really take my name is anuman hello um I was wondering what does DHL do to prioritize customer my experience and satisfaction and what does DHL do to continually improve in this area so I think this depends um really is is very different across our businesses uh consumer facing businesses are very different um because expectations are different Simplicity of use accessibility um also the the error rate and how you communicate errors and this for us is a challenge also in Germany because what we are in is a high volume um ultimately low Revenue per transaction business right um I get sometimes you know questions why don’t you offer a better customer service you know more personalized in our in our German business um but if you have you know three four Revenue euros Revenue per parcel um what you can offer there needs to be a machine that in principle in a very high um number of cases very high percentage gets it right and the rest you somehow need to work through this is a very different situation than if you have 30 or 40 EUR per shipment which we for instance have in our Express business so you you need to be honest and calibrate that and also make sure that the money that the market is willing to pay you invest for what the average consumer is is truly willing to pay and um that then also means if you have a very broad coverage as we have in Germany that you have certain segments that you cannot satisfy and that is something that is inherent in that business model on and generally in our Network businesses and that is also true for for DHL Express you need to persist on a high level of standardization so we we cannot take every shipment that the customer wants us to take because that would ruin our quality standards you know we have aircraft that are built in a certain way with certain uls that allow for a certain size that need to be loaded in a certain way so as much as people say we would like to be customer friendly and accommodate every need in a standardized Network that is important possible you know you can specify what you can carry and then um people can give you what fits in the box and they shouldn’t fit give you what what doesn’t fit this is very different when it comes to our contract Logistics business where we do bespoke Solutions you know we inbound to manufacturing for instance for car manufacturers where we supply parts up until the assembly line and this is obviously highly customized process is a is a year-long design Journey where we exactly look what the customer needs how they need the parts um so this is is highly customized um and you but even in that business nowadays you need to to balance that because certain technology technology always has significant economies of scale um so our fulfillment operations for instance where we pick orders for customers including e-commerce customers when you order online we pick the good and and put it in a package box um we increasingly use Robotics and automation systems and that obviously works much better and is much more economic if this is more standardized so then you need to have the discussion with a customer okay we can have a bepoke solution for you but if you adapt and willing to adapt some of our standards we are able to provide the service at a different price point at a different cost point so this is how um I think customer centricity Works in our business it is most important to be clear what you can do and what you can’t do and again in the consumer business this is a particular challenge yeah hello my name is Christo z i study at tum and my question is how big of an effect does geopolitical issues have on DHL being a logistics company and how do you react to that so generally our philosophy is that we’re everywhere where this is at all possible but you also need to recognize obviously that in certain situation you need to pull the pluck and it doesn’t work anymore so we had quite a number of people in Afghanistan for instance and we also handled shipment for the Allied troops in Afghanistan which in the turnover situation doesn’t necessarily make you the most favorable guy in light of the eyes of the incoming party uh meaning the Taliban so in that situation you need to work hard to protect your people and get everybody out as quick as possible so and we were overall I think very successful with that similar with Russia we closed down our Russia business we still have um kind of a service for diplomatic mail and certain times of nonsan function Pharmaceuticals but we we had you know our business in Russia was was sizable right so several thousand people um and taking that decision to to close this down and going through the process of closing it down was wasn’t easy because also what many people in the west didn’t recognize I mean Russia passed laws pretty quickly that didn’t allow the local management to close things down right and what do you do then right you can’t I mean by law you guys in Russia are not allowed to follow your orders anymore so what compliance local compliance versus compliance in the west how do you sort that and how do get your people out of that situation so these are these are problems where the world hasn’t gotten easier and I think it’s unrealistic to believe that it will get better anytime soon I think we just have to face the fact that um you know particularly my generation had an upbringing in an unusually quiet period since about 199 the Western world has been unusually prosperous and quiet and we’re probably back to an unfortunate more normal mode if you look into longer periods of History where we just have to deal with more geopolitical conflicts which does not necessarily make jobs easier and is obviously I think it’s very clear is very unfortunate because it leads to much suffering and and less Prosperity but I think it’s it’s the reality that will not so easily change again hello my name is Al I’m studying Master management at Tom I had a question about which emerging sectors in startup ecosystem is attractive or attractive for DHL to invest over next decade startups was the question now uh which emerging sectors okay yeah so we generally don’t invest in startup I think there is also an interesting discussion because this was a bit