Leadership

Successful entrepreneurs and leaders create a modern company culture of performance orientation, participation and transparency. As a result, they build up champions or successfully transform their current business models towards the future. Successful leaders reach – along with their teams - the right decisions when it comes to people, markets, strategies and their execution. And with their judgement calls they are rarely mistaken. A person is only successful in volatile surroundings if they trust their own intuition. Following the norm is often an unsuccessful strategy.

Thinking

Strategic brilliance occurs through listening to and understanding all options as well as by subsequently thinking the issue through. A good advisor, investor as well as a good supervisory board distinguish themselves by asking relevant questions regarding the strategy and the sustainability of business models, the quality of the teams, the organisation as well as the financial situation and the financing opportunities. They make you think as a leader.

People

The recruiting and the development of “performers with potential” and “high potentials” is a top management task that cannot be delegated. Heterogenic teams with an honest conflict mentality for the best solutions in the company are significantly more successful than the yes-men associations of many CEOs. Excellence in teamwork is only possible if the team members trust and rely on each other, especially in difficult times. There is no common success without trust.

Performance

A company must be significantly superior than their competition in all strategic as well as operational terms. The closer to the customer and the product development, the higher the customer’s understanding of the product and the more successful the business will be. World-class technology and world-class product development must be a foregone conclusion. When correctly applied, continuous market research is a game changer. Excellent businesses and teams should always grow faster than the market. Especially in the case of strong business growth, the main question should be: Can we even achieve higher growth?

Investing

Investing early in the right business. The prospects for highly innovative, disruptive game-changer businesses are high, whereas they are low for copycats – also in terms of value development. Excellent business ideas and excellent CEOs are scarce - as an investor, you must actively search, find, and support them.