Latest / The Action Catalyst / Leading to Thrive, with Klaus Kleinfeld (Leadership, Performance, Business, Language)

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Leading to Thrive, with Klaus Kleinfeld (Leadership, Performance, Business, Language) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:42
  Klaus Kleinfeld: Nashville Tennessee. Okay, that's very
• 0:43
  nice.
• 0:44
  Adam Outland: Where in Germany? Did you grow up again? Or was
• 0:46
  it...
• 0:47
  Klaus Kleinfeld: I was born in Bremen, but I left when I was
• 0:51
  18, and my parents were refugees from East Germany. Currently,
• 0:54
  I'm outside of New York.
• 0:56
  Adam Outland: Well, uh, ich bin ein actor Berliner.
• 0:58
  Klaus Kleinfeld: Oh wunderbar, let's start with that. So, how
• 1:05
  come you speak German?
• 1:07
  Adam Outland: Both my parents were opera singers, and they're
• 1:10
  us, born in the US, but they live 14 years in Bonn and
• 1:14
  Cologne.
• 1:14
  Klaus Kleinfeld: And they performed there at the.... does
• 1:18
  cologne. Cologne has an opera house?
• 1:19
  Adam Outland: It does, yeah, yeah. My dad performed locally
• 1:22
  at the Cologne Opera House. Bond had an opera house still does.
• 1:25
  And my mom performed there, and then she, she had an
• 1:28
  international career after that, and performed all over.
• 1:31
  Klaus Kleinfeld: I love opera. I'm also on the Metropolitan
• 1:34
  Opera board, you know, so I just love it. Yeah, lovely,
• 1:38
  absolutely lovely. And bond at the time probably still was the
• 1:41
  capital of Germany, right?
• 1:42
  Adam Outland: Yes, yeah. My dad and mom would sometimes perform
• 1:45
  in Berlin during that period. And the way they were paid was,
• 1:49
  it was always interesting, and you always wondered if your pay
• 1:52
  would would make it back across to the other side.
• 1:55
  Klaus Kleinfeld: What were they paid with gold coins? It's
• 1:59
  interesting, yeah. I mean, I went to Nuremberg, or my first
• 2:02
  place of work. Then from Nuremberg, I went to
• 2:04
  Switzerland, you know, worked there in the pharmaceutical
• 2:07
  industry, back to Munich, and there I started my career with
• 2:11
  Siemens, you know. And then Siemens moved me to to Erlangen.
• 2:16
  And then from Erlangen, I was asked to go to New York, then I
• 2:19
  was asked to come back to Munich. And then after that, I
• 2:22
  decided to leave Siemens, and I came back to New York. And when
• 2:25
  I co headquarter was in New York, you know, so which most
• 2:28
  people don't know, because the presence was usually in
• 2:31
  Pittsburgh.
• 2:32
  Adam Outland: You know, when you were a young man, though, did
• 2:34
  you did you already envision this, this path towards
• 2:38
  administrative leadership of of major companies? Or were you in
• 2:41
  it for the details of the science?
• 2:43
  Klaus Kleinfeld: And yeah, so no, I did not. I did not imagine
• 2:47
  that. In fact, I enjoyed learning. I mean, I've always
• 2:51
  been curious and wanted to want to learn more. I enjoyed being
• 2:55
  in the outdoors, doing stuff I only later realized I was forced
• 3:00
  into working when I was 12. Was my first paying job, you know,
• 3:04
  because my father died. So when I was so, so little, you know,
• 3:08
  but I enjoyed it. I mean, I enjoyed working in core
• 3:11
  business. You know, for me, it was making money, but it's also
• 3:14
  something that I I started to really like, you know, making
• 3:18
  things, doing things, you know, so to be I always enjoy being
• 3:21
  with people, and I also enjoyed complicated problems, you know.