of a trend that corporates invested in startups and I think corporates are generally not very good at that so we only invest in startups very selectively where we have a specific Insight in that company so we invested for instance in global e um which is an international e-commerce facility that is now listed on the NASDAQ just because we saw as a shipping provider that you know they were very successful um in building up their model and shipments were growing very quickly in terms of the this the sectors that we’re interested in as a as a business opportunity I’ve already eluded you know e-commerce is very interesting um definitely the whole new renewable space and electric vehicles is going to change massively um we’re also interested to do more in returns shipments for e-commerce also because we believe that that returns system in e-commerce will over time play a bigger role in the circularity discussion it is very perceivable that people will use the same logistical processes that are now used for the returns of of e-commerce kind of new merchandise to also increasingly use that for used goods and bring them bring the material back into to circulation and this is a big opportunity for us to move goods and also do the de assembly and and similar things through our uh supply chain unit I always say the best shipment is a shipment from DHL with DHL to DHL so this is in this case would come from the consumer but we would ship it basically to our own facility to handle the goods then so these are some examples of of trends that we interested in hello my name is Henrik demma um as a CEO of a of a company with a long history and culture how difficult is it to change things within the company while maintaining that culture or how much thought is put into that yeah I think the important element about that discussion is to recognized a what sticks with people and B how long it takes to transition through through the ranks to really take hold and people say not sure whether that’s accurate but I think it’s a good rule of thumb that it takes one year if you want to ingrain that by layer of organization so large organizations have whatever seven to nine layers um so it would take seven to nine years until things have really um come to a level of ingrain um and have reached the ground of the organization and you know again probably depends exactly on the topic but I think overall I think that is a good rule of thump what I’ve learned is um you need to talk in in things that people can can memorize so maybe as one example that I used recently I felt um in the current economic environment um you know things are not necessarily easy but we have a lot of opportunities as DHL because uh we have our house relatively well in order we don’t have you know internal problems like a non-working it system here or a major restructuring you know big m&a acquisition that you’re busy with integration we don’t have all that currently we can be entirely focused on the market whilst a lot of our competitors have this um you know FedEx is doing major restructuring of their ground operations in the US they still have a bit of the ASAS of the integration of FedEx and TNT in Europe um quago just announced a new organizational structure which I wish them all the best with but it’s definitely not going to be a quiet year for them shanka is discussed to be acquired by somebody not us but somebody and the government is you know sitting on that Nest since the last whatever 24 months and it typically doesn’t make a company better if you’re told we’re going to sell you we’re going to sell you we’re going to sell you so the list of distractions is long and I said how do I bring this now across to my top management team that they need to show some more action and I just then said there guys you need to show more bite bite bite bite you want to see more bite more commercial and then now if I visit the sales meeting I always say can I see your teeth and obviously people find this a little bit awkward but you know I now see that everybody talks about the bite that that we really this year we want to be on the customer and so forth so this is something that you also need to see that you develop things that people can somehow meem memorize and hand over with a bit of stories and there are many examples that we that I could bring and have something that is consistent with your overall strategy that is more an intellectual thing that you make this also memoral and emotionally appealing to people I think that is the way to gradually transform and also bring new themes to people but consistency is very important people we as humans like consistency we consistency makes it easier to memorize things it builds trust and so forth if you’re in consistent with your messaging and also with your logos this is why you know when I started I always thought this this logo stuff is all nonsense right but it it doesn’t make a it doesn’t make a difference if you um suddenly use different colors and so forth it creates an emotional blockage to people and psychological blockage you need to really spend time um also thinking how do you get people into the unconscious um psychological safety zone to really focus on the content and what you want to say and this for an engineer is not so easy to understand that psychological stuff but you if you want to really move strategy forward and culture forward more importantly you need to spend some time on on how people think what you know makes messages receptive um and you can’t just uh hold an I mean you will have exciting lectures here but you can’t only hold a dry mathematical lecture that is very rational and logical and expect that to stick with people my name is Sonia at and um hi how dare you yeah and so basically back when I was in high school I also considered studying business Engineering in damad but then decided to pursue these studies in stutgart and yeah now here I do the master in management at haux so I continue kind of to be more of a generalist and I have a two question about the time that you were our age and so first if you were to put yourself back in time did you ever aspire to becoming a leader um so to take as much of the responsibility that you have right