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Chasing Max O.

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On the power of a clear vision

“Are you sure you wanna do this?….” crushed into my head while I was sitting in the small and dark office of Mr. P. It was a warm und sunny day in July of 2000. I knew everybody else was outside enjoying the summer and the remainder was founding New-Economy startups and becoming both famous and millionaire over night.

It is more than 15 years ago now and still feels like yesterday. Actually I can see the scene right in front of me when I close my eyes. I am more the visual type of guy, but we will come to that later on.

“Yes” I pushed back boldly, “I’ll find Max O. – son of the incredible Dedekind and provide you with evidence proving his existence by end of this summer!” I committed myself to this quest, an endeavor of two months through dark, cold and stony fields while every body else was having fun. What the hell made me do that?

OK, if you didn’t get it by now, I am talking about my PhD thesis. And I committed myself to bring a detailed proof and an algorithm to provide maximal orders over Dedekind domains. Which is a topic from algorithmic algebraic number theory, it is mathematics. I promised my PhD advisor to submit my PhD thesis by the end of the summer break, which meant within the next two months. The question is still waiting to be answered: Why did I commit to this?

Usually it is uncommon within natural science to sell the result before you know a detailed proof. After all the answer is simple: It just felt right! I had a clear vision. It was my gut feeling telling me this is the result I can show. This will be the PhD thesis I will be able to submit. It will be a result I will be proud of because it has some beauty built into it. But how can this work out? My gut feeling presenting a crazy idea which I call vision? Shouldn’t a vision be based on structured deductive analysis? Fact based reasoning ad decently thought through?

Going back in time to July of 2000. It was a strange feeling. After months of research in the dark and outmoded academic library, reading through dusted books, reading back and forth concepts in different environments, old and new, the idea bloomed by itself. Today I know that this was not a coincidence. Studying the field in different environments allowed me to view this topic from different angles, to take different perspectives. This helped me to understand the commonality as well as the specialties of the various situations. This was the fundament of my understanding of the topic.

Allow you brain – you imagination to play with it and it will create ideas. In my case it was a picture. I literally saw how all the bits and pieces fit together and build up a huge colorful mosaic. This proves as well that I am a visual guy. Remember that I promised you also to deliver this proof.

With a vision you have the most powerful tool in your hands, it can be the ultimate turbo boost to achieve your goal. I had the vision for my PhD thesis. I saw it. I saw how the orders and the ideals, the radicals and the modules played together over the quotient field of their underlying Dedekind domain. – Sorry for that, I could not resist to put in these technical mathematical terms.

They formed such a beautiful picture that this must have been a vision. It was probably not the first vision I had in my life. But it was definitely the first one I realized. This vision gave me the strength to commit myself, to work hard on the details and submit my PhD by the end of the summer of 2000.

Was it a brainy vision or just a crazy gut feeling? Regardless of what you call it, it was not inductively derived, it was not a reasoned approach, I hadn’t had the proof for it all. Nevertheless – and this is my main point – it was based on extreme research and experience in the field. I did not come out of the blue.

A gut feeling or intuition is always based on strong experience and knowledge and created by your brain and not by your gut. If you are able to realize these feelings, to use your intuition that is a great skill.

Let your intuition build a vision. Visions are strong. If you have one your should use it. Share it with others and get them engaged. Try it out and enjoy.

My Mission

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“Where are the profit pools of tomorrow (read in 10 years from now)?” A couple of years ago I received this mission from my CEO and set out to discover those profit pools. Easier said than done.

Nevertheless here are the ingredients of a profit pool analysis: one portion of market intelligence (i.e. some 25-30 interviews), one portion of historical data on price and production cost development, three portions of excel model, and a dash of brave extrapolation. The mission was completed within 3 weeks.

Did we secure those profit pools for our company? That is the ultimate question; you all want to know the answer. The truth is: I can’t tell you, as the 10 years are not over yet.

In my point of view business development is always two-fold: yes you need to have a strong vision of the future, bold targets worth to put in additional energy, in the story above these are the future profit pools. And you need your team, the organization to go after those targets and fulfill your vision.

My mission is to enable the organization and support the team. Best I can do is being part of the endeavor and leading the team towards those new continents rather than waving the sailing ships goodbye and hoping they will return one day with glorious news.

It all summarizes in my favorite motto “Think global – act local”.

I’m more than happy to discuss the topic of business development. Looking forward to getting to know you.

Think global, act local – Leading Change

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Let me share a story that happened some years ago. We met a group of Chinese investors. They loved our concept and were willing to implement it in China; opening 100 stores in the first year… Isn’t that great? That is fantastic. Back home, we presented it to our board. The feedback we received was: “Who’s gonna run the show?”

It’s a people-thing. In the end, every business development initiative comes back to people and to change. If you could continue business as usual, you wouldn’t have to worry about anything. So there wouldn’t be a need to develop your business.

Think global. If we don’t think out of the box, we don’t see new opportunities, in the above story the new market China. We are not yet there. We don’t have a team to enter the market, identify appropriate locations, manage the building and get the business running. Is this reason enough to stop thinking about it? – Short period of silence… Now you need somebody to shout out “No!”

Act local. Let’s pretend somebody did you the favor. Now keep on going. As we don’t have the team yet to enter a new market, we have to build it up. Find the people – this can be existing members of your organization or external – who are willing to go on a new endeavor. It is more important that they are keen on doing something new rather than that they have 10+ years experience in entering new markets. Set up the team and offer all support they need. Stay to your word.

This is a transformation. For sure entering a new market – and doing business on a different continent with an expansion speed beyond everything that is known in your business – what else can it be than a major transformation? And thinking about a new opportunity in this way “Let’s set up a team and support them as much as possible.” In contrast to the implicit No of “Who’s gonna run the show?” This is a transformation, too.

Change comes in different flavors and for different reasons. The flavors can be anything from changing the work environment, changing behavior, changing skills to changing doctrine and changing personality. I first discovered them in the book “Führungsstark im Wandel” by Alexander Groth.

In the end it is always the Think global – act local principle. First you have to think, then you have to act.