• 3:27
  So in the early days, I would have thought I stay in academia
• 3:31
  and and make an academic career, because I saw what some of my
• 3:35
  friends who studied with me, when who went into business,
• 3:39
  what type of jobs they had. And I thought that I wasn't
• 3:42
  interested in that, you know.
• 3:44
  Adam Outland: And so, I mean, 12 I just, I gotta spend a minute
• 3:47
  on this, and then we can, what could a 12 year old do?
• 3:49
  Klaus Kleinfeld: Well, first of all, it's illegal to employ a 12
• 3:51
  year old, you know. But, but, but the local supermarket, first
• 3:55
  of all, I was fortunately relatively tall at a young age
• 3:58
  already, so they never asked me for a passport, you know. So
• 4:01
  they, they needed somebody who refills the the racks, you know,
• 4:05
  and and ideally comes in early in the morning, and changes also
• 4:09
  the fresh goods, milk and stuff, you know, before the supermarket
• 4:12
  opens, and be there on the weekends, you know, and where
• 4:15
  there was a lot of traffic, you know. So, so I did that, and
• 4:18
  they paid me two Deutsche marks an hour. Made my first money.
• 4:22
  The motive was very simple. I wanted a new bike, for instance.
• 4:27
  So things like, things I want to does a 12 year old one, you
• 4:31
  know, you want a nice bike. And very early on, then also, I
• 4:34
  started to love music. So then it became records, you know, I
• 4:37
  was very intrigued by this thing that had just gotten started,
• 4:40
  called software as as a as a individual, there was no way you
• 4:45
  could have a computer. It didn't exist, you know, even the the
• 4:48
  thought of it was insane, you know. So I wanted to, I wanted
• 4:52
  to get my hands on a computer and do programming. And at
• 4:55
  gutting, there were only two locations where I could program.
• 4:58
  One was where the physics. Department. And the other one
• 5:01
  was with the economics department, you know. And I
• 5:03
  decided to start with the economics department, you know.
• 5:06
  And and immediately got into software writing, which I
• 5:10
  enjoyed tremendously.
• 5:11
  Adam Outland: You speak to this a little bit in your book. And
• 5:13
  maybe this is a good opportunity to take, take a principle out of
• 5:16
  the story, your ability to or one's ability to untangle a
• 5:21
  problem. It's a good visual image because they're like nuts
• 5:24
  in business, and the knots are sometimes created because of a
• 5:28
  communication issue. Sometimes they're created because of a
• 5:32
  strategy issue, but what was a procedure that you found most
• 5:37
  helped you untangle the knots in business?
• 5:41
  Klaus Kleinfeld: Asking questions. I think, I think that
• 5:45
  I don't think I was shy asking questions and and I even today,
• 5:50
  and I think friends who have worked with me, and what, even
• 5:53
  those who are not friends who've worked with me, would say,
• 5:56
  closes a hypothesis generating machine, you know, because I
• 6:00
  always try to verify or falsify and find, find a course and, and
• 6:07
  I'd like to drill down to the bottom, you know, to really
• 6:09
  understand how the mechanics work. Because that did me also
• 6:13
  well, already in school, you know, when you understand the
• 6:16
  principle, then you don't have to learn much, you know, you can
• 6:18
  deduct everything from the principle. And in a way that
• 6:22
  helped me a lot, you know, because I also had to be very
• 6:25
  efficient with my time, because I had to do other things like
• 6:28
  work, you know, where other people could spend the time
• 6:30
  doing homework or whatever, you know, I use logic, you know. So
• 6:35
  that's the one thing that you can't have fault, you know. So
• 6:40
  I, first of all, I'm I don't think there is such a thing than
• 6:42
  a than a wrong question. And also, you also have to remind
• 6:48
  people that they should talk to you in non expert language,
• 6:53
  because way too often have I seen that expert language is a
• 6:58
  way to hide behind and very often, certain terms that have
• 7:04
  been coined in the expert world describe the phenomena,
• 7:09
  phenomenon in a limiting way. I mean, language is a limiting
• 7:13
  thing. That's one of the reasons why you see there are large
• 7:17
  differences in languages, like, for instance, the Australian
• 7:20
  aborigines when they describe the different kinds of red, you
• 7:24
  know, because they live in an environment, if you ever been in
• 7:27
  Australia and fly over it, it's red. The same with the Eskimos.