now so was this a goal that you set um for yourself and that you work towards or did it somehow like happen along the way and then for the second part is that if you see your greatest accomplishment ments and struggles in your mid 20s what do you think of them um yeah now a few years later so I think the first question is pretty easy to answer I I never aspired this um but but to it um I hate to lose this is something I don’t know I have a a natural competitive streak I really hate to lose so I was always set ified in the job um that I was doing and you know if you would asked me as a student I would have find it extremely unlikely that I ever uh make it to lead an organization of 600,000 people also because I would have been rational about it and say statistically is pretty remote um but still I have I really hate to lose and um I think I have a thereby a natural tendenc to to do a good job and also focus on those areas where I’m good at and I think that is a certain recipe for Success that doesn’t guarantee that you obviously make it all the way to the top but um I often see people that go a bridge too far in terms of stretching them and I I did this very systematically and made sure a little bit like the FC Bayern fan it’s I know it’s not true this season but you know statistically this is just a very good bet so if you you know pick your teams wisely um you try to pick winning teams because you hate to lose and I think that is what I did without much thinking about it in terms of regrets in my 20s honestly I don’t have many regrets in lives at all so maybe the best achievement is that I found my wife and she um you know um was also willing to take a certain burden in our personal lives um and I could focus on the job because it’s unrealistic that um if you have children that two partners both do such a job I think that’s also something you have to be clear about at least if you want to have a family it is unrealistic that two people have such a job not sure whe that addresses your question in terms of regrets but I’m short on regrets more more of struggles like when you think back in in time what did you struggle with in our Ag and how did you tackle itbe to be honest I don’t remember much of that um that I really struggled I I also didn’t have too many expectations you know I started working if you start working you don’t have many obligations right I had my first apartment in Frankfurt was very small um even in my first job I earned about double of what I needed and that you know if you’re always maybe that’s very lucky but it is on both sides of the scale um you know if your expectations and your lifestyle doesn’t require a lot you’re generally very satisfied in life what what what what was your main or the biggest challenge you ever faced I mean I can’t believe it was all smooth of course right I mean whether it was in your 20s or in your professional life afterwards what was the ma can you pinpoint one major challenge you fac I mean one reason why we left Asia was uh because of travel I just felt this is not sustainable anymore I mean I had a year in my life where I had as many flights as working days and there I was at a point where I said I don’t want to do this for much longer um you know when I came back to Europe I had made the commitment that I go back to Indonesia for half a year every second week and I really regretted making that promise because that is is really tough time zone wise there’s no direct flight and so forth so these phases you do have also when I went to Global forwarding um honestly I I mean this part of that was was was tough you know we we knew that one system wasn’t working but we didn’t have a clue for what the alternative is going to be so we rolled back to the old system um you know with a green screen and you have to explain that to an organization that just has many people have put a year or two years of their life into that new system have to tell them so I’m very sorry but it doesn’t work so we go back to square one and and I know that is not a sustainable solution either we just need a bit longer to find out what we really going to do so this is not necessarily easy um but this is something that obviously enriches your experience as well yeah but it’s also has a risk to you know if I would have you also have to have luck sometimes is also true so when I selected for instance I think it’s a episode that I can share publicly um during this time when we had the you know for our Global forwarding business we had to find this new system with the vender um that we ultimately picked I had actually fallen out so we negotiated and we didn’t come to a conclusion because we wanted certain terms that they weren’t willing to give and then the phone rang couple of weeks later and the owner and CEO said you know we did really get anywhere but I want to talk to you again can you come to Sydney I said H okay I flew to Sydney and he said look I don’t really like you but we want to IPO the company and my advisers tell me would be good to have DHL as a customer for the IPO so this is why I’m willing to give you some concessions so now honestly if this company wouldn’t have ipoed at the time he wouldn’t have been willing to give the concessions and maybe that would have been the end of my career so you also have these situations it’s not all skill sometimes you also need a little bit of luck Fortune as Napoleon said uh hello my name is a uh I want to ask something about logistics uh the logistics industry is undergoing rapid transformation due to uh changing uh consumer expectations so uh how is DHL adapting its strategies to stay ahead of these Trends so first of all it’s important again to recognize that our business is overwhelmingly B2B um so consumer business in the great majority affect us indirectly and definitely the shift to e-commerce is the biggest Trend that changes our operations but also the requirements of our customers and um e-commerce has also a lot still to go in transforming B2B Supply chains we we see this now you know the the teu type of model will also increasingly work for industrial or commercial users the plumber will in future not go to the wholeale sales store near his facility but he will probably