• 7:30
  They have gazillions of words for snow, whereas we say it's
• 7:33
  snowing and the snow is a snow there. Yes, you know. So. So I
• 7:37
  always believe that you have to be careful in in accepting this
• 7:41
  terminology, because it might actually prevent you from
• 7:45
  finding the real issue. So I asked them to explain it to me
• 7:49
  in plain language, and I would continue if they use terms, I
• 7:53
  would not be shy to say, Can you please explain how you use the
• 7:56
  term? What does that term mean? Then, then you get it, you know.
• 7:59
  And very often people then say, word classes is complicated,
• 8:03
  because if somebody tells me it's complicated, I mean, but
• 8:06
  first I would say, we're in a very friendly way, yes, please
• 8:08
  explain. I have time, you know. Because that's the other thing
• 8:11
  that they would say, oh, takes too much time, you know. And
• 8:14
  say, no, no, I have all the time. I want to understand. What
• 8:16
  is this, you know? Why don't you explain it? You know? But very
• 8:19
  often, you see very quickly that they can't explain it, then you
• 8:22
  find, then very often, flaws in the logic. The moment you have
• 8:25
  flaws in the logic, you say, why did that individual, who's
• 8:29
  supposedly the expert and not not ask these questions? Maybe I
• 8:32
  have to get some other people looking into this. Or maybe I
• 8:36
  have to drill even further here.
• 8:38
  Adam Outland: You know, this brings it to mind another
• 8:40
  question where I feel that this strength of yours played out,
• 8:44
  which is that there's, there's really only been, I think
• 8:46
  yourself, that's, that's Captain multiple companies at the CEO
• 8:50
  level on different continents that are in the Fortune 500
• 8:53
  right? There's two companies that you've led as a CEO on two
• 8:57
  different continents, and that really hasn't been done before,
• 8:59
  and one was US based, and one was German. So, you know, I
• 9:03
  think about the cultural and language differences between two
• 9:06
  different countries, what did you find from a leadership
• 9:10
  standpoint, as how you had to adapt?
• 9:13
  Klaus Kleinfeld: Yeah, I think that, yes, there are a lot of
• 9:16
  differences, but the fundamentals are similar. You
• 9:20
  know, because we all as human beings have some fundamental
• 9:23
  principles that we live by. How we interpret certain things is
• 9:27
  different, you know, but get the fundamentals is, everybody wants
• 9:30
  respect. And I mean respect comes to simple things,
• 9:34
  listening to somebody, you know, asking, you know, their opinion,
• 9:38
  you know, being thankful when, when they do something. So these
• 9:42
  type of behaviors are, I think, unilateral, all around the
• 9:47
  world. You have to learn, you know, what, what exactly what
• 9:50
  means. You know, certainly the most tricky thing is sign
• 9:53
  language, very I would advise everybody to be very, very
• 9:58
  cautious on this, you know, very carefully. Can get you into real
• 10:00
  trouble if you think that you know the sign language and
• 10:04
  suddenly realize it means something not so nice to their
• 10:08
  sign word, you know. But those are little things. Those are
• 10:11
  little things you know, that you learn. And overall, I think the
• 10:14
  commonalities, particularly when it comes to leading people, are
• 10:18
  bigger than the differences. One other principle is that I always
• 10:22
  try to go as close to the source where the issue originated.
• 10:27
  Because you very often you have filter processes. I mean, the
• 10:31
  higher you get, the more filter theoretical filter processes you
• 10:34
  have, and to really understand what is going on, you know. I
• 10:39
  mean, I would always go to the source, you know, and literally,
• 10:43
  to the person who is standing at at the machine, you know, where
• 10:47
  something is going wrong, and understanding what exactly are
• 10:51
  you observing that gets lost in translation, you know. I mean at
• 10:55
  a certain level you I mean, you don't even talk to a head of the
• 10:58
  to the head of the factory anymore. You talk to the
• 11:02
  division head, you want to make sure that you really, really go
• 11:05
  down to the core.
• 11:07
  Adam Outland: It very rarely is, is someone's life just pure
• 11:11
  accelerated growth. There's plateaus, there's down curves,
• 11:15
  because you've had such extraordinary success, not just
• 11:18
  in arriving in leadership at a company, but helping companies
• 11:21
  really scale and grow. What have been some of those plateau
• 11:25
  moments that presented real challenges for you personally?
• 11:29
  Klaus Kleinfeld: The first kind of wake up call shock was when
• 11:32
  my father died and I was 10, you know, and basically life, our
• 11:36
  life, my life, became a very different life then, because it
• 11:39
  made me ask a lot of very fundamental questions. You know,
• 11:43
  the next one, the next biggest one, was when, after 20 years,
• 11:47
  you know, 20 plus years, I decided to leave Siemens
• 11:50
  because, I mean, obviously after 20 years, you have a lot of
• 11:53
  friends there, you have a lot of memories, you know, you feel at
• 11:57
  home. But I decided to that's not that the environment was
• 12:01
  just not worth for me to stay on, you know. And I move very
• 12:05
  difficult, very, very difficult, you know. And then there's a ton
• 12:09
  of others, you know, when you when you have to restructure a
• 12:12
  certain and you you know that that how many families are
• 12:16
  affected by it. And you know, at the same time, if you don't do
• 12:20
  it, you'll risk that everybody will get affected by it. I mean,
• 12:23
  so by making that you can at least save the core, I hope that
• 12:27
  you can save the core, and you can never be certain you know
• 12:31
  whether it works out or not. So you you've done the best you
• 12:35
  can, you've got all the facts together, and you hope that it
• 12:38
  will work out after you've done your your best. And there's
• 12:42
  really nobody who as a leader. There's really nobody who
• 12:45
  carries the burden other than you, and at least that's my
• 12:49
  that's been my view of leadership. You know, when I
• 12:52
  when I take it on, I'm accountable and I live with the
• 12:55
  consequences and I stand up for it.
• 12:58
  Adam Outland: Yeah. And you know, you, you mentioned quite a
• 13:00
  bit around energy, you know, where it stems from, but also
• 13:04
  how you can recognize which quadrant you're in in that
• 13:07
  moment, one of those quadrants, I think you you've labeled as
• 13:11
  the burnout quadrant. It's, what was it? Low Energy, and what was
• 13:14
  the other variable?