also order his tiles or other equipment that he needs increasingly online so the digitalization and e-commerce trend has much more to go to transform Supply chains including the returns element um that you know many people talk about a circularity so this is for us um the the longer term trends that we focus on the you know specific consumer requirements in terms of what do you want to see in an app um do consumers like parcel lockers for instance is an interesting question in our our industry but it’s also highly diverse by country so in those questions I honestly don’t get much involved I I like this discussion around parcel lockers because I find it fascinating that in Poland for instance you know half of e-commerce is delivered through parcel lockers whereas in other countries is is a minute one or 2% um and it’s interesting to see which socio demographic elements lead to the use of parel lockers so there are certain elements where I also occupy myself with um but elsewise um we we leave this to our organizations country by country to fine-tune their business model to the specific needs of the consumer so hello my name is mar Muhammad I have a short question so it’s how big is your fear of competition so how far do you plan to include a specific degree of innovation for DHL well Logistics in some parts is a commodity where you you risk to be a commodity um where you need to you know focus on obviously cost competitiveness as well as having um the right features um that the customer is willing to pay for we we also have certain areas where which are very different competitive Dynamics so if you look at our Express business for instance a global Express network has significant economies of scale building a Global Express network is not easy because people pay us to be able to deliver basically every spot of the planet as quick as possible through Air transport that’s ultimately our value proposition in Express and we have two Global competitors which is UPS and FedEx and some Regional competitors but is a very different competitive Dynamic both from a value proposition that is pretty stable and also a customer need that is pretty stable maybe people want to ship more temperature controlled um and then we enable that you know it can be with dry eyes or can be with other Cooling elements active or passive so you have those things at the edges But ultimately it’s a pretty stable model where you know through digitalization you offer certain features but it’s not that you need to change your strategy every two years this is not the case you have a big deployed infrastructure um and you need to be reasonably sure that the long-term Trend justifies those investments in the area of contract Logistics we have a broader area with which is more diverse in how you you structure your business and also how you enrich the business model so for instance we went there a couple of years ago we started to buy land ahead of need which we you know hadn’t done previously previously we bought warehouses if we needed a new warehouse for a customer we went to a developer and he had land and he developed the building and sold the building directly to us or sold it to investor and we lease the building from there and there we evolve the business model which is could argue is a strategic change to basically do this ourselves so buy land develop the building and and then sell it to an investor if we don’t want to have it on the balance sheet so it’s those enhancements of the business model that in our industry make quite a difference same is true for robotics yeah um also standardization is very relevant for that in the past we needed longer term customer contracts to be able to basically have security for the depreciation period of a customized automation you know an automated warehouse for a certain customer is typically very difficult to use for another customer now with robotics we get the opportunity to own large fleets of robots so for picking operation we now have um exceeded the 10,000 threshold um so we have big fleets of robots that we can deploy much more flexibly from one side to another because robots you can put into um a truck and carry from one side to another so this is another evolvement our business model that um is very exciting for us because it provides value to our customers more flexibility but it also provides value to us so this is more on how we see our business model our strategy evolve so hello and thank you for the interesting discussion my name is Helen ler and I study Business Administration in the Masters and I have the question how do you attempt to identify what the customer will need in the future so do you do it through surveys or I don’t know market analysis because of course the world is changing and as you said some maybe we don’t need Parcels in in the future anymore we don’t know so that’s a question I think it’s a good idea to um you know have discussions with professional customers so on the B2B side I obviously have a lot of exchanges where things go um on the consumer side I think you need to be very careful so you can ask consumers but don’t do what they asked for you need to do the synthesis I mean I think no consumer would ever have ordered or or I would at least not sketched an iPhone as something that I want when I when there was no iPhone so and I think in logistics this is quite similar um you need to understand and and interpret what consumers particularly say and I give you one example in our industry where I think I got it right but the judgment is still out we never got into same day delivery for consumers as DHL never and people bugged me also when I was running the German business and say you know you need to get people want it always quicker and you you you need to have this three-hour service and said we can’t do it we can’t do it I can’t see how the consumer is willing to pay for what the production of that service really costs us and yeah a lot of consumers said I want it but if you had in detail the discussion what are you willing to pay for you know I always had my doubts also what people said they would be willing to pay for so this is one of those things where you ultimately need to judge do you go into that or not