• 13:16
  Klaus Kleinfeld: Low energy and negative, you know, so, so
• 13:18
  burnout is basically your toast, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's
• 13:22
  an interesting one. Let me take a step back, you know, I've
• 13:25
  always driven for efficiency, you know, because I also never
• 13:29
  had time had to do stuff, you know. So I was always driving
• 13:32
  for efficiency. I always thought it's willpower, good German
• 13:36
  willpower, boom, boom, boom, plow through, you know. So until
• 13:39
  one day, I realized it's all about energy and why? How did I
• 13:43
  realize that? I realized it very straight. It came relatively
• 13:46
  late in my leadership life, you know. So when I realized the
• 13:50
  following phenomenon I saw around me, people really getting
• 13:53
  burned out, you know? I also saw that not only older people, but
• 13:57
  younger people got burned out, you know. And I thought, wow,
• 14:01
  what is this? And then I love playing tennis. Wish I could
• 14:04
  play better, but I love it, you know. And in the tennis world, I
• 14:08
  saw another phenomenon. They got older and older and older the
• 14:12
  top performers. So I was thinking, What on earth is going
• 14:15
  on there? You know, in the end, it's all about performance,
• 14:18
  whether you're in business or whether you're in tennis you
• 14:22
  know, all about performance. How come that there's this
• 14:25
  dichotomy, you know? So I started looking into it, you
• 14:28
  know, as a curious person, you know, I want to learn more about
• 14:32
  it, you know. How can a tennis player, you know, who has no
• 14:35
  time to recover, really, you know, just 20 seconds between
• 14:39
  the serves? How can they do that? And how can they do it at
• 14:42
  such a late age. And I realized that in this whole high
• 14:46
  performance scene, the concept of energy had been introduced,
• 14:49
  and that they were not talking about time management or
• 14:52
  whatever on the court. They were talking about, how do you
• 14:56
  recharge, how do you keep your energy? How do you get
• 14:59
  resilience? And then I started my own journey and trying to
• 15:02
  figure out what is energy. What gives me energy? And I realized
• 15:06
  it's the old thing of body, mind and soul. The body I understand,
• 15:10
  you know, but then on the mind is basically mental and
• 15:13
  emotional, and then on the spiritual side. Nobody even
• 15:16
  talks about the spiritual sides, but those are the things there
• 15:20
  are no more. Those are the things that give us energy, and
• 15:24
  they can also drain energy. There's a flow in this, because
• 15:27
  you burn in the morning, you get up, you have a full tank of
• 15:31
  energy, typically, if you have slept relatively well, you know,
• 15:34
  and then you burn it through. So, and there are a lot of
• 15:38
  tricks, you know, that the high performance players have
• 15:41
  learned, and leaders can learn the same thing. Leaders can
• 15:44
  learn absolutely the same thing. So in the end, we are even more
• 15:48
  high performance athletes, you know, then, then the tennis
• 15:51
  players. Because the tennis player after the game or after a
• 15:55
  tournament, they have a time where they can go somewhere
• 15:58
  else. We are on 24 hours, or 25 hours, eight days a week. It
• 16:02
  feels almost, you know. So that got me into this. And in regards
• 16:06
  to the zones, it's relatively simple. You know, you want to be
• 16:09
  in performance zone. You know, performance zone is where you
• 16:13
  have high energy, positive, but then life happens, you know. So
• 16:17
  what do you do? Panic, you know. So you immediately go into what
• 16:20
  I call survival zone, by the high energy, but but negative,
• 16:24
  you know. So what do you do now? What do you do now? You know,
• 16:27
  you have to find a mechanism how you quickly get back into
• 16:31
  performance zone. The first thing when you go into survival
• 16:34
  zone. It's very good. And the human body is made for this,
• 16:38
  because it's a flight or fight response. We get adrenaline. Our
• 16:41
  focus goes like this. We get superpowers. The only thing is
• 16:45
  that the superpower lasts for an hour, for two hours maximum, and
• 16:49
  then you drop into burnout zone, so you have to very quickly get
• 16:53
  back into performance zone. And what's the trick of this? You
• 16:56
  know, there's a ton of tricks mental training, you know,
• 16:59
  figuring out the situation, but you have to be aware of it. You
• 17:03
  get back into it. So life is not I used to think. I thought life
• 17:07
  is an ultra marathon. That's in reality, your life is sprints of
• 17:11
  various distances, and recharge sprints and recharge and
• 17:14
  recharge time. And the sprint time is not equally, equal time,
• 17:18
  you know? It can be much, much less time today there, there is
• 17:21
  a really simple way how you can figure it out for yourself, you
• 17:25
  know. So, so, I mean, many of us have some type of tracker, you
• 17:29
  know, so, and this tracker shows me my heart rate. The heart
• 17:32
  rate, for me, is a super good indicator of whether you're
• 17:36
  stressed or not. You know one. The second one is breathing. If
• 17:39
  your breathing gets very shallow, very fast, you know,
• 17:42
  then something is going on emotionally with you. The third
• 17:46
  one is vision, you know, if your vision becomes a tunnel vision,
• 17:50
  you know. You know, where you only see one thing, you know,
• 17:53
  then you know something is going on that is not healthy over a
• 17:57
  longer period of time. You know. So, so, so there are things that
• 18:01
  you can learn how to observe yourself. And I would think that
• 18:04
  it's very easy to learn. You know, I don't even have to look
• 18:08
  at the watch, and I know exactly, roughly, exactly where,
• 18:11
  where, where my heart rate is, you know. So because somehow you
• 18:15
  you know your body, what, how the body feels, you know when,
• 18:18
  when the heart rate is outside of the zone that you want it to
• 18:22
  be in. It also requires a certain will to change. I mean,
• 18:25
  certain will to first be confronted with the realities,
• 18:29
  which, unfortunately, very often. I mean, we kind of know
• 18:32
  that something is not right, but in the we don't want to hear it,
• 18:36
  because it inflicts stress on us, you know, but at the same
• 18:39
  time, then, if you are not brutally honest with yourself.
• 18:43
  How often have you seen that people have certain strange
• 18:46
  habits? You know?
• 18:47
  Adam Outland: That feedback loop; I've interviewed numbers
• 18:50
  of executives and leaders, and it's kind of a common feedback
• 18:53
  when you arrive at a higher level of leadership is that the
• 18:57
  honesty from your team can diminish because there's less of
• 19:00
  incentive directly to the person to be directly honest with their
• 19:04
  superior, right? How would you go about moderating that risk
• 19:08
  for those around you? Or how would you go about making sure
• 19:12
  the feedback was honest, even if it's not always what you want to
• 19:16
  hear?
• 19:16
  Klaus Kleinfeld: By the way, this is one of the big
• 19:18
  differences when I was asked to move into a leadership role here
• 19:24
  in the US, for the first time, it's one of the big differences
• 19:26
  between a German environment and a US environment the US. I mean,
• 19:30
  if you as a CEO, start a conversation and want to want a
• 19:34
  feedback from your team, it's very interesting. The the team
• 19:39
  very often does not offer offer feedback. They ask you
• 19:42
  questions. And I realize that the reason why in the US you
• 19:47
  have that situation is simply because, in the US, if you want
• 19:50
  to fire somebody, you know the person is gone, literally, in a
• 19:53
  minute. And whereas in Europe and Germany, particularly, you
• 19:57
  know, you can't fire the person you know you. Know, go through a
• 20:00
  process, you know, because otherwise they sue you, you
• 20:03
  know, and then talk with the unions. And so, in a way, the
• 20:09
  perceived job security is, in this case, is a positive, a
• 20:15
  positive enforcer of they are not, they are not afraid of
• 20:19
  giving you feedback, even if the feedback is against what they
• 20:23
  think you want to hear, you know, whereas here, there's more
• 20:27
  an inclination to please, please the boss. So it's it requires a
• 20:32
  little bit more of an effort. And I would always do it in a
• 20:35
  one on one and say, may I ask you to give me feedback, you
• 20:39
  know? And and the and learn the rule of feedback. And the rule
• 20:43
  of feedback is you, you do not respond to what the person says.
• 20:47
  Your response is simply, thank you for the feedback, and that's
• 20:50
  it. If you draw a four by two by two, you know you basically you
• 20:55
  say, what do you know about yourself and what do you not
• 21:00
  know about yourself? And you have the second one, what do
• 21:02
  others know about you? And what do others not know about you?