yeah and you also need to be careful that you Judge Too Much from your own behavior which we all have a bias to right I order a lot of things online but I order one weekend and I need it on the next weekend I don’t look at the stuff during the week generally might be one exception a year or so but that is not the average and not a typical consumer Behavior some of you want it a bit more urgently than from one week to another so but I was convinced that this extremely quick 3-hour delivery particularly in Europe would stay in absolute Niche and that is something that you can’t get you know a result on from consumer research alone you ultimately need to understand also in great detail what is the cost structure that you really have to deliver such a service and then develop a judgment whether people are really willing to pay for that you have conjoin analysis and similar things that you can do on that but on these really fundamental shifts of behavior is not very reliable you can run a conjoint how much milk you can say at which price point because people know what milk is they know whether they like milk or not and and so forth there it works very well but on new Services is very difficult I hope my marketing people don’t see this video hi I um have a quick question you said that you got a let’s say very good role by speaking your mind and having a strong opinion I think that can also backfire how can you try to uh not make it buckfire and also on the other hand how do you as an or organization uh Empower people to speak their mind and uh get opinions thank you so I think you will find that people generally appreciate if you care about them and help them and that has it goes both ways um is is independent of hierarchy if you as a leader care about your people and they feel you have a true positive interest in their development they typically like that but as a leader you also like it if people try to help you so generally I think in a modern organization It is Well recognized also by leaders that if somebody speaks his mind it is in your true interest you obviously need to do this in a in a polite and non-confrontation in China and the way you do these things in China is different than how you do this in in Europe and I think there we we Europeans also need to be a bit more mindful that our way of telling each other the truth along every Dimension is maybe not the way which is seen as polite and conducive in other cultural context and there’s a bit here the feeling that this is the way it’s done but many people in Asia feel different around this in Latin America Maybe similarly so but if you you know take those cultural elements into um account and you behave politely I think you will recognize if you speak up if you have the facts on your side and you don’t cook them up um you know people generally appreciate that because they are very much interested to find a good solution were you part of the delegation with the chancellor yes all right all right by the way are there any countries you’ve not visited do you know how many countries you’ve visited so far there definitely some that I haven’t visited Africa as an astonishing number of countries um and I’ve definitely not been to all um I think I’ve I don’t recall I once did the count I think last Christmas but I I don’t recall the exact number okay but it’s the kind the planet has an astonishing number of countries and I think I’m roughly at half now okay all right that’s pretty decent so hi CA Lang um from mu and my question is from your point of view um which are the most important skills for a manager or CEO to be successful so I think one I already shared on the intrinsics in terms of be able to compartmentalize and um deal with things that you can’t solve and that you just have to somehow live with yeah including certain threats to the organization and your people where you definitely need to take careful decisions but you can’t carry that around for 24 hours during the day so I think that is is an important intrinsic skill that you can maybe somehow develop that that also needs to be is to a great extent I think intrinsic um for me what was elsewhere as helpful is just to keep a relatively practical sense you know and also do a bit of that cross check that I mentioned earlier so does does that make sense do the numbers end up right the simple triangulation you know a * B is C right does that what people present to you does that make sense that sounds maybe very basic but even in complex processes people sometimes get it fundamentally wrong and it is obviously very important for you as decision maker to see that and and have a sense on the number side but also practically this is why I spend a lot of time still in in our operations and I listen to our country managers very carefully wherever I go um I I spend time with our country managers and our country management teams um also without the interim levels of hierarchy yeah and I spend time with our cers for instance it’s very interesting with cers because the first hour people tell you what they precooked right what they were told to tell you or what they think they need to tell you but if you are with a CER with one of our delivery guys in the vehicle for more than an hour then you typically get to the truth of things and this has a has a certain value it’s obviously an investment of time um but I always find this very valuable to have these direct touch points and this gives you a good sense of what works and what doesn’t work so this is what I would say in terms of some of the ingredients that I think are important but it’s also important to recognize we are a service business right if I would run an automotive company I think some of those elements would be different technical judgment obviously then becomes more important than this you know feeling whether your people like the job whether the processes are good and so forth uh you do not have an R&D Department right so DHL does not have an like no we don’t real have real r& D we you know most of the processes that we have we velop um on the on the fly so to say in in the business we have what we call an innovation Center which is a bit of a collection of technology that is available but to