• 21:06
  And the interesting thing, there is a an element there of
• 21:10
  something that others know about you that you don't know. So what
• 21:13
  you do with feedback? You open that window, and very often it's
• 21:17
  these things that you you don't even you don't even realize you
• 21:21
  know. You've adopted some practices, you've adopted some
• 21:24
  language, you've adopted some some evidence you know that, or
• 21:29
  dress you know so that people interpret in a certain way,
• 21:33
  which was not your intention. And that's why it's so important
• 21:37
  for learning. Just look at the Navy SEALs. I mean, they, after
• 21:41
  mission was done, they would criticize what didn't go well,
• 21:45
  you know. And then they separate the the feedback from the
• 21:50
  person. They don't say you are an idiot. You didn't do, you
• 21:53
  didn't didn't do, they will say, this went wrong. This went
• 21:56
  wrong. It's clear whose accountability it is, you know,
• 21:59
  but it's a mutual description of how can we get to better
• 22:04
  performance. So brutal, honest feedback cultures are the
• 22:08
  fastest learning organizations, as long as it comes with an
• 22:11
  understanding this is not about you. This is about performance.
• 22:15
  Adam Outland: Yeah, so many good things here. Accountability
• 22:19
  seems to be invited by top performers. So for you know, an
• 22:23
  executive that might be listening what you know, where
• 22:26
  they find there's sometimes accountability gaps for
• 22:29
  themselves, right? How would you advise them to seek
• 22:33
  accountability for themselves?
• 22:35
  Klaus Kleinfeld: Yeah, I think in general, I believe, as we
• 22:37
  just talked about feedback, I mean, you even in larger
• 22:40
  organizations, to I would highly recommend that. And you can run
• 22:43
  this multiple times of the year. It costs you nothing if you want
• 22:46
  to have it, have a real finger on the pulse if, particularly if
• 22:49
  you're going through transition phases, if you have made an
• 22:52
  acquisition, you know, or you have a major transformation
• 22:55
  going through, you know. So I would highly recommend that, on
• 22:57
  a personal level, I think very often people also don't
• 23:00
  understand why this is so important. And it comes down to
• 23:03
  what makes a great team. You know, will you be able? How will
• 23:07
  you be able to make a great team? And accountability is one
• 23:10
  of those five things that are essential. You know, if you want
• 23:13
  a high performance team, they are essential. And it starts
• 23:16
  with trust. You know, that's that's the core. That's the
• 23:19
  core. You have to have trust among your core team, you know.
• 23:22
  Secondly, we talked about this, what I call conflict, you know,
• 23:25
  is you have to be willing to live with conflict. By conflict
• 23:29
  here, I mean, it's also very critical feedback, you know. So
• 23:33
  which many people interpret that as conflict, you know, but
• 23:36
  people have to have a capability of that commitment is, a big
• 23:40
  thing, you know. And then accountability, you know, if
• 23:43
  something goes wrong and you are committed and it's yours, it was
• 23:46
  your work stream, you basically say, hey, look, I mean, I did
• 23:50
  not do well in that moment, I will correct that. And last one
• 23:54
  is basically the results. And that's also interesting me,
• 23:57
  something that very often is not clear. You would not believe how
• 24:01
  often I see when I ask mentors, CEOs, you know, and when I ask
• 24:07
  CEOs who complain about that their team is not doing what
• 24:11
  they think they're doing, and ask them, explain to me, what
• 24:14
  exactly do you want? Do you want from them, you know? And
• 24:17
  interestingly, I mean, then they go into a rant, you know, it has
• 24:21
  to be crystal clear. What is, what does winning look like? The
• 24:25
  moment you know what winning looks like, and you will you can
• 24:29
  align the team around that's what winning looks like.
• 24:31
  Adam Outland: Wow, such a simple question to remember to ask your
• 24:36
  team members to test.