to really put this in action and make logistical processes out of it that deliver have an endtoend value proposition to our customer that you can basically only do live all right hello my name is D and I would like to ask you regarding um um regarding advantages and disadvantages uh being on the co role uh what would you say that um was the hardest thing uh to accept while you was on the role and was was the most um enjoyful I would say so I think it depends a little bit what type of business you run so we are the divisional business where I have five divisional CEOs that run their own business so I have some functional um responsibility as well for it for instance for procurement for some of the other thing that I talked about um but this is a very different role than if you run a functional business so when I was running the German business for instance the German business is organized functionally meaning you have a string that is operations you have sales you have marketing and pricing you have finance and they report to to you as a divisional CEO that role which I very much enjoyed is much more operational because you as a CEO have to do the classical functional tradeoff between operations and sales for instance right the sales guys always want low prices they want new features for the customer tomorrow and so forth and the operations will say no no no we can’t change that fast and we need to have a stable setup you the sales guys by the way need to deliver a better forecast so that we can plan better the resources elsewise you can’t expect quality and good cost and so forth and you have a much more operational role to for instance on the forecast need to ultimately make the call you know what is the capacity we plann for before Christmas which for all the German parcel business is always a very very interesting question right how many additional people do you need for these four weeks of peak activity um which on the one hand side if you hire too many resources you’re obviously inefficient on the other hand if you have too little it becomes a quality blood bath right so um that is a very different role than running a divisional organization and it’s also a different role than my DHL colleagues so DH Express for instance has which has under the global CEO role Regional CEOs and then country CEOs and only under the countries you have operations sales and so forth so the structure truly matters um what your operational and day-to-day tasks are and how much operationally involved you are um so hello my name is Nicole thank you for being here um I’m studying business admin rtion in the master and I want to ask how do you manage it to not spend too much time with operational tasks as you mentioned that this is an issue in your um position well I would frame it the other way around i’ actually like to spend more time on operational task when they’re really related to our operations and customers it’s more a challenge how do you um manage more the administrative processes in without doing major pitfalls so we have um on Friday for instance our um annual shareholder meeting where you know you need to prepare quite diligently because you don’t want that from a legal standpoint to go wrong but how much time do you really spend um how much time do you spend on lawsuits that you might have as an opportunity um you know to go after others so to say because you you have certain rights that were violated or um lawsuits that were you were put upon you how much time do you spend to make sure it’s adequately taken care of but on the same time doesn’t consume too much of your time because this is obviously not what in a positive way will help you to develop the company so this is more where I see you know the the balance that you need to find on those more administrative elements spending time in operations and with customers and operations obviously intend entails spending time with our people um that is more the area where I think you can’t do enough you just need to make sure that you free up enough time to really be able to do that speaking of time we have time for one more question so so last question make it a good one my pleasure um hello this is Ria Frum and listening to your story of uh who you become who like how you become who you are today everything sound very I would say like CH cuz when you hand it when you were handed with the job of CEO you were you’re like yeah I got it I I wonder what is your like life principles or life philosophies you have so I’m not sure whether I’m good at philosophy yet maybe that comes later in life but um I made some very clear decisions and I give you just one example it might sound ridiculous but I don’t I made it a point not to spend time on things that are not important to me so my clothing for instance entirely standardized I only have one type of shirts I always buy the same shirts and I I needed to change shoes now because after 15 years and I think 19 pair the producer stopped producing that type of shoe um you know I I have the same suits from the same tayor in Singapore since 1999 um I always wear red ties and I I keep wearing the same tie until it’s it’s gone and then I have the next bread tie and I always order them in a pack of five you know because I don’t want to spend time on it it doesn’t make my life better and I have several of those things that that that I did where I said okay this is what I do and this is what I don’t do and you know that is something which I think at least in terms of time management maybe you don’t have to be as radical in some of those choices but I think it is important to make some of those choices to to just have enough time and still have also some form of life there are also people who and I find this especially in politics interesting where I also you know have some limited insights but um we have politicians that don’t really have a life anymore which I also find an interesting concept how you deal with that but that would be not my part I still want to have some level of of private life also because I have a family well thank you so much for your wonderful visit well thanks for having me thank you than [Music]
2 Comments
great interview
Very interesting questions & answers.