• 24:37
  Klaus Kleinfeld: By the way, we didn't talk about purpose on the
• 24:40
  energy side. I miss that. I mean purposes, this thing on the
• 24:44
  energy. It's a very interesting thing, because purpose does to
• 24:48
  energy what laser does to light. You know, it basically focuses
• 24:52
  the energy around one point. And as you see, light is diffuse,
• 24:56
  you know, it's nice. You know, the moment it becomes a laser,
• 25:00
  it can cut through large walls. It can. And do anything, and
• 25:03
  that's like, that's what purpose does to energy the moment you
• 25:07
  know what you want to achieve, what mission you want to do. You
• 25:11
  know, all of your energy goes to this one point. Visioning is a
• 25:15
  great exercise. And in my book, I have a long chapter on
• 25:18
  purpose, because a simple concept, yet a complicated
• 25:22
  concept, you know, it's a concept that the mankind has
• 25:25
  struggled with as long as we exist.
• 25:27
  Adam Outland: What was your purpose? What was the purpose
• 25:30
  that you landed on?
• 25:31
  Klaus Kleinfeld: That's the other thing. I mean, my purpose
• 25:33
  also changed, you know, my purpose changed. And, I mean,
• 25:37
  and it's not just one purpose, it can be multiple purposes, you
• 25:41
  know. So my purpose, clearly, has always been around. I want
• 25:45
  to raise a lovely family and have a great relationships with
• 25:48
  my children, you know. And want to have children, and want to
• 25:52
  have a great relationship with my children and also the family
• 25:56
  of my my wife, you know, and want to be a great husband at
• 26:00
  the same time. I mean, when I've been running large organizations
• 26:04
  or even small ones, you know, the purpose was, I want to make
• 26:07
  this successful. And I want to help people excel in here. The
• 26:11
  people element also was always there. Those have been constant
• 26:15
  elements of of the of the purpose, you know. I mean, I
• 26:18
  love it, I change it, or I leave it, you know. So I Yes, I needed
• 26:22
  work originally, you know, for for making money, you know. But
• 26:26
  I, even then, I lived by the principles, even then I
• 26:30
  believed, you know, I want to get energy from it, and I want
• 26:33
  to feel that it serves a good purpose for me.
• 26:36
  Adam Outland: So I love what you said, and this may, it's kind of
• 26:39
  a great wrap up point. And if you've you've probably seen this
• 26:42
  quote, but it's called the master in the art of living. In
• 26:45
  this description, he says, the master and the art of living is
• 26:48
  the person that makes it so hard to tell if he's working or
• 26:51
  playing, because at the end of the day, he's always doing both.
• 26:54
  Klaus Kleinfeld: I like that. Yeah, wonderful.
• 26:56
  Adam Outland: So many good lessons in here. Klaus, I know
• 26:58
  we could probably go for another hour, but I'll stay to our time.
• 27:02
  The book was wonderful to do an initial read through, and I'd
• 27:05
  recommend it. Where can people find and follow your your future
• 27:09
  wisdom outside of what you've authored?
• 27:11
  Klaus Kleinfeld: I don't do much on social media. I do LinkedIn,
• 27:14
  I mean, so my LinkedIn, LinkedIn profile, you find me on a Klaus
• 27:18
  Kleinfeld, and I do write these things myself, and I do comment,
• 27:22
  you comment also, and, yeah, so, and the book can be found on
• 27:25
  Amazon, you know, and on many other platforms. There's also an
• 27:29
  audio book around it, you know, which I really like. I mean, I
• 27:33
  didn't read it myself, but I like the guy who read it, and he
• 27:36
  has a wonderful voice. I love it. I really love it, you know.
• 27:40
  Adam Outland: So good, great knowledge today, and coming from
• 27:43
  someone who grew up in the land of Haribo gum bears and
• 27:47
  Beethoven, really glad to spend time with you.
• 27:51
  Klaus Kleinfeld: Well Adam, wonderful pleasure. Yeah.
• 27:53
  Adam Outland: Thank you so much, Klaus.
• 27:54
  Klaus Kleinfeld: Thank you very much.